7 & 7: Include vs. Exclude

REFLECTION:

Exclusion creates a special brand of loneliness made worse again by distrust or lack of confidence. The world has witnessed many forms of exclusion, each justified with its own convoluted rationale, but none that has stood the test of time, or reason, or good sense. Excluding sets in motion changes that eventually overtake the excluder, for he is an instrument of the status quo. Nations within nations are unhealthy, pitting the we against the they, creating neighborhoods without brotherhood. To be different has its strengths, to be unafraid of striking out anew, to advance rather than withdraw. For we know a country’s future mission is reflected in the eyes and point of view of its minority citizens, as is its past reinforced by the majority. Excluded people are tougher than the rest, strengthened by the constant hammering, separated and rising to the top like cream on milk. So why shake it, and make it all the same? Rather make it safe to be different. Inclusion celebrates all.

MUSES:

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust.
George Eliot The world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.
James Baldwin It is not healthy when a nation lives within a nation, as coloured Americans are living inside America. A nation cannot live confident of its tomorrow if its refugees are among its own citizens.
Pearl Buck

The world has narrowed to a neighborhood before it has broadened to a brotherhood.
Lyndon B. Johnson

It is always the minorities that hold the key of progress; it is always through those who are unafraid to be different that advance comes to human society.
Raymond B. Fosdick

Shall we judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The nail that sticks out is hammered down.
Japanese proverb

The best people and the best things rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.
Robert Frost

If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.
John F. Kennedy