Daddy was colorblind. He could see no difference between black skin and white skin—brown skin and yellow skin; it made no difference to him or my mother. They quietly lived the “immortal declaration” written by Thomas Jefferson, “that all men are created equal.”
Honestly, I had no idea how fortunate I was to be raised without racial prejudice in our home until recently. In fact, for a long time I was very naïve to racial issues and got confused by news stories reporting clashes between races.
Daddy watched a lot of documentaries, and I remember watching one on the KKK with him. When it ended, he saw the questions piled up in my eyes and said, “God created every human being in His image. We are to love one another as Christ loves us—all men are created equal.” (Until my eighth grade Constitution class, I thought that last phrase was my Daddy’s original quote.)
Still, I didn’t fully appreciate my parent’s colorblindness until I became the Grandma of a delightful Vietnamese boy and a beautiful Indian girl. When I look into their foreign eyes—one pair of chocolate almonds and one pair as mysterious as the moon—my heart floods with love and joy like I’ve never known. In fact, I am so colorblind that the stares from Hispanic mothers watching me play with my dark-skinned grandchildren in the pool fills me with gratefulness. That God chose me to hold those precious souls in my arms is beyond my comprehension and I am privileged to be part of their family.
How does something as thin as the color of skin stop people from loving the soul, the heart, the mind and the spirit of another human being created in the image of our awesome God? I believe that question does not deserve an answer. I believe all men are created equal.
So, why am I pontificating on all this? I’m about to become a Grandma again. It’s true! Somewhere in the nation of Ghana, a little African boy is waiting to be loved by me, my son and his wife—well, I won’t be first in line to love him, but you know what I mean. Anyway, our son and his wife are adopting again and they have named him Isaac. We have no idea who he is, but God does, and I can’t wait to meet him and hold him in my arms and tell him how much our Creator loves him. Maybe it will be this month!
One thing I know for sure: when I hold his black hand in my white hand, I will pray that he will learn what Daddy and Mom taught me: that all men are created equal. Words are not necessary to proclaim that truth—it is self-evident. Freedom is colorblind.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” United StatesDeclaration of Independence
Happy Independence Day America!