I want to speak honestly about something that has long sat uncomfortably within me. The language used to describe human division has never fully resonated with my spirit. Words such as race and minority carry a weight that feels misaligned with something deeper and more unified within us. The experiences these words attempt to describe are real and often deeply painful. At the same time, the terms themselves originate from a system of classification that fragments a human population that shares far more in common than it does in difference. These categories were constructed to divide, label, and organize people in ways that serve systems of hierarchy rather than truth.

My experience in Central Pennsylvania reflected something more layered than what is often reduced to a race issue. Race, as it is commonly understood, functions as a social system of categorization rather than a biological foundation for human worth. Certain groups have used this system to organize themselves into hierarchies of access, value, and power. The drive to rank, control, and extract does not originate from the surface of the body. It reflects the condition of the inner life. It reveals what a person’s heart has come to accept, what it has inherited, and what it continues to carry forward. I witnessed this distinction in a very real and human way at a farmer’s market in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

A woman of European ancestry stood beside a sixteen-year-old young man of African ancestry. She had brought him to her market stand so he could learn how to count money and make change. She demonstrated patience. She offered guidance. She invested her time and knowledge into a young person who had been underserved by the systems surrounding him.

Carlisle Farmers Market, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania

The moment carried a quiet depth that stayed with me.

That same region contained a courthouse that denied me due process. It included attorneys who overcharged and misrepresented their role. It involved systems and institutions that perceived me through limitation before I had the opportunity to speak. The individuals operating within those systems were not acting from the surface level of identity. Their behavior reflected something deeper. Their actions revealed internalized beliefs shaped over generations, beliefs that position certain people as resources to be extracted from, managed, or held beneath an invisible ceiling established long before any of us entered these spaces. The woman at the farmer’s market and the individuals within that courthouse differed in something far more fundamental than ancestry.

They differed in the posture of their hearts.

One heart moved toward investment, care, and development. Another heart moved toward control, limitation, and extraction. One recognized the inherent worth of another human being. Another reduced a person to a category that did not warrant full humanity. This distinction invites a deeper examination of what truly divides us. The conversation extends beyond race or physical difference. It moves into the realm of the heart, the internal agreements a person forms over time, and the beliefs that are either questioned or preserved without reflection.

When conversations remain centered only on race, space is created for avoidance. A person can claim not to see difference and walk away with a sense of resolution that requires no further examination. A focus on the posture of the heart removes that distance.

The question becomes clear and direct. Does one recognize the full humanity of the person standing before them, or does one reduce them to a category shaped by assumption and inherited belief? The orientation of the heart determines whether one moves toward another person’s growth or toward their containment. This choice lives within each individual. It always has.

See them clearly.Name what you see.Move accordingly.

With Warmth,

Shenera Boodie-Wienken

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