We all love babies, and babies love their mommies the most.   Not a startling comment, but what does it have to do with racism?   Very early, within days of birth, babies start to use all their senses to pick out their parents and other caregivers.  As they develop a visual sense of color, they can use that newfound sense to help tell the difference between people they depend on.  Researchers are finding more and more that babies who see skin color and other genetic traits early end up being able to sort other visual traits better, resulting in higher intelligence.  Remember the Sesame Street song, "One of these things is not like the other...."? We want our babies to see differences. 

One day, that baby sees a person that looks so different than their mommy that they point, laugh, or ask aloud about the difference.  And they are shushed!  If you're over 35 or so, you were likely taught to try to ignore the gift wrapping and look at the gifts within the person.  You've worked hard at that all your life, denying your amazing original talent.  You might have even achieved that beautiful state of color blindness, reporting that you don't see color. 

Our exercise today is to give up trying to be colorblind and acknowledge that you have a wonderful skill, developed from birth, to tell the difference in how people look.  Do you remember when one of the most insulting things you could say was that you thought all Black people looked alike and you couldn't tell them apart? You may have actually trained yourself to not tell them apart.

We've promised you that this course won't take a lot of time out of your day, but each step should take at least a day to practice.  Today's practice:  As you are out in the world, or home watching TV or Internet images, do this one thing.  For every person you see, find something unique about their appearance.  If they have a different skin tone than you, try to notice what it is.  Or look at the size of their nose, the texture of their hair, or the closeness of their eyes.  Just notice.  In your attempt to see past race, you may have trained yourself without knowing it to avoid looking at people different than yourself.  Do you hear your mother's voice telling you it's not nice to stare? I don't want you to stare, but I do want you to study another person with loving eyes and a smile.  If you find something unique about that person, you are allowed to offer loving comments like, "You have lovely eyes" or "Your smile is infectious" or "I've never seen such pretty hands."

Your practice will guide you to see new beauty in humans all around you and--more importantly--help your brain reset to a normal place where differences exist in all of us. And you're allowed to notice. Skin tone is only one of hundreds of subtle genetic differences that design our exteriors.  Immerse yourself in the beauty of the differences that the mixing and matching of DNA over the decades has brought us.