People with similar personalities have much more in common than people with similar skin color. Get out of the race box. Color outside the racial lines. Get my new book “Off the RACE Track” on Amazon.

If you look back at America’s race tracks, openly and honestly, some of the things you learn will break your heart. Although the Declaration of Independence says we are all created equal, for two centuries America enforced legal inequality.

In the 1600s color was defined as, “a way to separate people.” Perhaps it’s time to redefine it as, “a way to appreciate people.” If America had treated short people and tall people differently for centuries, keeping them in separate neighborhoods, we’d have a short/tall problem today.

When was the race card first played in America? When laws were passed to establish and protect color-based human enslavement. However, the color of the skin has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the person within. Making skin color a way to categorize people was an unwise idea that has caused much pain through out American history.

Colorblind? It’s okay to notice people’s color, but it’s not okay to treat them disrespectfully because of it. To heal America’s racially charged society, perhaps we all need to humbly search our history and discover how we got to this point.

I don’t believe the myth that says that black people are scary. During three summers of selling black history books door-to-door I was never harmed or even threatened by a black person. However, I did have a white guy pull a gun on me for being on his front porch. And I had two white policemen harass me, threaten me to “get a bondsman” to avoid jail, and take me to their station, all because of “soliciting.” I kept responding kindly and they finally let me go.

Race is a myth, created by Europeans as an attempt to justify human trafficking. The idea of skin-color-based racial divisions was rare or nonexistent in the ancient world. Ancient Jews saw two “races” — themselves and everybody else. Red, yellow, black, white — we’re all “Gentiles.”

The melanin within human skin creates various colors, but society’s racial regimen is a myth. Slavery and legal segregation are gone, but many of the myths that maintained them still linger.