In light of our selection of the first black president, there is — for good reason — lots of talk of race relations here and elsewhere. We have come such a long way to correct the mistakes of our past but there are still so many people out there who can’t even say they have had the opportunity to be friends with someone of a different race. I grew up in an urban neighborhood where some of my best friends were black and Korean. I believe those friendships helped to make me a better person. So, when I saw this short CBS piece about an unlikely bond between an elephant and a dog it made me think, if an elephant and a dog can get past their physical differences, why can’t we?

It also made me question how people will ever get over their racial bias if we continue to live in towns with minimal integration. How will the opportunities for friendships ever arise if people of different races do not live and work together? How do we see past the color of our skin if we never really get to know each other — allowing us the chance to see how similar we really are. And in friendship, my hope would be that we gain a new respect for what makes us all different. Cheesy as that sounds… white people who wouldn’t normally have voted for a black man, voted for Obama. They didn’t vote for him just because they wanted Bush out of office (although that may have been part of the reason), they voted for him because they felt like they got to know him during his campaign — and they liked him and they liked his politics. Maybe, in fact, he is the first black man they’ve ever gotten to know.

Hat Tip to Dixie

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