This disaster will become even more tragic if the racial extremists of any side are able to exploit it to weaken the diversity which our nation has paid so much to achieve.
In my career, I have worked in Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. I do not claim to have seen it all, but I do claim to have seen much of it. And my experience has been that depravity and incompetence and indifference are all color blind. In Africa, I have seen the worst of humanity and the best of humanity. I have also seen those attributes in people of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Latin America -- and also in my beloved America.
My old Cherokee grandmother taught me that I should judge other people not by the color of their skin or whether they agreed with me but only by the content of their character.
And whenever I think that these earthly problems are overwhelming, I like to take a look at the following photograph taken by the Hubble telescope. It reveals a billowing tower of cold gas and dust rising from a stellar nursery called the Eagle Nebula. The tower is 9.5 light-years or about 57 trillion miles high, about twice the distance from our Sun to the next nearest star. When I contemplate such things, it occurs to me that we who are privileged to occupy this third rock from our own dying red star should begin trying to hang together.
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y30/RichardS/2005-12-b-web.jpg)