This era has brought back the long standing issue of race and cultural relationship to our nation.
It is interesting to look at it from a scientific factual view. The issue of skin color difference makes one segment of our population being viewed as being better than the other and boils down to the early members of mankind exploring the world.
Our African ancestors needed darker skin to filter out too much sunshine.
Some of that early population traveled north from Africa, into the area known now as Europe, as they searched for their basic needs to making a living.
The colder climate required clothing, and to be able to utilize what sunshine they still received, and their skin tone to lighten, using the warmth of the sun and vitamin D to be used more efficiently on a lighter tone of skin color.
So that answers the skin color issue. Many bigots of our time point out the fact, and it is a fact, that those northern cultures developed greater skills to make a living than those who stayed put on the African continent most likely needed to, as necessity is the mother of invention.
Like today, it is harder to make a living in the colder climate areas of our world than in the warmer climate areas.
Even today, many retired and limited income folks head south during the winter months because it”s cheaper to live in those areas than in the colder states.
The warmer areas have longer growing seasons for food, cost less for keeping warm, and even game migrate there.
Early mankind had to figure out new creative ways to stay alive in the colder areas they moved to, while those in the warmer areas had to come up with far less new innovation to stay alive, thus, the difference in skills needed to survive.
Even today, when a person moves from one climate to another, they have to adjust from their old ways of living to a new way of living.
For many, gone are the need for snow tires, heavy wool coats, ear muffs, fire wood. Instead they need shorts, light weight clothes, air conditioners, flip flops, and suntan lotions.
Even the diets of the two change and type of employment offered, etc. Work habits also are effected, a more laid back lifestyle in the hot areas is one example. So, a greater understanding of the above, and greater tolerances of the many differences between those raised in the realities of the areas they grow up in, would lesson the degree of the negative effects of bigotry that divides so many of us from being the more united and compassionate Nation of Citizens we could all enjoy.
Jim Hall
Clearlake Oaks
