Last week I wrote about getting beyond race; it was a reaction to the then-story-of-the-moment. An NAACP director in the West was found not to be the race she said she was. The reaction was all over the place, on everyone's part including mine.

Then the shootings in Charleston took place, followed by an intense dialogue about the Confederate flag... which I'd grown up with as a school boy in Virginia, where we were still taught about the "War of Northern Aggression," and all of our state's great generals, in those days when the final vestiges of segregation were still being ripped out of the lives everyone lived down there.

I realized what I wrote last week, about reaching a time when we could all choose race (and gender and all the things we identify with as a means of differentiating ourselves from others) on our own terms, was misguided.

I have never felt threatened for being blonde (or now balding), fair-skinned, even overweight. Even overseas in developing nations, or in more homegrown neighborhoods where I definitely didn't feel like I belonged. I've tried to find points of empathy with those who've faced others' attitudes, and prejudices. Considered the "minority" feelings that many feel for their religious or political beliefs.

It just isn't the same as being targeted for the color of one's skin. Or for the way one dresses and behaves as part of one's belief, for that matter.

Can we ever wrench racism, and all forms of hate and bigotry, from our minds, our souls? Probably not. Those places that seem to have been successful doing so, on close glance, tend to be relatively homogenous. Or insular.

Can we better ourselves by becoming more conscious of the differences between each of us, and respecting them? Can we treat all life as a relationship, a sort of marriage, that needs constant vigilance, work, therapy, but also elements of just plain fun? We hope and believe so.

Certainly, many among us scoff at such sentiments. The idea of talking about one's feelings or, worse, listening to those of a partner, neighbor, or someone one doesn't know seems crazy painful. But it works... if one works at it.

Whatever one thinks of our President, his victories in 2008 and 2012, and his measured presence over the last eight years, have not created the situation at hand, but allowed us to see into ourselves in ways we'd glossed over during past times when our enemies were elsewhere.

Electing a black president, or Supreme Court justice or attorney general, are important acts. As would be the election of a woman to lead us, even if we insist that we're a nation of fighting opinions and words rather than a unified nation acting on a stage where all the world still watches us for leadership.

Any of you know the musical "South Pacific" There's a song in it, by the great Rodgers & Hammerstein, that goes like this...

"You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!"

Remember that? Now learn from it... and teach all our children to be better than we've ever been. Why? Because we can...

And because we all are different, but the same in all needing equal respect and patience. And work.