I grew up in a mostly “all-white” community.  In my high school, although there may have been, I don’t remember any non-whites.  I believe that more than half the students were Jewish.  Since my first office job was in downtown Los Angeles, working for the County of Los Angeles, there was a wide array of races, religions and nationalities.
 My first adult best friend was Japanese, born in one of the “Internment Camps” during WWII.   Her parents had owned a nice home and a grocery store.  They were given one week to sell both before placed in the camp.  Of course, they lost both their home and store. In Europe millions of Jews and other non-Jewish victims, including Catholics, homosexuals, gypsies and more, died at the hand of Hitler and his followers.  They didn’t fit into Hitler’s “Master Race.” When I was a child, I remember my aunt, referring to her Black maid, saying, “I’m not prejudice, I even let Vera eat dinner with us.”  I didn’t understand that then, and I don’t understand it now. My father served in the army during WWII.  When a soldier in the same barracks as my dad learned that my father was Jewish said to him, “You can’t be Jewish.”  When my father asked why not, the soldier replied, “Because you don’t have a tail.”  He was raised to believe that all Jews had tails, and he truly believed it. I could go on and on about times throughout history where particular groups of people were tortured, killed, singled out or treated as property or second-class citizens. There are different words used to describe it - prejudice, bigotry, bias, racist, discrimination, stereotyping, and more – but all are basically the same behavior, an attitude or actual negative actions toward a particular group of people based solely on the fact that they belong to that group. Prejudice arises out of ignorance, although environment and upbringing certainly may contribute to it.  It is ugly.  It is irrational.  I believe it is a behavior born of fear and cowardice.  Bigotry drives people to take evil, pointless actions against other groups or individuals. I do not know now, and I never did, how any human being can think they are better than any other human being or that any one particular group of people can be considered “less than” any other group.
 I am less educated than many people, smarter than others.  I am plainer than some people, more attractive than others.  I am kinder than thousands of people, far less charitable and giving than millions of others.  I am simply me, no better or worse than any single group of individuals.
 Whoever you are, wherever you were born, no matter your sexual orientation, whatever your beliefs and to whichever race you belong, I believe that I am no better or worse as a person than you. Although I doubt it will ever happen, I pray that one day prejudice will fade into non-existence.

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Relationships

Interesting word, relationships.  It can mean so many different things.  As children, we had a relationship with our parents. Loving them, adoring them, admiring them and wanting to be like them when we grew up. (No, I’m not that naïve. I know that not everyone has a wonderful childhood, but I’m generalizing here.) When we reached school age, we began making friends at school. Friendly relationships through which we learned social skills and how to care for people outside our own family. As teenagers, we then began dating. Another entirely different kind of relationship. Maybe we even began to feel a new kind of love for someone, at least we believed we did at the time. We may even have had our hearts broken in a “boy-girl” relationship. Once we got into the “working world,” we began learning how to act in entirely new types of relationships. The boss-employee relationship. The co-worker relationship. The subordinate relationship. A whole new set of social skills, along with learning our actual job. Some of us had to cope with competition with a co-worker for a position, or we dealt with slackers in the office where we got stuck with their work. The climb to the top created some very challenging relationships for some of us. At some point between the dating and where we are today, many of us fell seriously in love, perhaps married and had children. We (hopefully) learned what compromising meant. We learned much more about how to give in a relationship. And our roles were reversed from when we were children. Our children then believed we could do no wrong and nothing could happen to them as long as we were there. (OK, I’ll admit, this period ends pretty abruptly when our kids reached their teens.) Those of us who now have our own business, network marketers, have at least attempted to learn about this whole new world of relationships. We are building relationships with people we have never met and likely never will. This networking relationship is completely new and different from any we’ve ever experienced. This is a “blended” relationship, sometimes strictly business. Other times, the relationships build into actual friendships. We care about one another, this distant person in another city, another state, even another country. Another type of relationship I’ve developed over the past few years is with others in network marketing. I have people on my network marketing team for whom I care deeply. I’ve also developed relationship with people I have met on various forums, many of whom I consider friends.  In fact, I find a great deal in common with my team members and others with home businesses, because I’m in a place in my life where my network marketing career is very important to me.  I believe my online friends understand this. Relationships. An interesting word.  ************************ Learn how to reduce your Health and Dental expenses AND reduce costs on Hearing, Vision, Prescriptions, Roadside Assistance, Lifelock™ and even more at http://ibourl.net/XpressSavings (NOT insurance). To learn about Julie Klein and how you can be successful in network marketing, look at the Xpress Healthcare Business Opportunity at http://joinxpresshealthcare.com.