A Human Is Not Divided at Birth

Author’s Note: I’m writing this as a human, to other humans. I notice difference the same way everyone does — skin, bodies, language, culture. But I’m trying to practice noticing something first. The human in the skin. If this piece helps you pause for even a moment and see that human — in yourself or in someone else — then it’s done what I hoped it could do.

A human is not born Black or white in the way society means it.

A human is not born into a nation, a culture, or a side of the world.

A human is born human.

Skin has color.

Bodies have form.

Hair curls or doesn’t.

But none of that divides a human from another human until meaning is placed on it.

When two people with different skin tones have a child, that child does not arrive divided.

They arrive whole.

Nothing is missing.

Nothing needs to be reconciled.

There is no conflict until humans introduce one.

Race did not appear because humans were different.

Difference has always existed.

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Race appeared when difference was turned into separation.

The same is true of borders.

Africa and Russia are not opposites.

They are places on the same planet.

Earth did not divide itself — humans did.

We draw lines and then forget we drew them.

Before a language is learned, before a culture is inherited, before a nationality is assigned, a human exists as capability — as “I can.”

I can breathe.

I can grow.

I can learn.

I can become.

That is what arrives at birth.

Everything else is layered on later.

Humanity does not need to be unified.

It already is.

What needs to change is what we choose to see first.