Location, location, location. It’s not just important to choose carefully when it comes to where you place your business, location is also important when it comes to where you choose to raise your family.

When I was in elementary school I had a teacher, a white women, who took a bunch of us students on a field trip; this teacher also brought her daughter along. At some point we were all waiting in line and the conversation came around to where the teacher had chosen to live. My teacher said that one of the reasons she had chosen her neighborhood to buy a home and raise her family was because the neighborhood was ethnically diverse–she wanted to raise her children in a neighborhood with black people, white people, and everyone in else. To my teacher, it was important that she live in a community that looked like what the world looked like; my teacher she felt that a diverse neighborhood would help prepare her own children to see others–no matter their color–as people, as fellow humans first and foremost.

Personally, I don’t want to live in an all black community–at least not in America.

I don’t want to live an all-white community either.

I think that due to the racial animus that still resides beneath the usually calm veneer of society, it is difficult in this nation for black and white people to come together on one accord to fix national problems. I actually think that it would be easier to raise an emotionally healthy, non-racist black child in most all-black communities outside of America than it would be to do the same inside of America.

One of the reasons why I prefer living in a major city as a opposed to a suburb or rural area is that I think the sheer diversity of people and cultures that you are exposed to in a major city will help you to become a less racist person. I want to my children to grow up as truly global citizens, as people who care deeply about humanity and are able to see the humanity in other people just as easily as they see the color and hair texture of other people.