As a nation, we seem collectively focused on our differences. Black or white. Male or female. Red or blue. Naturally born or immigrant. Wealth or lack thereof. We are defined by our differences, and relish pointing out how others lack the homogeneity we seem to think we all seek.

Over at Medium, Eduflack writes this week on the horrific actions at Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina last month, and what that experience should teach us as parents and as a community. I’m honored to be a contributor to Changemaker Education, a new series from Ashoka’s Start Empathy Initiative.

In one of the more personal pieces I’ve written in quite a while, I talk about my own experiences, as a white Catholic, at AME churches, and my hopes for my own children, both of Latino descent. As I write:

As children of color, my son and daughter will have a very different life experience than I have had. They will know just as much of the world in which I was raised as they do of the world from which they were adopted. It may be tough for them to be raised with roots in both communities, but it will define who they are as adults and how they raise their own children.

Ultimately, it is my hope that 20 years from now, one of them will be in the well of an AME church, speaking out on the importance of community and equity. It is my hope that they will speak of how far we have come in two decades to tear down the walls and silos of difference in pursuit of identifying the similarities that define us. And it is my hope that they will mean each and every word they speak.

Please give it a read. And please check out what Ashoka is doing on this important topic.