50 Shades of Grey

Tonight I met the sister of a classmate from my High School.  I had the chance to let her know how much I admired her family for being the only black family to enroll in my small town school in the 1970s and ask what it was like for them.  We knew we received a very good public school education and acknowledged the respect we gave to teachers who were in charge of our education. We reminisced about the “old days” as they were — but mostly admitted how glad we were to move on in our life from High School.  Over 35 years later, this wonderfully educated women transcends the prejudices of society, towns and gender based systems that still exist regarding race and gender.

This is a re-blog from 2012 and seemed very appropriate to re-post after seeing

It’s interesting how much our country is shades of grey, yet our choice tomorrow is between “black and white.”

When I taught in public school in the 1980s – early 1990s, there was a principal in the school who saw everything black or white.  That always infuriated me — as I KNEW there were many shades of grey.  I’m generally tolerant of varieties — I’m an artist and musician.

Thank you Miss Clairol, I’m not yet ready to let my hair go completely grey.

This is one of many light to dark brown hair dye colors I will use till I decide to go “silver”

Of course nature has its share of grey animals. Some furry, some scaley, some slimy, some leathery.

  

Sometimes birds are grey before their feathers change to either white, black or pink (flamingo)

 

Check out the baby panda who starts out pink and ends up white and black.

 

This is just a small sampling of grey paint colors:

With only a little research you can discover all the shades of human color — and I haven’t seen much black OR white:

This portrait project seeks to discover every possible human skin tone.

That’s quite a project!