One Big Family

My wife and I had another smile-inducing experience yesterday. We attended a spring festival at our kids' new school in Burbank. And once again, we were simply amazed at the multicultural and multi-ethnic mix we saw. Again, giving us that joyous recognition that the world as we know it is changing very fast - in a good way.

This particularly elementary school's demographics are about one-third white, one-third Hispanic, and one-third Asian, black, Indian, and other ethnicities, including multi-racial. But interestingly, even within the "white" one-third, what is considered white is not typical. In this area a very large portion of that number are ethnic immigrants from Armenia and Russia. American "whites" are actually a small number within that group. The principal of the school told us some 31 languages are spoken in the homes of the children who attend this public school. How cool is that. So you can imagine the beauty of the playground yesterday. To these kids "race" was definitely not a reality. Culture certainly was, but that is not a bad thing. It was also beautiful because the school kids, the 1st and 2nd graders, then the 3rd, 4th and 5th graders, did a hip hop dance performance that was really well done. So here you had all these ethnicities dancing together to largely black American hip hop music. That is what life should be about. That kind of blending of groups and cultures.