Originally, I included eight pages in my book Getting Back to Great called Race in America. But after re-reading the section, I took it out. I noticed that at least seven of those eight pages were nothing more than my take on the current racial situation in America.

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There are many reasons why you are probably uninterested in my take on racism, not least of which is the fact that, genetically, I’m as white as a white girl can get. In fact, I received my Ancestry.com DNA results and it’s even worse than I thought. I was hoping for maybe a little American Indian (I heard from an early age that my maternal great-grandfather was literally carried off a Cherokee reservation by his white mother, which I always thought was the coolest story ever!) or (let’s get crazy!) Middle Eastern blood –but no. The results were a blah 98 percent European Caucasian.

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Although I’m disappointed to now be Ancestry.com-certified blah, I must say it did remind me that being born an upper-middle class, white Christian has been the greatest thing ever! Because of these supposedly “preferred” traits, I’ve never been unjustly detained by a police officer, or been spit on, yelled at, beaten up, or shot because of the color of my skin (or for simply wearing a hoodie or just jogging around my neighborhood). It’s awesome!

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Don’t get me wrong, I understand that, regardless of the color of my skin, I’m allowed as much as anyone to have “a take” on race and racism in this country. But I also understand that “takes” and opinions aren’t going to get us very far. The only thing that will truly move us forward at this point is to find solutions to very specific problems, regardless of the motivations that caused the problems in the first place.

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Another thing that would help move us forward is this: Let’s just accept the fact that we have all lived very different lives, and our unique personal experiences give rise to our world views and our reactions to practically everything – socially, politically, and otherwise.

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If you grew up in a government housing project in Harlem, your world view is going to be very (very) different from someone who grew up in Bel Air in Los Angeles, or on a farm in the Midwest. Because of this reality, the empathy gap between us can be at times difficult to bridge. In this regard, the walk a mile in someone else’s moccasins concept could change our entire country.

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The bottom line is that every American has a unique perspective they bring to the table, based on their life experiences. One of my high school friends, a white guy, has spent years in and out of prison thanks to multiple arrests on meth charges. I clearly remember a speech he gave when we were teenagers – with much conviction and passion – on how drug addicts, who were “pretty much” all black, should not be offered rehab over incarceration, and his unwavering support of the three-strikes law. My guess is he has since changed his mind.

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Or another white friend of mine who was shot and nearly killed by three black men during a carjacking, or a black friend of mine who was falsely accused of raping a white girl in college, or the black man who was convicted of stabbing a white woman by a mostly all-white jury. He was serving his 27th year when new DNA evidence found him to be not guilty after all.

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We all have a life-altering story like this to some degree, and our unique paths create the blueprint for our personal paradigms. The problem is that, when confronted with issues that fall outside our comfort zones, we often can’t see the forest for the trees. To fully comprehend and appreciate the complexity of our social condition, the suppressed elements routinely involved in our decision-making process must be brought to the forefront of the conversation. This will finally uncover the fundamental roadblocks, both conscious and unconscious, that prohibit tolerance and compassion.

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Then we must all rise above – rise above our histories, our prejudices and our discomforts and just do the right thing.