Our Differences Make Us Stronger

A story about sharing our identities and making new friends from La June Montgomery Tabron, the President and CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. La June and her best friend, Jenefer, love going to school in Detroit. They’re in the same class, and they always sit together at lunch. La June is Black and Jenefer is White, and they don’t notice that all the other kids are sitting with friends who look like them. But when Jenefer moves away, La June doesn’t know where to sit. She feels different. A new girl, Eva, moves into Jenefer’s old house, and everything about her feels different to La June, too. At school, La June’s teacher tries something new: changing up the seats at lunch time. After, he gathers the class into a circle to talk about why it was hard to sit with different people, what they learned about each other, and how they can share more in the future. La June and her classmates start to understand that sometimes it’s comfortable to be around people who are like us, but we begin to build a community when we learn about people who are different. Reflecting the transformative racial healing practices that the W.K. Kellogg Foundation promotes and celebrates around the world, Our Differences Make Us Stronger shows young readers that sharing our stories, listening to others, and learning about our differences are the first steps to building a stronger community.