all the same?

* all the same? *
My heart and social leanings say
They are all the same
We are as identical as slices of white bread
Or lumps of coal
Each only differs in culture and upbringing
In present circumstances found
Or perhaps past slights of fate endured
This wash of humanity
So many racial shades and stereotypes
We are really all the same
And yet my reason begs to differ
Our life is seen through perception's lenses
And if we each have different ones
As if we looked through an individual snowflake each
A unique prism with as much variance
As Notre Dame's lead coloured glass
Defining our lives and incidents differently
Influenced by life and self history
And by culture familial and social
Geographical topographical and metrological
Our world even standing in same place
Even in sharing the same moments
Will not be perceived in the same way
My reason tells me for all my emotive softness
Empathy with these others here
I am as strangely alien to them
As they are aliens to me.