So I have this new tagline on my mind, but before changing it, I came across Carol Tice's recent post about writing a good tagline for an income-generating blog. So I learned that my planned tagline is not good enough for that genre, but since my blog is therapeutic I decided to stick to it: "Different is neither positive nor negative". It attempts to combat prejudice.
When you say "these people are different than us", you subconsciously mean they are different in a negative way, that we should be careful when socializing with them, or avoid them. We have a natural tendency to be around people like us. It's easier, but then we miss the advantages of diversity. Think of diversity in terms like bio-diversity, large gene pool, different ideas, solutions, tastes, cultures. Don't go to the controversial diversity [mis]used by educational and business establishments to prefer people from certain backgrounds rather than merits. But 'different' doesn't apply only to people, but to things in general.
Next time when you come across 'different', test yourself. Was your first thought negative, positive or neutral?