Just a Thought

Preface: This entry is not perfect. I don't think I will ever be able to make it perfect or express exactly what I'm trying to say. Irregardless, I'm still posting it because it's the effort that counts, right? Plus, I'm sick of editting it.

So I’m sitting in class last night trying to think about anything but what the teacher is talking about. I take a quick glance around the room at my fellow students, when it strikes me. Everyone in the room is sitting according to their race. There is a group of three or four black people in the front right of the classroom and a couple of citizens of the Asian persuasion seated directly in front of me. I turn around in my chair to find another small black community sitting one row back and to the right of myself. They must have gotten there late. The rest of the class room was an assortment of different looking white folks. We’ve all seen this type of thing before. Whether it’s in the high school cafeteria, the college classroom, or the work lunchroom, it’s always the same. This trend got me to thinking about exactly why people exhibit this type of behavior and how this behavior impacts social interaction between people of the same race and relations between races.

People tend to gravitate towards others who are of like mind and body, that’s just general social law. I think there’s a certain comfort in being around people that at the very least have one thing in common with you, your outward appearance. Segregation, in and of itself, is a natural process. Different kinds of birds don’t usually hang around together. I’ve never seen a goose flying with a pack of seagulls. It just doesn’t happen. I know that’s an elementary example but I still think it has meaning. There is a certain inherited comfort in being around people of a similar race, a similar look. Does that mean that because it’s natural, we should all segregate ourselves to groups? No. We are not birds. We are more advanced, though sometimes we decline to use our superiority to its utmost. There are valuable things we can learn from interaction with people no matter their race. However, to get to the point of sharing and learning, there are social boundaries that must be crossed, which can be difficult. As a side note, one of the reasons I believe the internet is such a powerful social tool is that everyone is faceless if they choose to be, and therefore it is merely our personalities floating on an electronic highway, bypassing many of the social roadblocks normally associated with person to person interaction.

Being a white male in his mid-twenties, I can only speak on personal experience and observation on my next point. And to be honest, maybe it’s just that I’m not a social butterfly unless I’m drunk but I’ll say it anyway. It’s more difficult for white people to find commune in a group of strangers than it is for any other race, assuming all races are represented by two or more people in the group. In general, when I white person enters a room or group, he’s in the majority. Obviously, that’s not the situation in all cases, but being the majority in the US, I’m going to assume that it happens more times than not. Inclusion in the majority is being part of a non-group. The majority is like a piece of paper and the minorities are the words written on it. The words have order, place and purpose. They form sentences and paragraphs that eventually represent thoughts and ideas and expression. The paper is more of just a background. Being this background offers no innate sense of belonging to anything around you. You’re not in with the words and there’s nothing that distinguishes or draws you to the section of paper next to you or in the top corner of the page or anywhere on a given sheet. When I walk into a room of strangers, I’m not compelled to talk to anyone, white, black or other. Generally, I’ll just keep to myself, get done what I need to do and head on home. Maybe I’m not social enough but I’m jealous because it seems like people of other races have an instant kinship with eachother that I’ll probably never know. Is it the same if you reverse the situation, like at a school with a primarily black population? Is the sense of instant togetherness lost? Do they then become the paper? I don’t know, but it would be interesting to find out.

Being a member of the majority can create a feeling of disjointed loneliness between its patrons. There is no initial bond shared between people in the majority when meeting for the first time. No common ground from with a relationship or even an interaction can grow. This lack of belonging to anything other than the bloated and nameless majority breeds isolationism. It makes you think, “What’s the point in trying to connect? It’s too much work”. And really, it is true that it’s hard to take the time and effort to get to know someone and without an initial social draw, race, looks, money, whatever, it’s even harder to try.

If there were a single race in this world, would it make things easier or harder? Would we lose the camaraderie born of being a minority? Would we be able to relate to each other and make the effort every time if we had to? I don’t know, but I don’t think that I’m going to have the chance to find out any time soon.