I must say that I engage in some truly thought provoking inner dialogues while I am driving. With the right music and sense of direction my mind is open to explore different ideas and truths that would otherwise be kept in the recesses of my mind as I take care of more pressing issues (included but not limited to school, band, work, family, and relationships). So as I drove up 295 today, part of the family in tow and 808 and Heartbreak on the speakers, I thought about the issue of race. Not in sense that it is traditionally spoken of, but in more of a logistical way. When we make an argument about race, we are quick (sometimes hesitant) to label the sides as white and blacks, whites and minorities, blacks and minorities, or any variation of the sort. This creates a problem because labeling gives way to assumption. The assumption that every white person is for the oppression of blacks and other minorities or that every black woman is either a video vixen (using that word very generously) or an Omarosa (just happened to see her book in Borders today). As we are all very sure, these are far from true.
One of the great things about growing up in this era of information and technology is that we can question concepts that were widely accepted as truth, i.e. race. Yes, for those that did not know, race is a man mad concept that can not be measured by any means other than the pigment of a person's skin. Think hard about it and tell me another way to do it. Research shows that on a microscopic level, there is no more of a similarity between two people of the same 'race' and two people of a different race. It even shows that there sometimes more similarities between two people of different races than those of the same race. So ummm, yea take that convention of the old guard!
But back to the subject at hand, when discussing race and placing the labels that we often use, black and white, we also diminish the value, struggle, and validity of those outside our groups. Who is to say that our struggles are not similar? Who is to say that their feelings about a subject are not the same? To this, I propose that we drop the labels of race (as a means to erase the concept for future generations) and use the terms 'us and them'. At first glance if seems elementary and pending your inspection, you may find it that way. But we can use the marker of us to stand, all inclusively, for those who share in our sentiments and in our dreams for the future and the marker them, all inclusively, for those who happen to be our antitheses.
