We've been talking a lot about race these past few weeks, and I've wanted to make an insightful blog post about my interactions in interesting race situations in that time. I wracked my brain, looked through pictures to jog my memory and... nothing. I could not remember a time in my young life in which I was in a place where someone's race mattered. My dads best friend and my pseudo-uncle Leon is black, my best friend in the universe is Peruvian, I grew up in a heavily jewish town, and I am a member of the B'hai Temple in Wilmette. I guess its a little weird that I've never been in a situation I can remember where race mattered, and it is not even that my whole life has been sheltered. My dad worked as a Dominick's security guard all around Chicago when I was growing up so I was exposed to different races of people from a young age. When Barack Obama was running for president, I was honestly annoyed by how much people brought up his race and how he would be the first black president. To me, that didn't matter. He was an intelligent man and a very engaging speaker and I didn't know why that was being over shadowed by his race or that it was some how a "surprise" that he could be as polished or
"clean" according to Joe Biden. I had known black men who were very smart and incredibly articulate and I didn't know how that could be surprising...
This may simply be me babbling about my lack of racial tension in my life and how I've had a vanilla life, but I feel like I haven't. I feel like no matter what my exposure has been or will ever be, I'm not going to see race as a class marker or anything other that genetic code. I mean, if there was something about me that I couldn't control that people judged me on, I'd just want it to stop and feel like an equal, with equal opportunities to prosper and fail as the next person, but my only genetic oddity is that I am a 6 foot tall girl from Glencoe so maybe I can't really know what I would do in that situation but I would hope that is what I would do...
maybe this doesn't make sense, but I just wanted to explain my frustration with not being able to connect class discussions to my life in interesting blog fashion.
Chloe,
ReplyDeleteI really like reading about your background -- you have a fascinating set of experiences that I would imagine set you apart from the rest of our student body. Couldn't you write about that? I mean, consider how "white" our demographics are. Do you find that your peers see things differently than you or that you find our institution is missing something?
Don't despair. You have more to write about. Sound like you're just trying to hard to force it.