Minority Report

I'm a white guy. Like a really white guy. Like if it was your first day of school and you were sitting in art class and the teacher asked you to get out your new crayons, and you got all excited because you bought the box of neon crayons instead of normal because you want to be more awesome, and then the teacher said "ok get out the white one" you would reach into said box of neon crayons, and pull out the one that said "Scott" on the side.

So today I got to experience something I have never experienced in my entire life. I was the only white person in a room. Today I was in Cincinnati for the Black and Hispanic Achievers kick off. It is a YMCA program that promotes achievement among Black and Hispanic teens. In my job I'll be doing something similar so I wanted to see how they did things. I have to say that the whole time part of my brain was kind of like "woah you are the only white guy" but the other part was like "um... who cares. It doesn't really matter." And to tell you the truth it didn't matter. But it was a new experience for me.

It did make me think a little about race and how we (well I can only speak for myself) how I think about race. A lot of times we generalize race in weird ways. For example we might say someone is black, but that doesn't tell us about their ancestors. The same goes for Hispanic. We generalize their race into one word but we will talk about our German, English, Irish, Italian ancestors for hours on end. I really think this is wrong. sure someone who is Brazilian has more in common with a Peruvian than say I do, however a Brazilian is not a Peruvian so we shouldn't label them all the same.

I think the error comes from America's own failure to recognize its own culture. People forget that culture is shared based on experience and societies expectations. It doesn't matter what color your skin is, culture is learned not innate. Skin color is innate. While some people hang on to European traditions, for the most part the USA has its own culture. That is why there is such a difference from African Americans and from Africa African Americans. I think that in America race relations could be bettered if we just simply accepted the fact that even though we look different we share a common culture. We need to embrace our own culture if we are to advance as a country. We need to say, we are America and we are all brothers and sisters. Maybe I'm wrong but that would probably make things be a lot better.