Why Talking About Race is Difficult

As the years go on, it is plain to see that one overarching issue Americans have is the issue of race and how to handle it. The United States of America is one of the most diverse places on the planet, but when it comes to the issue of race, folk's can't seem to get along. The Atlantic makes a good point in describing where the difficulties in discussing race lay. Talking about race brings up ideas of shame and guilt for some, and issues of power for others. More often than not, the people in power do not wish to give up their power, with exceptions to George Washington and most recently Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. The idea of racial superiority is one reason that these people (generally white in America, but also in Europe and some other places) will not give up power, which, unfortunately, means that they can use their power and influence to spread their idea of racial superiority. Similar to the ideas of the man in the video I will discuss later, The Atlantic also claims that "some people just want to move on" and forget about race and the problems it causes entirely. But to forget is to ignore, and we should not ignore history because it is liable and commonly does repeat itself, so we must take from our mistakes and confront the problem of race before we forget it and it all happens again.

An article on talking about race on Tolerance.org explains that there is little to no talk of race in the schools. I found this to be extremely true at my high school. While more than 25% of the community at my high school was Asian American, and maybe 5-7% was African American, we as students never saw much difference in each other, or maybe we just didn't express it. We did acknowledge that we didn't all look the same, but we were all taking the same classes together and no one really got much "special treatment" such as study periods and whatnot. There were more things to worry about in high school than someone's race, and I believed that to be true about most of America until recently. The Guardian references a blog in which the author states that she will no longer talk to white people about race, which I believe to be the wrong move. In order to move on from these racial differences (which have been institutionalized) we need to confront all parties and talk about our differences, even if they are just skin deep. It is the culture and one's own surroundings that determines who you are and who you become. If you feel you are sick, for example, you go to the doctor and he tells you you are sick. That is just confirming what you already felt. If you don't think anythings wrong, and you go to the doctor and he tells you you have some disease, then you keep that idea in the back of your mind all the time that you have this disease, and you are reminded of it. That's similar to this situation in that if you are told you are different, when in reality you aren't any different, you will embody the idea that you are different. People are just people, and there must be a conversation about how we are still people no matter what labels the media or the establishment or the culture tries to change us. It's more often a cultural clash than a racial clash.

During the year, there was a video we watched in class in which one man directly contradicted himself. He claimed that race was not a thing, and not 10 seconds later was questioning how we talk about race to children. This contradiction is explainable and understandable. One must not take his words literally. He is claiming that in order to have less race violence and discrepancies towards each other, we must eliminate the idea that with race comes difference. Sure there are physical qualities of race, and when culture is included that builds one's ethnicity; however, these are most if not all physical qualities. When two people are raised in the same place together, they are likely to grow up the same. If we have one white child and one black child, they will recognize that they do not look the same. It is at this point that we must engage them in conversation about how just because they do not look the same does not mean they are different, or else we risk the children implementing and assigning a hierarchy.

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