Laura Menzel Blog #9: Clybourne Park Musings

As a graduating senior, I have been thinking about the future increasingly often lately.  Even though I am headed towards more years of schooling, I am still entering a broader section of the real world.  With that in mind, I've been mulling over the question posed at the end of last class:  Are we really post-racial?  This seems to be the million-dollar question as we continue in the class and prepare to apply what we have learned in everyday life.

We have certainly come a long way in integrating society and celebrating our differences.  I see our generation as very accepting and full of hope.  We form friendships based on similar interests instead of similar racial or economic backgrounds.  However, even as I write this, I realize that these friendships were largely made possible because of the college community that brought us together.  Had we all remained in our hometowns, we would likely still be associating with people who shared our background.  Even with all the potential for acceptance, we are limited if we remain in our own cultural communities.  Elif Shafak, who I mentioned in my presentation, has a lot of interesting things to say about cultural communities in her TED talk (Elif Shafak TED Talk).  One of the things she talks about is her experience in international school.  Even in such a diverse setting, people of the same race tended to associate with one another.  This still happens today.  We associate with people who are similar to us because that is who we are comfortable with.  Mass media creates some of these divisions.  There are several networks targeted towards specific ethnic groups of the population (see I Want My Hyphenated Identity MTV for an example of this).  These networks bring people together, to connect people who may feel isolated otherwise.  However, an unintended consequence may be that it encourages us to seek out the company of those who are similar to us.  By staying within our comfort zone, we may miss the opportunity to learn something new.  As we prepare to graduate from Sexy Racy, I propose we actively try to seek out the company of those who are different from us, and encourage others to do so, just as this class has brought so many different people together.