All Are One

I enter the room which is stark and somber. No one inside is smiling but rather having discontent smirk on their face. I am one of the few people inside that isn’t black. I scan the room and people are attentive, proud and eyes are glued to the speaker at the podium. He is tall and large. His white beard and bald head is capped on top of his generic looking tuxedo that looked liked it had been picked up at a thrift store. I am just wondering what this man is going to talk about and if I am going to relate to a thing that he says. I look around the room again and figure that I probably will not come remotely close.

The man begins to speak and he carries a thick African accent from a country that I have no clue of the origin. Because this was an African American sponsored meeting I guessed correctly that this man was going to be talking about race and its problems of sorts. What he said was surprising. He said that race in fact is not a biological construct but rather a social construct and that there is no way to classify race. According to him the race we identify with and associate with are socially created in order to belong amongst so many people around us.

The more the speaker talks and goes on about his findings and hypotheses about race the more attentive and engaged the blacks become. I think what the speaker was basically trying to communicate is that because race is socially manufactured and exercised that one has no reason to act as if race predicts or validates anything. While the findings are not that shocking or revealing since it is rather predictable that people would separate themselves according to race, what is predictable is that people keep identifying their place in this world according to race. To me I just figured that people are who they are because of what they accomplish and that’s it. Some people though attach heavy meaning to race because they are treated a certain way because of it.

This lecture was different from others in that this man was much more academic and not trying to be on a soapbox rousing up people’s emotions. He was neutral in attitude and presented his findings in a factual manner. He wasn’t hateful and didn’t blame white people for racism or wasn’t passive aggressive like other lectures I have been to. Many lectures I have been to professors and guest speakers act condescending and full of themselves but this man was humble, soft spoken and knew his material backwards and forward. He presented his facts and while he had his opinion he left enough open for the audience to form their own conclusions and interpretations which I found very respectable.

While race according to the speaker is a social construct there will always be a sort of separation and groups that form because of it. People gravitate towards their own race and background naturally especially if they haven’t had lots of friends growing up that were different than them in background. Today it seems to be changing but outside the college environment I am not sure how this plays out. Some people insist on staying with their own group while others mix into other groups freely. To me diversity is not about different backgrounds and races but at different mindsets and ways of looking at the world.