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Avoiding the Issue

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Kind of a Big Deal

Like many of my classmates at Cornell, I had an internship in New York City this summer. Every day, I would commute to my job on the subway — the 6 train, to be exact — spending 30 minutes riding from the Upper East Side in Manhattan to the South Bronx. For anyone unfamiliar with the area, it is a particularly interesting commute — a short ride on the 6 train quickly transports you from the one of the richest congressional districts in the nation, the Upper East Side, to one of the poorest, the South Bronx. The supervisor at my internship liked to call it the “Rags-to-Riches Ride”, or in this direction, “Riches-to-Rags.”

Beyond the vast economic differences between these two areas, there is also a stark racial divide. In fact, one of my favorite activities was watching passengers get on and off my train car each morning. When I got on the train at 86th street, the population on the train would be overwhelmingly white and sporting suits. As I continued to ride uptown, the suits would get off as more blacks and Latinos got on the train. By the time we crossed over from Manhattan to the Bronx, even the white hipsters would have gotten off and more people of color would have gotten on. More often than not, when I got off at my stop on Brook Ave, I was the only white person left on the train. In a few short stops on the subway, the racial composition of the train, and the community it served, had completely changed.

A ride on the 6 train makes it clear that racial divides are very much still in existence in our country. However, more and more, issues of race are not being directly spoken about in public discourse, often under the guise of being politically correct. Some take this notion to the extreme, proclaiming themselves to be “colorblind.” These people, almost always white, claim that they do not notice whether a person is black, white, Latino or Asian. Now, to any rational person, this claim is as ridiculous as a person not noticing whether someone else is tall or short or whether someone is a blonde or a redhead. These are simply things the human eye, and the human brain, cannot ignore.

Some people who proclaim to have this unique form of colorblindness quote Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous vision of a world where people are not “judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” This is a timeless quote, and a wonderful world to aspire to. The problem is that these “colorblind” people are misinterpreting the meaning of King’s words. King was not seeking a world where race ceased to exist. Rather, he envisioned a place where race does not determine how one is treated.

Beyond their misinterpretation, our world is not even close to living up to King’s vision. We continue to live in a place where every day people are judged by the color of their skin. Simply compare the racial makeup of our nation’s prisons to our nation’s universities. Notice how the word “poor” is often used as a synonym for “minority.” Also notice how a white woman clutches her purse as a black male passes her on the street at night. It is undeniable that the skin color still has a drastic effect on each of our lives.

When there are so many obvious ways in which race and ethnicity affects our lives, why do certain people still claim to be colorblind? Often, it’s because many people are uncomfortable talking about race. In our current political landscape, this is at times an understandable reaction. To many, simply mentioning a person’s race or ethnicity is viewed as racist. Once, I was speaking with a friend of mine about a group of people who we had just met. Three of the guys in the group were white, and the fourth was black. My friend couldn’t remember the names of any of these people, and he was trying to identify one of them. He tried giving all sorts of characteristics, like “He had dark hair” or “He was wearing white sneakers,” none of which were very distinctive. Finally, I asked, “Are you talking about the black guy?” and my friend sheepishly replied that he was. When I asked why he didn’t mention this distinctive attribute first, he said he was worried it would sound racist.

Why would mentioning a distinctive characteristic like race be inherently discriminatory? If one were trying to identify the sole female in a group, would it be disrespectful to identify her as the woman in the group? Of course not, and no one would classify this exchange as sexist. But race has become such an explosive topic that often people are even afraid to use the word race in casual conservation.

The problem with making race such a taboo topic is that it is slowly beginning to disappear from our national collective discussion. The problems of racism still exist, yet people talk about it less and less. Academics are much more likely to discuss the economic divides in our country rather than the racial ones. Although these discussions are important as well, they should not replace open discourse about race.

Pretending race is nonexistent will not solve the problem of racism. Rather, it allows racism to continue by refusing to address it openly. At the same time, it eliminates any possibility of ending racism in the future. If our society really wants to end racism, we must talk more about race, not less. We cannot battle against racial oppression while refusing to acknowledge that it exists. We must fight against racism openly and proudly, celebrating our differences, but refusing to allow them to divide us.

Laura Taylor is a senior in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. She can be contacted at lat34@cornell.edu. Kind of a Big Deal appears Tuesdays.

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