Stop digging for a problem, America

I am so sick of people doing study after study to prove that we as a society are racist. Umm, okay—I understand that some people are, but why are we focusing on this? There are problems enough in society without creating and expanding problems that are slipping away. Humans as a whole are intolerant to differences between themselves and others. People tend to congregate and socialize in groups that are most familiar to them. Perhaps then, it has nothing to do with race, and a hell of a lot to do with perceptions of cultural beliefs, practices, and upbringing that are so often taken as judgment on a certain race.

I grew up in a predominantly white community. I have come into contact with relatively few black people throughout my life. There were only two black people in my high school. One I didn’t know well, the other I did. The black man I knew turned to drugs, dropped out of college, then randomly decided to move to Florida. I had a black roommate several years back, he was my age and had a girlfriend who lived an hour away that was pregnant (he was 20). He was on a full ride scholarship at a university that didn’t accept me with a 3.5. How did he get in? He went to an inner city school that had a program for students that guaranteed admission to the best university in the state if they simply passed their courses. So, he had no debt for school, and get this! He had already failed out of college once, and they let him back in, continuing his scholarship!

And people wonder why there is such bitterness toward race. Here I am, white, raised in a middle class family, with good grades—and I can’t even get INTO the college I want to go to. Now, I have graduated college, and I have piles of debt because the system doesn’t help those who have a family that has helped themselves to become middle class. I will be paying off loans for at least a decade—my old roommate? He dropped out of school again, married and divorced his girlfriend, and now struggles to pay child support while on welfare.

Can I be blamed for my anger?

No, I am not racist, but every black person I have known personally has been given everything—and come to nothing. So the people in cnn’s most recent article that were polled and found to be “subconsciously racist” I think are far from it. People tend to stick to what they are familiar with. If they are anything like me, I am not surprised they chose the white person in the room to be their partner in an activity.

When digging for a problem, you will undoubtedly find one. Affirmative action, scholarships, and the like, tend to favor minorities—and thus cause bitterness in the “white” population.

So perhaps before studies are done to scream racism, we should evaluate the underlying bias that created the ideas for them in the first place.

CNN Article: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/07/racism.study/index.html?iref=mpstoryview