Race Stuff

I just finished reading an article from  the CBS News website that was written last year about how the "minorites" were to soon become the majorities. Although I had already known about this, it's interesting how America, a country filled with a white majority once holding blacks as slaves up until the mid-1800s is becoming a country where whites are no longer the majority. Although I don't think that this is such a big deal, it seems to me that people who write these articles are trying to make a bigger deal out of this than it really is. So what if whites are not the majority. Americans shouldn't be concerned about what ethinicity is the "majority" as much as they should ideally be concerned about illegal immigration. To me, if Hispanics become the "majority" race in America, so be it, as long as they are officially documented United States citizens, and not Hispanics who are fresh from the other side of the border.
Another article that I read, this time from CNN.com, entitled "Black and white, and a target of both" was about a black man, Don Lemon, who had discussed his hometown when he grew up. Although his grandmother made sure he did well in school, his town was split up between blacks on one side, and whites on the other, sharing the same grocery store, post office, etc.
"The whites, on the east side. We all shared the grocery store, bank, post office and such. That's where I first heard a white person call me a N***er."
He continued his story by explaining how the new town that his family moved to was pretty much all white, and some parents wouldn't allow their children to play with him. He then mentioned how the time when his intergrated "white" school was dealing with Ku Klux Klan protests, he was elected as Senior Class President, the 2nd one in history of the school.
I thought that this story was very insightful, on the idea that the South, while having a lot of racial tensions in the past, has made progress with being more racially accepting. With the video we watched in class last week,  regarding the murder of the black man in Jasper, Texas in 1998, the form of racism that was expressed through the murder was dampered immediately by arresting the three convicted white men who were involved with the muder of a black man. It was really the first time in the South where this type of arrest to any white person was made, and this was a huge strive for black people.
Then recently, we were told to go onto a website and see how racist we were. It started off with a simple survey of whether you prefer white Europeans or African Americans. Then the test portion consisted of hitting two keys on the keyboard "e" and "i" and associating certain words to the "bad" category on one side of the screen or the "good" category on the screen. Then instead of the good and bad categories, it was replaced with "African American" on one side and "White European" on the other side, and you would have to associate which pictures go where. What made things even more challenging was the combination of the "good" and "bad" words, and the "African American" and "White Eurpean" pictures. It was even harder when the two sides switched.
My end result, however was that I prefered White Europeans over African Americans, which I really found interesting. I honestly don't see one person as "black" or "white", but I see people of different races and ethnicities more as just a people. I don't have a preference or a point where I am comfortable or not around certain races. The reason why this is is because the grade school that I went to had a lot of diversity. Going to a majority white high school, it will be a bit harder to get used to being around a more diverse community of students, but I won't have a preference between any 2 or even 10 races.