diversity.

Yesterday in class we focused on the topic of diversity, which I had commented on in my last few blogs. I noticed something really obvious over the weekend and was contemplating why it happened. Friday night, three laptops and a wallet was stolen from the Cedar dorms. The wallet was stolen out of my room, but wasn't mine. It was my friend's. When everyone in Cedar heard about this, the universal reaction was "it must have been those black guys." I thought this was really odd, because I know that everyone isn't a racist as they came off. It was true that a group of about seven black men came into the dorms on Friday night, but I was wondering why fingers were being pointed directly at them. I have met plenty of white men and women who have stolen things from other people, so why is it automatically them? On the ride back from cheerleading I started to talk about this with the captain that was driving me. She said that it's probably not because of their specific race color, but only because this University is predominantly white. When a diverse group of people come in to the building, it is obvious that they probably do not go here. This is why the people had this general consensus. This situation made me think of Nathan's book and her observances of diversity. When the other races walked in, we all felt uncomfortable because that was not the social norm in our school. I don't think that it is entirely about race, though. If a group of 65 year old men came into the dorm, the residents would all be uncomfortable as well. It is just a matter of what we're use to seeing. Just to let you know, the wallet was actually found next to a dumpster in Warren. How it got there, we have no idea, but she's just happy to have it back.

It seems like my core classes are connecting in such a great way. Once again, I'm talking about diversity in Human Behavior. Yesterday before lit, we talked about what constitues being a minority. For example, where do we draw the line? If you're born in America and are third generation Asain, are you a minority? We had a really great discussion about what we think it means. Our answer came out to be that Americans judge on outward appearance. If you look foreign, you're considered a minority. But then we got onto the topic of why aren't white people minorities? We come from other countries as well. For example, I'm very Swedish. What doesn't make me a minority? And what about Italians? You can tell that a person is an Italian, but yet, we still don't consider them minorities. This got into a really heated discussion. As soon as we thought that we came to a tentative answer on outward appearances, our professor posed another question, what about Albino African Americans? What are they? This discussion made me realize that outward appearances are a main reason for segregation in the United States. They provide a sense of comfort among people like you, but a distance between you and others not like you. This was really interesting to think about.