The Human Race

I'm reading a book of short stories by mixed-race individuals, called Mixed. I suppose it's as valid a subject for a short story collection as anything else, for instance, one could assemble a book of stories about living in Vermont, or stories about food. Why, then, do I find it a little off-putting to see any short story collection focused on any particular racial issue? I guess because, in an ideal world, stories should be about people, their common humanity, their common foibles; there should not be this separation, where stories about race are assembled and presented as a solid unit. But we do not, obviously, live in a perfect society. We do need to think about where the new awareness of our mixed-ness, due to the election of a biracial man as president, has led us.

Not very far yet, I'd say...in fact, I don't think most people are all that aware of how mixed we're becoming, and what this might or might not mean to the future of our country, and beyond that, our existence as human beings on this planet. Given the increase in interracial marriages in this country, can we expect an amazing future moment where the word "race" itself will have no meaning, because we will have become, all of us, mixed, and nothing else?

Hm. It's nice to fantasize; but we're a long, rough road away from that moment, in my view.

When I made a short documentary film about Obama and the increase in interraciality in this country, the people who had the most to say and were the most knowledgeable about race relations in the United States were, not surprisingly, black or Latino, or mixed, with some measure of an African American or Latino heritage. I thought about this as I watched the schoolchildren at Mission Dolores yesterday; they all fell into those categories (black, Latino, or mixed with black and/or Latino in their background).

The simple truth of race relations in this country is that those who are the most negatively impacted by race are also just about the only ones who think about the issue on any regular basis. "But wait a minute," others say..."Those people blame racial injustice for their economic misfortunes--but maybe their culture simply needs a better work ethic." That argument has been used to write off the whole problem of race, at least in some conversations I've had with white people. Or they might say, "Why do we even need to talk about it--most people I know are color-blind."

My reply to this could be summed up in three words: visit our schools. Visit the schools in this country, and then see how color-blind our society really is. See which schools have adequate supplies, facilities, qualified instructors; then see which schools are situated in the poorest neighborhoods, and which of those neighborhoods are comprised of mostly black, Latino, or multiracial families. See how the air is taken out of the tires (or Air Jordans) of most of these kids before they reach high school-- how downright Dickensian their existence is for much of the day. I've only had a brief taste of it, at one inner-city school in San Francisco; but it was an eye-opening experience. Jonathan Kozol sounded the alarm several years ago (even, decades ago); but how seriously are we taking this problem?

I've written on this once before. I don't pretend to have done much about the problem myself; but it needles at me. I don't want to see my son living in a "color-blind" society, I want to see him living in one in which those living in predominantly black or Latino or American Indian communities truly have the same opportunities as the rest of us.