Race & Community Race and

Race & Community Race and Community One of the reasons that I chose to live in my suburban neighborhood was because my neighborhood includes people of all races. I am fortunate to live in a relatively affluent area, and many of the upper-middle class neighborhoods surrounding ours seem to contain clusters of racial and ethnic groupings.

I wanted to avoid living in such a cluster, because I wanted my children exposed to people of all cultures; I believe that segregation, whether de jure or de facto, is harmful to the souls of all people involved, and I simply would not have chosen to live in a neighborhood that was not race-inclusive. Therefore, I cannot look at the physical appearance of my neighbors and say that people resemble me, but I also cannot look at them and say that they do not resemble me.

My neighbors come in every shade of the rainbow and from every ethnic background. However, there are overt physical similarities, which suggest that a certain amount of assimilation is important. People dress in similar clothes, and, despite the fact that there are many ethnic groups represented, no one in my neighborhood wears ethnically identifiable clothing on a regular basis. My local government is also relatively diverse; it is populated by people from various ethnic groups. However, the local government is disproportionately populated by whites.

Depending on the service group, they appear racially homogenous as well; for example, two local service groups of mothers, MOPS and MOMS, are composed entirely of white women, which does not reflect the racial makeup of the population. This racial isolationism is reflected in most of the "mainstream" service groups, and smaller service groups; many of them even specify an ethnicity in their titles. However, when viewed as a whole, it is fair to say that every ethnic group is represented in service groups that help my community.

The leaders in my community appear to show the same benign indifference to members of all racial groups. However, they seem to fall prey to the same racial stereotypes that plague people everywhere. Blacks and Hispanics are arrested at rates that are disproportionate to their actual rates in society. Furthermore, while high prestige positions may be ethnically diverse, mid-level positions tend to be filled mostly with white people, while minorities seem to fill most of the lower-level positions.

For example, when looking at the schools in my community, many of the administrators are from minority groups, but the teachers are disproportionately white, and the support staff, like janitors and lunch ladies, tends to be either black or Hispanic. Therefore, it appears that there is some type of discrimination. However, it really is difficult to tell how much of that discrimination is unintentional. There is no question that minorities have traditionally had poorer access to educational resources, which makes them less competitive for higher-paid, higher-prestige jobs.

Furthermore, my community is largely composed of people who have moved to the area; it's an area that has experienced tremendous recent growth, and people of all income groups have moved to the area to take advantage of job opportunities. Therefore, people from different ethnic groups may be moving to the area in different numbers to seek specific job positions; the lack of ethnic diversity in some situations may be more indicative of this factor than of any overt attempts to discriminate.

However, the reality is that children growing up in the community still continue to see stark racial divisions in local government employment. In addition, my neighborhood and local community have become very anti-immigrant, vocally attacking illegal immigrants. While these attacks may be facially race-neutral, the fact is that they focus these attacks on immigrants from Mexico.

One of the most disturbing aspect of this is that many of the people leading these vocal attacks and attempts to lobby against illegal immigrants are people whose own families illegally immigrated to the United States within the last few generations. Moreover, many people in my neighborhood are able to have people come into their homes and provide services, such as housecleaning and lawn maintenance. Overwhelmingly, the providers of these resources are Hispanic, and the majority of them are illegal immigrants to the United States.

Therefore, the hypocrisy of people is alarming; many people in my community are content to live a more comfortable lifestyle using the labor of illegal immigrants, but do not want to face any financial consequences for having done so, or to help provide any of the social services that these people need if they have come to the United States to work. As far as I am aware, no manuals for any workplace in my community mention any race, specifically.

To do so would invite charges of overt discrimination, even though doing so might actually help prevent certain types of discrimination. For example, an Indian friend has a swastika-like symbol on her front door, and people have assumed that she is anti-Semitic. However, the symbol actually serves as a type of blessing in her religion. Providing this type of culturally-relevant information might help prevent racial discord, by minimizing the opportunities for misunderstanding. However, companies seem to shy away from doing this.

On the other hand, the fact that my company manuals are race-neutral means that I do feel that they relate to people like-me. Whether I would feel that way if I were the member of a minority group is impossible for me to know. There are really no significant differences between me and the people in leadership positions in my community. In fact, I think that my community does provide ample opportunity for people from all backgrounds to attain leadership positions, whether in government or business.

However, like leaders everywhere, I feel like many of the leaders in my community have lost sight of the importance of individual people and have placed monetary concerns above human concerns. I hope that I never do so. If I were to resolve any inequities in my community, I would not attack those inequities primarily on a racial basis. On the contrary, I do not believe that.