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E-PrinceTwo weeks ago, this paper featured “Black in the Orange Bubble,” an article that tried to highlight the enigma that is the black community. Despite my peers’ comments that the piece was laughable, at best, I put aside my prejudices ...(back to the article)
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The realest shit thats been said in these pages for a long time.
you so hood Keith, rep yo city boi!
Damn fine job Keith.
"Why should I feel guilty about the people with whom I associate, when I don’t hear football players or a cappella groups expressing similar misgivings?"
I'm sympathetic, but is this question really any good? It just means that everyone is lame. Moreover, these other groups are defined less by what is congenital.
Your right of free association is subservient to the all-encompassing needs of Diversity. Damn right we should feel guilty!
i don't get it keith. football teams and a cappella groups self segregate because they spend hours and hours per week together. they become friends because of proximity and convenience (and because spending 3 hours/day in practice together doesn't leave much free time for forming other relationships).
i know you said that you make friends in multiple social contexts, but unless you ARE selecting for those that look like you, your friends shouldn't be mostly black (in fact, they should be mostly white, as princeton is mostly white). i agree that we don't need to think of race and phenotypes when we pick our friends, but it seems like if you were embodying this philosophy your close friends would not be mostly black.
People who participate in sports together or in performance groups together share interests, talents, and constraints on their time. People who share the same race do not--as you said your black friends all have very different personalities. So what I'm not getting here is why your friends (or at least your close friends) are predominantly black. If sharing a race enables you to relate to them at a deeper level, by all means embrace it. But don't extoll the values of ignoring skin color when selecting friends, when that is not what you practice.
Why do you seem to care so much what color skin his friend's have?
I feel compelled enough to respond to "confused."
Has it ever occurred to you that, quite possibly, the activities that any student engages in, whether it be in an organization like a sports or dance team or not, consume just as much time? You may see the same people and, based on your evaluation, see them so often that they become your closest friends? The time I spend watching ESPN in the Frist TV lounge may not have the same value as spending hours on the playing field, but do the friendships I gain through that shared interest possess any less value than the friends established among athletes? People choose to participate in groups just like they choose to do activities outside of a structured environment, so I think the examples I presented are just as adequate as any.
Now, your assertion that most of my friends should be white, by virtue of them being in the majority, shows me this: It is my responsibility, as a black person, to court white friends in the interest of diversity. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds to me like it's quite alright for a white person to have most of his closest friends be white, while it's reprehensible for me to have in my circle mostly black people. Do you not see the problem in this view?
Again, I'll state my view and elaborate a bit more: white people are by no means a homogeneous group, and no one questions when they leave this place with most of their closest friends being white. Yet, when I, as a black person from a group of people at Princeton that is also by no means homogeneous, has as his closest friends people who happen to be black? Give me a break.
As much as I share in common with my friends, black or non-black, there are so many other things that set us apart. We may share interests here or there, but it's the time that we spend together that contributes most to the strength of those relationships. Until we're able to swallow that, we'll be stuck with this misconception that not only is diversity important, but that diversity in race trumps any diversity in personality, as well as the time we spend with the people that we do.
*Yet, when I, as a black person from a group of people at Princeton that is also by no means homogeneous, has as his closest friends people who happen to be black, that's a problem?
If one makes race-blind friendships, they should end up with a proportion of friends of any given race that is roughly equal to the proportion in the population at large. This is assuming that "interests" do not segregate along race lines. However, that assumption is, in practice, false.
I strongly agree with the third paragraph of Keith's comment--that racial double standard is completely unfair.