Self Segregation

"If I have a cup of coffee that is too strong for me because it is too black, I weaken it by pouring cream into it."

- Malcolm X

Most humans are tribal animals. While some individuals are extroverts who love to mix and mingle, the majority of people form cliches and stay within their circle of friends. My wife and I observed this frequently in square dancing. When we visited another club, few of the natives wanted to dance with "the strangers". When we attended a square dancing weekend, dancers ate and danced with fellow members of their ownclub. One of the few times we saw true mixing was at a national convention where everyone was an outsider.

Cliches form on many levels. You may have your set of "church friends" or fellow parents of the same PTA at school. I also observed this while a graduate student at the University of Michigan. A dorm where I was a Resident Assistant had a "Black Pride Room".  I was suprised that there were students who wanted to be seperate, who endorsed (and wore T-shirts of) the Malcom X quote above that warns against mixing whites and blacks together. The university supported this self-seperation; one semester I taught a class called "Mathematics for Minority Engineers." This seemed to me, to be contrary to years of Integration efforts but the students liked it.

Bottom Line

Although people say they want to live in a color-blind world, in reality they tend to self-segregate. Look at this graph of census data from the NY Times, http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer?ref=us.  Within NYC I was amazed at how solid the racial zones are for whites, hispanics and blacks. Some of the outlying cities like Newark are also uni-racial.

Happy Thanksgiving

A Happy Thanksgiving Day to all.

My wife and I plan to visit an old friend, a teacher who taught us how to Round Dance.
Round dancing is a bit like square dancing - the moves are choreographed and the dancers follow the instructions of the "Cuer". But instead of Western songs, round dancing uses ballroom music and the steps being followed are foxtrot, waltz, tango, etc. Think of Dancing with the Stars with a coach calling out the steps.

Update - I'm glad I took a moment to look at past posts. The danger of scheduling posts to publish automatically is forgetting to update them when something changes. Our trip to Virginia was canceled but we hope to get down there someday soon. Instead a wonderful family in our Church invited us to share Thanksgiving with them. We had a great time. Thanks to Swedish Mom who reads this blog and is the #1 commenter.