#postracial

“I’m 35 yr old white man”

Photo by Craig F. Walker- Boston Globe, Getty Images

The King of civil rights keeps on making news. I love it. Art is whatever you make of it. Making art of any kind invites the world to interact, comment and respond to it. One of my offspring, an art professor, advises me on how to interpret art. Ready? What does it mean to you, parent?

This art memorializes the icons of the civil rights movement. It means to me that connection and support are the foundation of human life. Coretta Scott King, MLK's parents and grandparents, and his religious and activist communities provided tremendous love and support to his courageous work and persuasive communication skills. Listening to him speak, (albeit full of patriarchy), still sends shivers down my back.

Maybe the sculpture doesn't do that for everyone. Okay. Make your own art and put it out there. Let's use MLK's memory to go post-racial as we go post-gender and accept each other as people who look and think differently. Why care about our gender, race and who we share intimate moments with?

Above is a picture of my fraternity and I. I chose to use my organization as an example for this post because this is one of the most diverse groups I personally know.

Growing up, I wasn’t really used to being around diversity. I was born in Mexico and moved to the United States when I was seven. Moving around in the U.S. was very different for me in many ways, especially when it came to being around individuals of different races. Once my family decided to settle in Salinas, California, it was very interesting but cool to see how many different types of people I was making friends with. It wasn’t until I moved to Hayward, however, where I realized that Salinas is not as diverse as I thought. I came to East Bay and even learned about new ethnicities that I wasn’t too familiar with. Back in Salinas, my friends consisted mainly of Hispanic, White, and Asian people. As you can see in the picture above, more friends of many different races became a part of my life.

Post-race is the idea of not seeing color when it comes to individuals. As described in the reading a post racial view is where “race was not important to forming relationships or shaping life chances and that race would lose its currency if we would just choose to not pay it any attention”(167 Drew) . When we view how someone is, we shouldn’t do so because of their race/ethnicity. One of the things that attracted me to my fraternity was how diverse it was. When I joined, it was clear to see that my organization is a great example of post-race. As a fraternity, we don’t discriminate individuals because of their race. Instead, we look past “color” and get to know who they really are.

This is a picture of my debut court back in 2015, right before I started college. If you can’t tell, everyone in my court is of Asian descent. I never saw this as odd when I was younger, given that I was so used to being around Asian people in the racially diverse schools I grew up in.

When I got to college, I was quick to point out in my head that there were not many Asian people in all my classes. The racial diversity didn’t seem to bother anyone else by my surprise. This is where I had my wake-up call. I realized that I unintentionally had only Asian friends.

The whole idea of post-race is that people are “colorblind” when it comes to a person’s race and that race does not determine how we treat or view a person. We live in a society where we should be using the theme of post-race everywhere we go, in order to treat and view everyone as equal. When I entered college, I finally got to experience a community of post-race individuals and what it was like to be friends with people in a racially diverse community. In college, you have people of different backgrounds and upbringings, and you should be able to respect their differences from you. The color of your skin should not determine who you can talk to or hang out with, but I guess I unconsciously did just that back in the day.