Journal 1: Halftime

I find myself about to wander in to the halfway point of the Reporting in Multi-ethnic Communities class and it hasn't quite sunk in yet. "It", however vague in appearance, is the vague notion of race I have biting at my ankles. The constant issue shoved down the throats of every God-fearing, red blooded American. It is perceived as an insurmountable obstacle, something to be pushed into the past, then wrapped in a blanket and pulled into an awkward group. Then again, most people are not brought up in a place like Miami. Diverse as the populous may be, race finds itself to be a few things in Miami:

-RACE IS-
The itch everyone feels but few scratch.
The awkward cough halfway through a moment of silence.
The child glaring at you menacingly amidst rush hour madness.

In short, race is what human beings have constructed as something to distinguish as well as twist into a tool of blind hatred.

Of all the pieces selected to read, my favorite had to be Leonard Pitts' speech at the 1999 Unity convention. What Pitts (along with the other columnists and authors) tried to get at was the fact that race IS important, just not in the way most people stress it. Most tiptoe around potentially offensive questions because of the belief that there is a greater sense of dignity in ignorance than in embarrassment. Nothing could be further from the truth.

After reading Pitts' piece, I couldn't help but think of Spike Lee's movie Do the Right Thing (see above picture). The movie is an incredible look into racial and ethnic tensions, casting each and every group involved as equal parts villain and victim. What I found more interesting than the film was the critic's perceived reaction from the "target" black audience. The film came out in 1989 (before the LA RIots) and for all the hot air blown into the non-issue, nothing happened. There were not young black kids grabbing the classroom trash can and shouting "HATE!" as they threw it through a window. There were no diatribes held in the general population of Italians and blacks about "Fuckin' Frank Sinatra". Life went on without mch incident because of the film. It was rediculous to asume that a piece of film could not simply be taken as an alegory of sorts, to open a discussion and nothing more. It was sick that as far as we'd come, or thought we'd come, the media still had this belief that riots would sweep from the theatre doors and into the city.

But thinking nobody would bring up such a rediculous point would just make me naive.


Though we don't have an equally spread demographic sample (not a single Asian or Pacific Islander in the class), we still bring people of all types into a classroom to expand our understanding of the so-called "other". More importantly, it is a trial run, a laboratory to try out anything and everything that just so happens to crawl into our skulls and tug on vocal chords to produce some kind of potentially awkward situation. While I consider myself a very open person (sometimes at the worst possible times), I will never get a better opportunity to simultaneously cringe at the words coming out of my mouth and open my eyes at the end to see one of my peers, eager to educate me. Our love/hate relationship with race, in my opinion, won't disappear at the end of this course. What I am certain of, is that it will become a something new, an extra tool in the box to be used when the situation calls for it.