Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about race. As a Northwest-born white middle-class American, the issue is all tangled up in political correctness, liberal guilt, and the fact that my hometown (Bainbridge Island) is notorious for being almost completely homogeneous. Sometimes, even just thinking about race makes me feel guilty, and that’s fucked up. It doesn’t help the issue that I once was accused of racism by a blog reader, because I included race in the description of someone who hit my car. I was trying to help draw a picture for readers; but instead I guess I was profiling. Ack!

All that aside, part of what I like about my new neighborhood is that it encourages me to keep thinking about these issues. Where-as ¾ of Seattle is known for being predominantly white, Southeast Seattle is known for being a total smorgasborg. It used to be mostly African Americans, but then African immigrants showed up, and then Asian immigrants starting moving in. And there’s also a strong Orthodox Jewish community, and all those damn gentrifying young white couples (oops, hee hee). As one friend joked (JOKED! ABOUT RACE!) the neighborhood’s got it all, with “buppies, yuppies, gangsters, rednecks, hos and pho.”

When I went to get my pedicure on Saturday, the shop was own and staffed by Vietnamese women. The customers included an Isreali, an African, several Vietnamese, and me. It was great to see the mishmash of accents, attitudes, and conversations. Watching the Vietnamese owner and the Isreali client haggle over the cost of a highlighting was particularly enlightening (you mean you can bargain with your hairdresser? I never knew!). When I came home to have dinner with my (white) mother and my (white) husband, I commented on the scene at the salon, and how much I enjoyed the people-watching.

Andreas commented that he had some misgivings. “People are just people,” he said. “It seems like a slippery slope to talk about how great it is that they’re different colors than you.”

Oh. Hmm. Maybe he’s right? Does this mean I’m just as much a racist as someone bitching about “the colored folks,” because I’m talking about enjoying diversity? That I should really just be color- and culture-blind and ignore the differences in color and accent and just assume that we’re all the same until proven otherwise? I’m not sure. He’s sort of got a point though: I’m still focusing on race, even if it’s positively. It’s a reverse bias, like someone saying “Oh I love gay men! All those boys on Queer Eye are just so sassy!” It may be positive, but it’s still a generalization. And generalizing and stereotyping are cousins, are they not?

Case in point: this article. (That’s a salon.com link — you may have to watch a free ad to read it.) The author debates this very issue with her sons. Interesting stuff.

It is by taking note of race and all that accompanies it — the assumptions, the stereotypes flying to and fro like flaming arrows — that we can achieve a transcendental compassion, a unifying respect for the power of experience. People are people, there’s no doubt about it, but you have to understand why things are the way they are. Not to take note of race or, more important, discuss it, would leave my sons in the dark.