(NOTE: This isn't an update about my life, nor is it the promised filk. The latter is coming; the former, probably not, at least until something interesting actually happens. But this is something I've been thinking about today.)

I spent my formative years in and around one of the largest racial and cultural mixing bowls on the planet.

And yet the vast majority of my time was spent either in a rich suburb at an exclusive private school with maybe a double handful of black students--most of whom did in fact sit together at their own table--or within an area populated mostly by people like me.

I like to quote the Jargon File: "if one's imagination readily grants full human rights to future AI programs, robots, dolphins, and extraterrestrial aliens, mere color and gender can't seem very important any more."

And yet most of my friends are either white or Asian. And most of the people who write science fiction are white.

I claim to be colorblind to skin tone.

And yet I assume people are white unless I have evidence otherwise; and I often find names to be good evidence.

I express disgust at arbitrary restrictions based on ethnicity and especially racial profiling.

And yet if I was in an airport and saw four men who looked to be of Middle Eastern decent and kept to themselves, I'd at least be suspicious.

I often use my Judaism as a dodge ("I'm Jewish...we're our own category in the race and religion wars") or defense against prejudice ("How can I be prejudiced? I'm Jewish!").

And yet I have never, in my life, suffered for being Jewish, and my entire family was in the United States long before World War II; to my knowledge, no one in my immediate or extended family tree died in the Holocaust. And Jews aren't free from prejudice, either..."I had the whole time to watch out that this Shvartser doesn't steal us the groceries from the back seat!"[1]

I support the concept of international peace and cooperation.

And yet as the news about Israel and Lebanon builds up, I wonder whether it wouldn't be easier for everybody to be with their own kind.

According to kate_nepveu, this week is International Blog Against Racism Week.

And yet I wonder whether I have the right to participate.

I'm exaggerating for effect, of course, and no, I'm not making a reverse-sympathy play, either...I was friends with a number of the black students at school, I can dismiss my mental conception without issue given new data, I don't assume every Middle-Eastern person is a terrorist, I don't really talk about my Judaism in those terms, and there's no way I'm going to spend the rest of my life with people exactly like me. But there's at least a kernel of truth in each of the above contradictions. I try to take the advice of my music to heart, but sometimes I have to wonder just how little--or large--that bit is, with me.

[1] From Maus, by Art Spiegelman. For those who haven't read it, the speaker is a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor whose daughter-in-law has just given a black hitch-hiker a quick lift. "Shvartser" is Yiddish, and...well, it's not as harsh as "nigger," but it's definitely not a neutral word. No, I've never used it, but...