Take a look around any high school cafeteria. What do you see? Students, who are probably sitting around and talking with their friends. In a school like Western Alamance High school, a lot of students are primarily friends with people of the same race. We took the time to try and find out why.
What we found out was interesting. Most students are perfectly happy to have friends of a different race – the problem is, they just don’t. “I’ll admit, most of my friends are white,” said Paige Forsyth, “but I’m not about to judge someone simply because of their skin colour.”
An interview with Mr. Jones’ psychology class proved that the tendency of people to associate with members of their race goes further than skin deep. “Vision is the quickest way that we gather information as humans. Race is a visual thing – and we use it as a quick way to gather information that we need about someone,” he mused.
The interview also produced another observation – that people tend to group with people that they are similar to. Race is a quick way to see how similar you are to someone, and what sorts of things that you would have in common with that person. If not kept in check, these sorts of assumptions can lead us to subconsciously form an entire opinion of someone before even taking the time to know them.
According to Mr. Jones, this problem doesn’t exist in just America. He provided the example that in Europe, most countries possess members of the same race, and often of the same nationality. The countries’ members are often wary of members of other countries. America is simply such a mix of different cultures that it allows these sorts of stereotypes to play themselves out.
His psychology class offered the solution of getting to know people as individuals. Rather than using stereotypes to define people, they offered trying to learn more about them as individuals. “Don’t just think that you know everything about them… simply take the time to get to know them as a person,” said Mr. Jones.