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11/16/2004: "Rainbow"

The other day I decided to make an effort to notice race. Now, I can't claim to be color-blind; I can only say that, these days, seeing a person of another race is not so remarkable that the mind pays attention. In fact, I had the idea that the place i live and work was becoming rather diverse. But not really; until I stopped forcing myself to notice, easily ninety percent of the people I saw were white. Now that I think of it, "residential diversity", in the form of a minor influx of people of Asian background, happened about fifteen years ago, and has remained static ever since. The rest has been "employment diversity": retail, maintainence and constuction are all more racially diverse than the local population. There is a near-invisible ghetto of struggling Hispanics in the midst of a thriving middle-class town; they provide fuel for the day-labor engine. Our community, I think, looks just diverse enough to induce complacency and self-satisfaction, and that's a shame.