I believe once while discussing the issue of racial segregation in class, I spoke about the issue regarding the sororities at Baruch. For the sake of making my point, I will describe my experience again. During the club fair last semester, I was walking around looking for some organizations that seemed to be of interest to me. A girl tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was Russian. When I told her that I was not Russian, she replied, "Okay, We were going to see if you wanted to join our sorority". With that, she turned and left. This relates to the communities reading by Zeitz, which speaks about New York City and its ethnic diversity.
Just like Baruch College, the city is filled with numerous groups of people representing different countries from around the world. However, these groups seem to stick together. Communities can be easily classified by the predominant ethnicity that has settled there. For example, Brighton Beach is known as a Russian neighborhood and the South Shore of Staten Island is predominantly Italian. It is a natural human instinct to associate with the people who share the same traditions, language, and beliefs as you. I believe this is why Baruch’s students seem to associate with people of their own ethnic groups as well. During a discussion in class, the group agreed that the student of Baruch usually congregate with their own races and nationalities.
In today’s society, the tolerance for racial and ethnic prejudice is decreasing. People can no longer openly show hatred toward people because they are different. The “In Between” reading by Orsi mentions lynching and racial segregation in the south meant to drive out dark-skinned Italians. Such acts have no place in today’s society, in a time where the leader of our nation is African American. However, it is interesting to think that the Italian race was once seen as a group of outsiders because of skin tone, and now the same group is viewed as part of the “white race”. What caused this acceptance?
There seems to be a clear difference between the “us” and the “them” in all of this semester’s readings. The white middle class has always been the “us”, but the “them” has changed as time goes on. This makes me think, have certain races become part of the “us” because they have been in the America long enough to become accepted? Or have they become part of the “normal” group because some other ethnicity has taken their place as the outsiders?
