SEPARATION ANXIETY: Judging a book by its cover

I never even saw the guy. Leaning against a pole in a SEPTA subway train and minding my own business, I was reading a copy of Real News: Speaking Truth to Power – a newspaper sold by the homeless with a noticeable African-American slant. When the doors opened, a black man on his way out smacked me on the side of the head –Eand hard – before walking off the train. I have no idea why. What did I do wrong? Was it the newspaper I was reading? Why did this random attack occur between two strangers? I was thinking about these questions as I made my way back to a seat in the train. Still a little dizzy, I heard many people – black and white alike – talking about the incident, saying, "I can't believe he did that!" and "Why didn't you kick his ass?" But then another black man, probably about 20, tapped me on the shoulder and said this to me: "I just want you to know that there are some ignorant black people out there. But please don't judge us on a whole like that." I thought about what he said, and his words made a lot of sense to me. I realized that incidents like this are what make many people prejudiced against blacks. An "ignorant" black man harassed me, but because of him, so many more blacks are wrongly feared. Certainly, it's common for people walking down the street at night to become tense when a group of blacks approaches them, but to hardly flinch when they are approached by whites. This fear is neither warranted nor rational. Obviously, not all crimes are committed by black people. But random incidents which are then re-told, re-hashed, and embellished cause people to think this is true. It is similar to a concept in psychology – called the availability heuristic – which also explains why we're afraid of plane crashes more than car crashes, even though we are infinitely more likely to die in a car accident than in a plane crash. In other words, the few "ignorant" blacks who make these random attacks impress in the minds of equally ignorant white people a skewed image of all blacks. Since taking the minority affairs beat this semester for the Daily Pennsylvanian, I have noticed another problem – right on this campus – that may add fuel to this already raging fire. People are afraid to admit it, but the University is a segregated place. Now, I don't claim to be an expert on race relations. I come from a predominantly white suburb of Chicago. There were less than 10 black people in my graduating class of 400. But the difference was that I was friends with several of them. Even though they were in the minority, many of them really fit into the class and were well-liked. At Penn, I have no black friends, maybe because I haven't been given the opportunity as in high school. The closest thing to a black friend that I have is The Vision reporter with whom I am co-writing this race relations series. And I notice that very few whites have black friends here, and consequently very few blacks have white friends. Sometimes, I even feel that many black students here wouldn't give me the time of day (whether it's because I'm white or because I'm a DP reporter I don't know, but that's a different story.) But are black students given the time of day from white students? Hardly. It is definitely a two-way street. When white people hear of random incidents – stabbings, shootings, rapes – and hear that they were committed by black people, they tend to transfer their anger and hatred to all people of color. I think that this is what leads to the limited contact between the races which is so evident at Penn. But listening to what that man on the subway train told me, I don't judge black people any differently now that I did before. Just because I was hit by a black man doesn't mean that all blacks are guilty. If all people of all races would take this approach to life, and try to understand other people and other cultures more, maybe we'd all be a little more accepting of each other. Don't get me wrong – if I see the guy who hit me again I'd like to kick his ass. But I also know that the random black man who approaches me in the street at night had nothing to do with it. Daniel Gingiss is a sophomore from Highland Park, Illinois. He is the minority affairs beat reporter for the Daily Pennsylvanian.