Race: The Invisible Mace in the Face

So there are three different routes to get to Kingston and with each route I see the difference in housing which indicates the race relations in this city. You have the suburban homes away from the noisy city and downtown area that has both businesses and apartments that are either too much to afford or are cramped with large single and two parent families. This assignment brought me back to the story we did on community issues and the business owner from New York City schooled me on the race relations in the city before this story was assigned. I returned back to my original listening posts at the mall and shopping centers and when I said the assignment was focused on race relations, some people were not as shy as I thought they would be to talk about it. However, there were some who admitted to not paying attention to race but the ones that did pay attention didn't really seem to have much of an opinion on the matter. So, it seems that race is acknowledged by residents, visitors and employees but it's a no-win situation. You can talk about race, but not all of the time and you can't ignore it because we know it's there. If race is such a big deal, why try to ignore it? Further, this is the first time that I've had many conversations about race and Michael Jackson wasn't even mentioned [1st common response and long story but I digress]. So talking about race wasn't going to be as nerve-wrecking as I assumed it would be, but at the same time, getting people to elaborate and explain their opinions...now that takes a little extra work.