One Race?

As I was walking down the crowded halls of my high school, a particular poster caught my eye. It was an advertisement for the cultural diversity club. Something about a club meeting coming up within the week. The poster itself was nothing eye catching. If I recall correctly, it was a piece of white paper with a handful of informational words. No color, no pictures. It was far deeper than anything the poster had intended its viewers to ponder. And even as I proceeded to walk to class, amidst the noise and chaos all around, this thought persisted.

The thougtht: If the world is undergoing a cardinal collision, will a single race emerge? It's hard to fathom this idea. The world is home to 55 minorities in China alone. All across the country, hundreds of ethnic and racial groups populate the earth. Each maintain an identity, encompassing physical, emotional, spiritual and cultural aspects. The worldly mosaic would cease to exist if there was not this diversity. Personally, the variance is interesting and beautiful.

Now it's time the ever infamous game of "What if....". What if cardinal collisions persist to the point where all uniqueness is lost? If you mix all the colors of the rainbow the result is one poopy color. Furthermore, separating the boring brown into its original colors is impossible. I fear this trend in color mixing is analogous to cultural mixing. If that's the case, I cultures continue to collide and mingle with eachother, one dull color of commonality will manifest on the face of the earth. What a sad day this will be for mankind.

In this new world society, uniquenesss would be an archaic concept. When you wake in the morning, the mirror images you. THen you advance to school or work, the mall or church, and every person is a mirror of you. It is a physical uniform, in a sense, that everyone is forced to wear everyday of their life. You can't take it off or shop for something different. The power of personal expression would no longer be an option. It would be boring, repetitive, unfortunate.

The complexity of our complexion would be beyond imagine. From the darkest to lightest hue, the layers of diveristy would fuse together our skin, our fleshly being. The concept of segregation would be impossible. If you segregated one person, the rest would follow in separation. But from what? Nothing.

At this point in my train of thought, the poster was 10 hallways and 5 right turns away. I was sitting in class, daydreaming further. There are three primary colors. When mixed with one another, new colors are created. The analogy grows more positive. If we think of this world, in its culturally divide state, as the primary colors, cultural collision in various respects produces new colors pleasing to the eye. Not brown, but orange, or green, purple or pink.

Then the teacher called on me to answer this or that. I responded, quickly to return to my preoccupation. A cultures collide, we must oppreciate the new hues that are produced. But as every artist knows, to maintain the integrity of one color, you must not overtake it with others. As peoples of a colorful mosaic, our cultures must preserve pigments of identification. In 20 years, I hope to return to my school to see a cultural diversity club poster once again.