No, this is not an ergonomics post about seating, posture,
and back health. It is my take on a really
interesting story I heard on Youth Radio last night during
a bout of insomnia. (Does that count and
serendipity or just a silver lining?
Perhaps a topic for a future post).
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Youth Radio, a young person
creates a short (15-30 minute) documentary-style radio segment and PRX plays
them overnight one after the other.
Despite low production values, the stories are often very engaging and
insightful. This was one of those.
The youth reporter was a half-black half-white high school
student doing a story about race in his high school. He noticed that in the cafeteria at lunchtime
the students self-segregated into tables of black and white students. When the principal announced a policy
requesting that students try to mix more during lunchtime, he was “politely
ignored.” So the student went around to
the black and white tables asking his schoolmates why they sat in these
groups. I found the responses intriguing.
The highlight was that they spent lunch talking about music and girls. So they sat at tables with other students who
liked the same music and knew the same girls. It was unintentional that this
led to race-specific groupings. Perhaps
they noticed that they were segregated, but it was not a racist behavior.
Since taste in girls and music sets in well before high
school, it seems that this root cause has to be addressed with younger students
than high school. In high school, it
doesn’t make sense to ask them to reconfigure their tables to be more integrated. Instead, they should find a way to get them
talking about topics that are more cross-race and let the race configuration
change organically.
I missed the beginning of the story, so I don’t know if it
was a boys-only school, if the student only felt comfortable going to boys’
tables, or if the presence of gender-specific tables even crossed his mind. So that will have to wait for a future post.
