Is Our Generation really Post Racial?

Recently I had to give a speech for my gifted and talented class. My question to address was "Is our generation really post racial?" based on an article by the New York Times. I feel really strongly about this topic and I feel like I should share my opinion. I feel like we as a society have come a long way since the 60’s. We have passed the days of segregation and race specific laws, however, I don’t think we can go as far as to say that our generation is post-racial. Post-racial is defined a society or time period in which discussions around race and racism have been deemed no longer relevant to current social dynamics. I’m not saying that we are still racist and stuck in the ways of pre-civil rights movement, but race still plays a part in our lives. To be post-racial we would have to live in a color blind society where the color of a persons skin is barely acknowledged let alone plays a role in our decisions. Individually, we may not take race into consideration. I don’t think any of us say, “ew, I can’t talk to him, he’s Asian”. But if you look around at the different “groups” at school, you can often see an unintentional separation of races. On a grander scale, there is the University of Michigan. The population of students attending the University of Michigan are primarily White and Asian causing some of the African Americans to feel isolated. African American enrollment in the University of Michigan dropped from 6.2% to 4.6%. This is nobody’s fault but it goes to show that racial separation is still present and still has an effect. On the other hand, there is Howard University with a 64-82% of the student body being comprised of African Americans and only 5% of the student body being White. So this goes to prove that the separation goes both ways. I don’t think that our generation as a whole is actively racist but race remains as an underlying factor in part of our lives. We aren’t racist but we’re not post racial either.

Older not wiser

      I never understood why people were afraid of growing up. What is so scary about being able to do more of the things you want to do. Even though there would be more responsibility surely it can't be that bad. How could something so exciting be "scary". Now I'm not a little kid who looks at a high school student like an alien creature. I realize now that its not the fear of getting older, its the fear of being older.
       When you're younger nobody expects much from you. You're expected to be your age and that's all. When your parents leave you with a baby sitter you expect the sitter to be able to handle anything. Whatever emergency that could possibly happen would be easily taken care of. However now I'm the babysitter and I realize I have no idea I'm doing. If someone gets hurt the best I can do is apply a Band-Aid and hope the parents get home fast. When you're younger you assume that you'll figure it all out when you get older but the scary part is when you realize you're older and you're still waiting to figure it out. When you reach a certain age you're supposed to have a plan. When you're six you don't see any issue because you'll have time before you have to figure everything out. The scary part is when you're sixteen and you still don't know what you're doing yet everybody still thinks its their job to remind you to figure it out.  The scary part isn't getting another year older, its realizing that you're not any wiser.