I’m not sure when I realized I was neither white nor black, but it may have been in kindergarten when my friend Max asked me, “What are you?” Six years old, I told him I was “kind of Indian,” which he took as Native American, unaware the two were separate ethnicities. In any case, I took Max’s question lightly. Max noticed our skin colors were different, and, like any curious child, he wanted to know why.

Twelve years later, it would be graceless of me to inquire about another’s ethnicity openly.

As children, observation molds our unspoken thoughts. We have no problem saying “she’s black” or “he’s white.” Society, however, dictates which of these thoughts can be said aloud.

We are taught to ignore some observations because of discomfort. The South holds a long history of racial tensions that, frankly, we’d all like to forget. Nevertheless, racial stigmas do not vanish simply because we choose not to acknowledge them.

When we see someone different than ourselves, we’re asked to brush our differences under the rug. Yes, it’s good to focus on common ground, but we shouldn’t disregard our separate backgrounds, either.

We may deny it, but none of us are colorblind. Old Row fraternities and sororities remain uniformly white, as always.

At lunch, the Korean students aggregate to a single table. At our dining hall, is it coincidence that all the employees are black? These are merely my observances, yet I feel racist penning this, though I’ve said nothing offensive.

Ignoring race and ethnicity teaches us to deal with people impersonally, without their cultural baggage. We’ve mastered the art of discretion, beating around the bush, though we’re all dying to know the answer to that touchy question, the same question my friend so easily asked me years before: “What are you?” Put less crudely, and asked more sincerely, many of our “diversity” complexes could be eliminated.

We deny ourselves the right to be different, since after all, we can’t even talk about difference. We fear rejection from others, so closed-minded we stay. Afraid to question our background, we meet people exactly like ourselves.

Why is it this way? We’ve been set up in a social structure that inhibits cultural discourse. We’re reluctant to ask a Muslim woman why she wears a headscarf, just as we’d rather not ask our Mormon friend why he chooses not to drink caffeinated sodas. We know that not all Muslim women wear headscarves, and some Mormons do drink caffeinated sodas, but do we know why? We’ve grown so timid to ask these questions that we end up learning nothing at all about the people we meet every day.

Our cultural ignorance is not our fault. In some way, we don’t want to talk about our differences because it conjures bad memories. We never hear about the mass segregation right here in Alabama, nor does anyone mention George Wallace’s notorious “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” quote during his inaugural speech.

As humans, we only differ from one another 0.1% genetically. If we’re so weak-minded that we can’t openly talk about this 0.1%, then I may have overestimated the human condition.

Everyone has roots. It’s about time we talked about them.

Tarif Haque is a sophomore majoring in computer science.