Working Toward Zion

When the word “race” comes to mind, sometimes it can bring to mind negative connotations. Our minds immediately go to the bad words; racism, discrimination, segregation, bias, race wars. Some would immediately put up a wall to the topic: Why does it always have to be about race? You’re just playing the race card. Aren’t we all part of the human race? I don’t see race, everyone should be colorblind.

It’s easy to think that by just eliminating the very idea of race, all these problems would simply evaporate. Whether it be by changing people’s minds to not notice the racial and cultural differences of others, as Dr. Haber in Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel had intended, or to physically change the appearance of the human population to eliminate racial variation, as George Orr’s “effective dream” created, ignoring or eradicating race is seen as a very positive thing.

But is it really a good thing to destroy the racial variation so inherit to humans? Of course Dr. Haber believes so, as for him the “racial problem” was solved once everyone was gray. Unfortunately, George Orr did not believe so. This new world where everyone looks the same “was intolerable”. In this new gray world, Heather Lelache, the woman he loved did not exist. To George, “her color, her color of brown, was an essential part of her not an accident,”. Heather’s very being was tied into her experience as an African-American woman, just as George Orr and Dr. Haber’s being is tied to their experience as White Americans. Just as we are the sum of our past experiences, good or bad, so do our racial identities also shape our lives. In a gray world, none of us could exist as we are now, and that, as George Orr says, is “intolerable”.

So if eradicating race as a thought process has such consequences, what should we do? We can possibly look to the Matrix’s depiction of a multiracial society. Although there seems to be an over emphasis on white and black characters, with fewer asian and hispanic representations, there is an obvious intention of a society completely harmonized with it’s diversity. Despite Zion’s drab setting among steel machines and damp caves, somehow it has a very vibrant, colorful, warm atmosphere to it. This is most assuredly because of the racial diversity and harmony shown among it’s inhabitants. Would Zion feel the same if everyone in the city were full of nothing but gray-skinned people, or even all people of the same race? Probably not. Zion represents the few humans able to resist the Matrix, standing together against the gargantuan threat of the machines. It is fitting that Zion represents a diverse population, or at least the appearance of one.

From all of our diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, we can truly create a society of pure beauty. The answer to solving any racial difficulties should not be to ignore or eradicate the existence of race. We must embrace the variation, and work towards the harmonized unity of our differences. Diversity makes for a much more interesting, and satisfying world.

Michael Randolph