Everyone’s against segregation until it’s comfortable

Shiny Chandravel, Contributing Writer

VCU is praised for its diverse student body, comprised of people from all nations and walks of life. It was one of the factors that drew me here: the hope that I could find the stereotypical multicultural friend groups tossing frisbees in the park, just as they were depicted in the advertisement pamphlets.

Yet when I walk through Monroe Park, the sun is warm enough to draw students out of their dorms, but not enough to melt the unspoken divisions that have segregated even the smallest of friend groups into homogenous cliques. 

Despite VCU’s diversity, the pattern I so desperately wanted to escape from in high school persists — different races and cultures can coexist, but only in separate spaces. Even in a post-segregation society, people are still unwilling to give up the level of comfort found in sameness.

I don’t intend to disparage these “comfortable” friend groups entirely — they provide a sense of belonging, shared interests, language and values that can be otherwise difficult to find. This is why there are so many identity-based school clubs such as the Chinese Student Association, Swahili Club and Latine Student Association. 

But when every friend, roommate and person you decide to associate with turns out to have a similar background to you, at what point does your comfort in familiarity turn into resistance to growth and change?

There is a time and place for both constancy and unfamiliarity — a time to connect with your culture and background, and a time to be in the spaces of those with differing stories and life journeys to share, but no one ever chooses to be uncomfortable. We would rather sit cozily listening to the echoes of stories we already know the ending of.

Except you have your whole life ahead of you to be comfortable — our country’s design ensures it. 

As of the 2018–2019 school year, one in six public school students attended schools where over 90% of their peers shared the same racial background, according to the Century Foundation. 

Over 80% of large metropolitan areas in the United States were more segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990, according to an analysis conducted by the University of California-Berkeley. 

In the same Berkeley study, it was found that the consequences of redlining, wealth inequality and city segregation ordinances have led Richmond to be the No. 38 most segregated city in the country as of 2019. 

Even today, VCU maintains its own private student bus system, RamsXpress. The system sits apart from the greater city’s GRTC, allowing students the privileged comfort of exclusivity. 

Our buses may not be segregated anymore, but now we will not even ride on the same ones.

Many will agree, albeit quietly, that the comfort of being isolated from the city is worth more than the discomfort of sharing it. It is the same quiet agreement that will one day lead us to live in neighborhoods, attend schools and experience our livelihoods in the midst of those identical to ourselves.

As students, the ability to experience discomfort has never been more necessary, and the college environment makes this all the more accessible. For these few years you are at VCU, you live in a rare opportunity that defies what much of our adult life will look like: a world where people from all walks of life, backgrounds, affiliations and cultures are within reach. 

You have a lifetime ahead of you to be comfortable among people just like you. Don’t waste these years in college doing the same.