The Last Train...To Racisim?

After discussing in class today the readings that were assigned and after we watched the television show, I was riding public transportation back to my apartment and I couldn't help but notice something that was standing out in the obvious to me. Since we were talking about enlightening racisim and branching off of that, colorblind racisim and all the frames that follow into that category I couldn't help but notice naturalization while riding the brown line home. While riding any public transportation it is a very interesting place to do observations with people and their actions. I couldn't help but notice as more people were piling on the preferred seating and the different races and genders that were merging toward each other. I first saw that there were two empty seats (within the same distance from the other) but it had two different skin colors in the opposite seats. One person that was sitting by herself was an African American and the next a white woman. Another white woman got on the train and walked immediately to the other white woman and sat with her. I noticed the same thing with other different races as well. I saw that African American woman sat next to other African American women, White women with other White women, Asian women with other Asian women.

The next thing that I noticed was that people of certain races (whether they were women or men) were sitting with the opposite sex of the same color as them. Rarely did I see a white women sitting next to an African American man. Then when more people piled through the doors, they tended to merge toward those people of the same color as themselves. At first I thought that this was just because of the particular train, but then I also took the red line the same day and noticed the same naturalization going on. Is this a conscious decision that we are making, or are we completely blinded by the fact that we still feel some comfort being identified with a particular group?