Brett Lider     Just Say Hi I was walking down West Main Street Saturday night. As a group of three black men was walking ahead of me, they glanced over their shoulders to see who was behind them. I was beginning to overtake them, when a (white) woman in an automobile yelled out some depreciating comment to one of the men, who took it with grace and continued walking. By this time, I was amidst them, and they knew that I had heard the woman. I was torn as to what response I should make to the obvious racism displayed by the passenger. My proximity to the event made me feel as though I should say something to let them know that I sympathized or that not all white folk were bigots. At the same time I knew none of them, and anything I said would stand a good chance of being interpreted as condescending, over-eager, or at best, unwarranted. All I managed was a sad smile and a shake of my head as I walked by, not knowing if it was too much or too little. A tension exists between a group and an individual or two groups of different races that does not exist between two individuals of differing races. It is not just a problem that exists between blacks and whites, but involves all the ethnicities and nationalities on Grounds. One must ask why interracial interactions change so drastically when the number of participants on one side or the other increases above one. There seems to be some sort of implied or interpreted threat posed by a collection of individuals who look, talk, and/or dress the same. The discomfort, if not outright fear expressed by many a white person when walking through the old Commerce School bus stop was unmistakable. I asked one of my friends what the root of this reaction was. The conclusion that we came to was nonlinear, that one could not separate cause from effect, that the expectation (of what?) on the part of a white person was often met with louder voices and laughs by the black persons at the BBS. The subtlety and intangibility of the nonverbal communication going on then and now makes this a hard topic to address. Through the work of Mendel and Darwin, it was taught that genes controlled the phenotypes of organisms. The latent effect of this synthetic theory of evolution was to foster the idea that genetic material accounted for everything, that there was no room for environment influence except to select for or against traits. Lately, the coevolutionary view has come to greater attention, citing evidence that the genetic material and its greater environment (gene, chromosome, nucleus, cytoplasm, tissue, organism, environment) together dynamically create the ecology of the habitat and the outward traits of the organism over time. In this system, selection occurs at the extremes, and in between the seven levels of nature-nurture interactions direct the development of the organism and create its phenotypes. The organism manipulates a change in its environment, triggering counter-effects and responses by the environment that the organism reacts to in a dynamic system where cause is not separated from, but intrinsically bound to effect. Small changes can have large effects, and big changes can have small effects. The same can be said for human relations. To blame the white student for being afraid or to chide the black student for being intimidating is to miss the point entirely. In a coevolution-based metaphor for race relations, the best way to enact a change is to consciously take a different set of actions than what one had previously established. A change in behavior triggers a change in environment. This would have the effect of altering the actions/reactions of those around oneself to oneself. One does not have to walk far to hear someone refer to those "international students," "Asian students," "frat boys," "sorority girls," or "Indian students" always hanging out with each other and no one else. Eating at the dining hall. Living with each other after first-year. Segregating themselves and being segregated by others. It is a hard problem to correct, especially since most of it is laid down in the first few days, if not hours, after one arrives at the university. The longer one waits, the harder it is perceived to enact change. One should not believe that just because one is not a peach-fuzzed first-year that one cannot branch out into and become apart of the incredible diversity found on Grounds. All that can be said is that it has to be taken one step at a time, one interaction at a time, one smile and "hello."

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