Hello Mister, you have to be a little more careful

The little that I understand of the culture in the United States, I have realized that race and ethnicity are contentious issues. While most conversations are exempt from discussions about race, I feel an underlying sense of discomfort for all the external silence that prevails. Also, as a newcomer, its hard for me not to notice the physical disintegration and the divide.

For Instance, I was taking my normal train ride this Saturday morning, from Journal Square (in Jersey City) to the NYU campus in New York City. Journal Square is the last stop in the train network and also traditionally has been one of the most underdeveloped areas (probably next only to Newark). Thus, Journal Square is also home to a large immigrant population. So, as the train starts its journey, the occupants are extremely diverse. I could hear in the background many dialects, whether its Spanish, Russian, an African language (sorry about my ignorance), some Hindi and mostly a lot of broken English. I wanted to create a quantitative measure that can help you the reader understand the ethnic composition of that train compartment. I came up with something called the Cumulative Weighted Skin Color Index (CWSCI).

This is how I would calculate CWSCI:

(Skin color Value)*(No. of Individuals with that Skin Color Value in the Compartment)
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(Total Individuals in the compartment)

Skin Color Value is a number between 0 and 1, based on the shade, where 0.01 corresponds to Black and 0.99 corresponds to White (Please note that I'm not implying that one color is better than other, however, its just a simple mathematical measure).

So, at Journal Square my guess is that the CWSCI would be approximately 0.3 (again this is a intuitive measure, I have not yet devised a means to create a randomized study). As the train heads to Groove Street, CWSCI should increase to 0.4 and then to Newport, it should hit 0.5. I believe that the Index starts to show great increases as the train halts at Hoboken (the last stop before entering New York). As I observed at Hoboken today, most individuals who entered the train had a Skin Color value of 0.9 and above. Thus, the overall CWSCI reaches 0.75, due to the surge of White people (not only does the train become more noisier, a strong American and sparsely European accent takes dominance. Conversations mostly range from "Oh, I wore my number 2 jacket yesterday, when I should have worn my number 3" to "Did you watch the game last night". I realized most of my previous neighbors when I got on the train at Journal Square had probably only one Jacket and did much make much of the sports in America).

Thus, my thesis is that the index would go from 0.3 at Journal Square to 0.75 at Hoboken. An even more glaring example of such distinctions can be seen in a public ice skating rink, which I found out during my trip to Bryant Park at 42nd Street. Let’s assume for the sake of simplicity, that the skating rink is circular. Let us divide the Skating rink in to two co-centric circles (circles which share the same center). My guess is that CWSCI for the outermost circle would be less than 0.3 . The reason being most immigrants have obviously never been on the ice before (like me) and cannot imagine letting go of the railings. In comparison, as we move closer to center the CWSCI should increase drastically, getting closer and closer to one.

The skating rink is also an excellent example of the microcosm of US culture. There are people in the periphery trying to make their way to the mainstream both economically and socially. As I was cursing myself for trying this insane activity of ice-skating, I slipped and fell (although I was holding on to the railing). A little girl comes around extending her tiny little hand to me and says "Hello Mister, you have to be a little more careful"! That’s when I realized, what attracts so many people to this country, immaterial of whether you are a 0.01 or 0.99, you always have a chance to make it to the mainstream and eventually to the center of the skating rink.