Vanessa Evers, 163, Yale's Project O

Yale’s Project O deals with the space where racial history and dance collide, and it examines the implications of a generation who self-identifies as post-racial. Joe Queenan’s eloquent review about the difference between being “color-blind” and ignorant perfectly verbalizes the issues associated with considering yourself post-racial. In highlighting the reality that Hurricane Katrina “happened in 2005, not 1955” and bringing attention to “the numbers of young men going to college as opposed to those going to jail,” Queenan states the obvious: racial inequalities in the United States are still very pronounced. Just because we elected a president who happens to be black does not mean that our country is in a position to simply forget about our history (and continued struggle) with racial discrimination. The participants of Project O ultimately confronted uncomfortable racial realities about “looking back” on American history and learned a valuable lesson about keeping history alive in order to continue to progress. The article mentioned that the students felt uncomfortable when they performed a racially segregated scene, but if our supposedly post-racial generation wants to genuinely move forward on racial equality, we need to be okay with feeling uncomfortable and speaking frankly about sensitive issues.