"Oh, this race business, it's just you older types who go on about it. Young people like me, the 18-30 crowd, we really are past it all. It just doesn't matter to us at all. Black, white, Hispanic, we really don't care."

Now, you know me; I really, really hate to burst anybody's bubble. However, the crowd of 21-year-olds I graduated with back in 1966 were just as convinced of their own post-racial righteousness as this present cohort are. So, I am sure, were the graduates of 1976, 1986, and 1996. It's to do with being young.

*yawn* I'm white and my friends are disproportionately white but even still it doesn't bother me (and disproportionately white collar, and Jewish, and Asian, and gay, and atheist, and bowlers, and golfers, and from the Mid Atlantic, and ..). I don't feel guilty about it or want to get new friends to make quota - I just don't care. My friends are also disproportionately Electrical Engineers but I'm not working on "fixing" that. Heck, I was a frat boy at a frat boy school and even so my bro's were disproportionately gay*. Ask me if I give a shit.

I think Derb is right that the classes of '66 (my parents) and '96 (myself) both professed the same rhetoric of "people are people" but I think the content has changed. Each generation is embarrassed by the racial views of the generation that came before it which causes the same "I don't care about race" rhetoric but the reason for embarrassment changes. Viz, here is a dinner conversation circa 1992

Guest: Where is your oldest these days?
Mom: He's visiting his roommate's family.
Guest: That's nice.
Mom [apropos of nothing]: They're black.
Me: *groans with embarrassment*

If you want to score diversity points just get a hobby. If you spend a Saturday at Habitat for Humanity you'll meet all kinds of people (very few of whom can swing a hammer, so don't be intimidated on that account). Like most things all this "diversity" crap is mostly spin. If you join a bowling league you can make friends with more blue/white collar people than you already know. The particular institution is dedicated to bowling and not race or class. In my Sunday league are lawyers for Google and construction workers, blacks and whites and hispanics, couples and singles (sadly for me single women are woefully few). Perhaps the biggest group under represented in this Cambridge alley are college professors (undergrads are well represented).

Maybe Derbyshire is correct that "I really don't care" is a lie. I'll cop to a philosiphy of "I really don't care what you think about me" instead. My friends are an imperfect representation of America but I like them anyway.

* College is probably a bad example because of strong identity politics. Some groups of non white males were encouraged to segregate themselves by race, ethnicity, etc. For example, you couldn't be a member of the Korean Student Union and be in a fraternity. As a result any group that didn't have that "us or them" mentality was over represented in the general population which at Lehigh means fraternities.