No one wants to read old blog material. No matter how good it might be. I know when i go to a site that has not been updated in a while i leave pretty quick. If there has been an update as of late i will usually go back a few entries to check out the quality of the stuff. But other than that, that is where most of our searches end as bloggers. It is like going back to read old news paper articles, only a very (and i mean very) few people do that, if any.

Ok so I met this girl here about a month ago. We hit it off, started hanging out did some stuff together you know nothing serious. Anyway so I ask her out to dinner, not like we are getting married, yesterday (11\7) for tonight. Well I call my mom up to talk to because I hadn’t talked to her in awhile. Well she asked what I had planned for the weekend I think or I just told her what I was doing, I can’t remember, either way I told her I was taken a girl out to dinner. Well she asks me about her, you know the basic mom stuff. Well then I tell her this girls age she is 21 turns 22 in February, I am 18. Well they, my mom and dad, pretty much asked why is she going out to dinner with some 18 year old. What a freaking double standard! If I was 21 and took an 18 year old out there would be no questions asked. But when it is the other way around people wonder what is wrong with the girl. The other thing that gets me is that my mom is what, 3 or 4 years older than my dad. I mean what the heck. I am not mad about it at all, I just think it is really funny. The point is what a double standard.

This essay is on a phenomenon known by many people as self-segregation, which is an independent choice by an individual to segregate him or herself. Most people will admit of existence self-segregation. The debate is whether it is human nature to segregate oneself or is it something learned and is therefore discrimination and whatever it be human nature or otherwise, is it helpful to society as a whole or harmful? I believe that self-segregation is human nature and it is helpful to society as a whole.

Beverly Daniel Tatum wrote a book on the subject of self segregation called "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria." In a CNN.com news article about self-segregation she is quoted as saying, "As young people move into their teen-age years, they start thinking about questions of identity. They do start looking for people with similar experience, similar backgrounds to them, and they do tend to cluster in that way." People surround themselves with others who are like them; they self-segregate, mainly according to race, monetary status, style of dress, or religious views. After being here on campus for a few weeks, I noticed that circles of friends were beginning to form. As these circles formed, I noticed that they all had something in common. The people who made them up generally looked and/or acted the same. It is stated in the book, "Enduring Issues in Sociology" by Lynn Bartech and Karen Mullin, that "people tend to associate with others like themselves and usually have little exposure to lifestyles different from their own." So after observing that fact, the question began to surface, why is that? Why is it that people associate with other people who are like themselves? Is it because people are stuck up and will not accept people who are different from themselves? Maybe this is the reason part of the time, but from what I have observed, it is not that the different groups of people would not accept someone who is different from the core people of the group, because they would in most cases. It is the fault, not of the group, but of the individual trying to interact with the group. The less one has in common with another, the harder it is to find common ground. Not being able to find something in common with another person is very awkward, very uncomfortable. I believe we can all agree that it is a common human trait to try to be comfortable. Therefore, wanting to be comfortable is human nature. I think about how many people I know that enjoy being uncomfortable, none. Consequently, being around people who are similar to ourselves is human nature because it is comfortable. It is just easier to interact with people that are like ourselves.

How is self segregation helpful to society? When people are comfortable they tend to be happy. When a person has a group to which he or she can relate, that person is more likely to be fulfilled and therefore more likely to be happy. When people are happy they are more likely to be gregarious and therefore more likely to interact with people outside their normal group. A professor at UCLA, Mitchell Chang, was asked in an interview with CNN.com about self-segregation and its effects on students and had this to say, "They’re more likely to be involved in campus activities, and when students are more likely to be involved in campus activities, they’re more likely to socialize across race."

To give a real life example, last week a friend and I where sitting in Denny's restaurant. He was talking to me and I was studying, when in walked an especially attractive girl walked. I glanced up quickly and then continued studying.  As the girl walked around our booth he started to look at me and nonchalantly shift his eyes over as to tell me to look behind my right shoulder. I replied that I had already seen her, he then commented on how attractive he thought she was at which point I agreed with him. Well he jokingly he continued to talk about how she came into his workplace, a coffee shop, fairly often and then began to joke about how she was coming in there to see him. Well it seemed pretty funny at the time. Anyway, half an hour passed and another exceptionally attractive girl, who looked very similar, walked in the door. I noticed her and thought fairly quickly, she is going over to sit with the other girl that walked in half an hour before. As soon as she came into my friend's field of view he commented to me that he thought she was going to go sit with the girl from before. Well she did go over and sit with her friend just as we had predicted.

My friend and I would not have predicted the same thing if the second girl had been someone who would be unattractive to us or to society. We were making an assumption based solely on looks, because someone who is found unattractive by society will most likely have had very different life experiences, that would have made it harder for the imaginary unattractive girl to find common ground with the girl who society would call attractive.

There are many different factors that determine who we socialize with on a regular basis. In a way self-segregation is a contradiction unto itself. As I said before it is a help to society in the way that it encourages others to interact with people outside their core group and find ways to relate to people of other races, monetary status, style of dress, or religious views, when they may not do so otherwise. So the more we interact with people like ourselves the more we interact with people that are not like us.