I’d like to start my first column of the new school year with a story about a guy with a do-rag.

I spent the summer living in a not-so-well-off part of Houston, Texas that had an abundant scenery of pawn shops and adult video stores. On my first day there I noticed a guy wearing a do-rag (who I would come to refer to as “do-rag guy”) walking around outside of my apartment complex. Coming from a very affluent town in Illinois, seeing this man sporting a style that is often associated and stereotyped with gang activity naturally gave me a slightly uneasy feeling.

I saw do-rag guy frequently. Every day he would walk down the same path and sit on the same bench. He just sat there and watched the world go by. That was all.

After a while, I finally began to contemplate what do-rag guy was really like: Nothing about him was particularly threatening, other than the stigma that wearing a do-rag carries with it. All I ever saw him do was walk down that path and sit on that bench. What did he see when he looked out at the world? What did he think of it? He seemed to be of a pretty substantial age. What lessons had he learned in life? He probably knew more about the neighborhood I was living in than anyone else.

***

I was coming home one day in the middle of summer when I saw the aftermath of a car accident on the major roadway near the entrance of my apartment complex. Two cars were pretty banged up, though no one appeared to be seriously injured.

A woman was sitting in the driver’s seat of one of the cars and appeared to be quite shaken. A man was at her side trying to comfort her. And guess who it was?

It was that man I had seen my first day moving in. Not only was he just a man who sat on a bench and watched the neighborhood, he was a man who stepped in when someone in that neighborhood needed help. He was a hero.

That moment inspired me. While I’ve always tried to perceive everyone in as fair and objective way as possible, I realized that subtle misconceptions can still creep in and govern the way we judge others. That incident made me more committed to trying to look past the shallow things that sometimes encourage us to form swift and firm judgments.

As an opinions columnist it’s my job to come up with strong viewpoints about issues that the campus cares about. I’ve always tried to do so to the best of my ability, but I can’t help but wonder if there are things I have missed in the past due to not looking beyond the do-rag.

I think we are all vulnerable to falling into these traps, regardless of how righteous some of us might think we are. What is important is that we are able to take a step back and examine our thinking to see if we are really living up to the standards set by our self-righteous minds.

This kind of introspective viewpoint is critical in creating a more harmonious world, and is central to the framework that world-class institutions like the University of Illinois are based on. All of us as a campus community, whether we are students or faculty, should go into this new year with the attitude that there are things we don’t know, that there are things we take for granted, and in the spirit of the institution, we should try our best to seek out what those things are and improve on them.

We should give extra attention to seeking answers to the questions we have, avoid conforming to ideologies that claim to know everything, and be willing to push ourselves out of our comfort zones and pursue new frontiers.

In short, we shouldn’t let the do-rag (no matter what form it takes) prevent us from seeing a greater truth. It’s a well-known lesson, but one that sometimes needs reinforcement.

Andrew is a junior in Engineering. He can be reached at [email protected].