Part 6: Judgement + Part 7: "May Be of Any Race"

Hello to all of you!

Now the end has come, the end of Race that is. It was an an enjoyable read at most times, and really got my brain churning to think about different aspects of this, and how the topic of race has been an influence in my life. The thing is, I’ve largely ignored it.

In all my life I don’t beleive I’ve ever witnessed a legitamate example of racism. This has led me into the mindset that it really isn’t much of a problem, and that it only exists in select locations where few people would ever be victims of it. Obviously, as I have become more educated I know this is far from reality.

Still, I think it’s a good thing I have not seen it, because it does represent that in this day we are an the slope of improvement. I guess the real hope for us, then, would be to improve in the quickest and most effective way possible. Improve to a point where racism is thought of the same way as medeival torture; nobody spends considerable time thinking about it but we look down on the past for having it.

Throughout the book, I kept wondering how we could get to that point. I want the generation of my children to be the one that is not racist at all. That’s right- not at all. It might be a big jump, but big jumps can come from simple changes. I thought about whether or not we should continue teaching the history of Race in school. Doesn’t it just let children know that those ideas exist, and therefore allow racism to flourish? I suppose I will dedicate the rest of this post to speak my mind about it.

I was really unsure of this idea and whether or not I wanted to put it in my blog post until in only a few pages from the end I came across an idea that was similar: “Dr. Morning suggests that one step would be to stop even using the term “race.” ” I call it similar because my proposed idea would involve the discontinuation of the term race. Now I don’t feel likee I’m being absurd. However, I do acknoldedge that there are some very arguable reasons not to do this.

For one, there is the arguement that the history of race, slavery, and discrimination, is a very important one. I would never be the one to argue that we should forget history. Perhaps I need to alter my argument...

We should stop teaching children about this kind of history at an early age- That is my arguement.

I came to realize that although I am learning about race at the moment, it is not impacting my level of bias. It’s really the earlier ages that the teaching is harmful, because the formation of opinions is underway in young minds, and those children could end up with a lifelong opinion we don’t want them to have.

To better illustrate my point, I’ll share a personal experience, one of the day I learnt any of this existed.

I was in 2nd grade when Barack Obama was elected, and my teacher was eager to tell my class how big a deal a black president was. In order to do so, she told us a bit about the civil rights movement and MLK's "I have a dream" speech. Before that day I had never been introduced to the idea of racism. I remember raising my hand and asking, "So if I had lived back then I would've hated black people?" Yeahhhhh........


The purpose of this story was to show that it's more difficult to comprehend these ideas at young ages, and I feel that if people aren't introduced to the subject until later on, they will have a better grasp on it.


I can relate this to the picture I chose to analyze in class depicting the black children moving into a white neighborhood and receiving judgmental looks from the white children. I think the only reason the kids were racist is because they were introduced to the idea of racism at an early age.

Anyway... that's all I have to say. Thanks for reading!

2nd Half of Part 5: The Age of Racism

Hello again my friends,

I am growing to love the way Marc Aronson leads up to his arguments. It’s always the same sort of thing; he begins every chapter exactly the way a non-fiction book would be written. Then, towards the end of the read, he clarifies the connection and I feel a sudden jolt of enlightenment. For the sake of using simple terms, it’s a surprise when the clarification comes.

Now.... I suppose an example would be helpful. Since I’m reflecting on chapters 13, 14, and 15 in this blog post, I’ll pull examples from them.

Chapter 13: Survival of the Fittest
          As a portion of you might have guessed by the title, this chapter began with a rundown on who Charles Darwin was, and what he dedicated his time to doing. Aronson tells of how his ideas were highly controverial, mentioning that Darwin delayed revealing his discoveries for 20 years because he was afriad of the reactions people would have (pg. 175).
          Next, Aronson explains the impacts Darwin’s ideas had when he did reveal them. He particularly goes into depth on how people such as Francis Galton (Darwin’s cousin) took Darwin’s ideas and used them for strange implications. Galton took Dalton’s ideas and applied them to people, rather that what Dalton had intended: application to the natural world (pg. 177).
          Now that the concept of traits being passed from parents to children was scientifically established, Dalton wanted to beleive society could improve if the people with worse traits were kept from having children and conequentally die off.

My jolt of enlightenment happened was when on page 84, Aronson connects Galton’s idea of genetically inferior people with the prejudice against jews. Now I understood why Aronson brought up “survival of the fittest” at all. Ot was becuase, ultimately Dalton’s work increases the severity of racism in the world by providing a supposedly scientific background, rather than just the opinions of racist people.



I’m going to leave it at just the one example from chapter 13 so as to avoid boring you all. Plus, I feel like I went overboard explaining that one. Just be aware that the pattern of arguent formation exists in every chapter somehow.

The one other thing I’d like to share today is how I feel this can connect to what I said in my previous post about people feeling the need to be superior. I think that in Galton’s case, it is really the same idea: he wants to be superior. The scale is just larger, because he is trying to make his race superior, not just himself.

Later in the section, I read about Adolf Hitler’s actions. This was essentially the same concept. Overall, I can clearly see that Aronson intended that the big takeaway of Part 5 is that any development in history that eatablished a difference between groups caused those groups to separate even further, in some instances going to extreme levels.

If I could request anything of you as you read my blog, I would ask that you choose never to hate people. It just seems to me that that is the reason wars and other large social conflicts erupt: because on the basic level, too many individuals decide to have hatred for one another.

Okay that’s a wrap!

-Simon S. Page