Blog Post 5: What I Have Learned From Race

     Hello reader, today is the last time I will be posting on this blog. To celebrate the final blog post, I wanted to share what I have learned through reading Aronson's book. In reading this book, one of the main questions that I wanted to answer was, is there a historical chain of events that you can follow to get to our idea of race? Of course, history builds on itself all the time, but that was not my main focus. I wanted to know, can you follow race from the beginning to right now without bouncing around to different places' unrelated events? 

Through reading Aronson's book Race, I can say that no, no one path led us to the idea of race now. One way that Aronson shows race is not a chain of events is the way that he bounced around with what defines race over time. To some people, race was social class, it was religion, it was bloodlines, and skin tones. A particular quote that showed the widespread ideas of race was when he wrote "You could paint a picture of world history starting in 1775 with race prejudice spreading like a dark cloud, until, in the 1940s it covers the whole planet." (pg 131). Thinking about this quote, you can see that there is no way that race has a linear history. Something that started around 1775 would not be an isolated thing that traveled around the world, but instead an idea with multiple origins and branches. Of course, the course of the idea has merged paths with itself over the years to become more of what we know, but in 1775 there was no widespread media broadcasting the same ideas to people. By this point, I was almost sure that race was stemming from different places rather than one idea that branched out.

Another thing that Aronson addresses that confirms this new way of thinking, is his discussions around slavery. Aronson does not talk about specifically the enslavement in America, but various places to broaden the idea. He also notes that slaves were of what we would classify as the same race as their masters, however, they were viewed as a different race. "If you were a slave, that was because of something slavish in your nature" (pg 37-38). Aronson's definition of slavery here shows that, against what seems to be popular belief, racism and slavery do not mean the same thing, and therefore can not have the same origins. Aronson has explained in his book how slavery was everywhere, and that these ideas developed into what is known as race now.

Is the future of race going to progress in a linear fashion? Yet again, I have found that the answer appears to be no. Racism continues to be an issue in the world, as Aronson stated, "even in the face of crimes like the Holocaust." (pg 249). As a society, we have not found the end of the idea that race is a bad thing and it certainly does not appear that we will any time soon. As long as we continue to have people on both sides of the issue, we can never find one strand to follow the idea of race, it will just continue to branch off into more issues.

I want to leave you with one final thought before we depart. Aronson said at the beginning of his book that "As we grow more civilized, we also find new ways to be ever more cruel and harsh." (pg 16). I believe this applies to much more than racism and is something that we need to be mindful of as a society and individuals. If you take nothing else from this blog, remember that words and actions are powerful. Use what you do and say to be the reason someone smiles and not to contribute to the negativity that Aronson pointed out continues to expand.

Thank you for reading my blog,

Tessa R.

Works Cited

Aronson, Marc. Race: A History beyond Black and White. New York, Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2007.