Race Blog (Audria)

 Context     Hi fellow readers!I have just finished the book Race , the last few chapters have been a crazy ride. Aronson uses the end of the book to examine more recent and even modern progressions of race. He takes a look at the beginnings of the civil rights movement and how the idea that blacks deserved equality started gaining momentum. I thought possibly the most important part was how he explained the a fight for equality initially had the exact opposite effect. As blacks began to stand up for themselves, others were afraid of their improvement and wanted to repress them further. He closely examines the tension in America as ideas about race were so fluid and yet so rigid at the same time.      He transitions into the modern perspective of race. He acknowledges that nobody is very comfortable talking about it and it's ignored in a sense. Because it's a very heated and controversial subject, many of us have become afraid to discuss it for fear th...

  In this post, I will analyze Aronson's arguments  Context   Hello again fellow readers! This week I have read the third quarter of  Race , up to page 200. Since last time, Aronson has moved into more recent developments of racial prejudice, discrimination, and persecution. It follows through the 1800s and early 1900s to examine race specifically in America. In this period, many immigrants came to America. New York in particular had an incredibly diverse population as new people kept entering, and at first New Yorkers loved this diversity. In New York people didn't believe that Whites were superior to other races, but there was still the residual concept that whiteness equals freedom. This meant that all the new immigrants had to be classified as white, or not white. At this time, the ideas about what contributed to race were pretty conflicting. Sometimes it was purely a biological and scientific thing, based on skull measurements and things of that sort. Other...

In this post, I will be relating Aronson's text to current events Context   Hello again fellow readers! I've just read the next section of my book up to page 130. In this section, Aronson shifts into a more religious examination of how the idea of race evolved. So far he has walked through the history of feuding religions and how their differing beliefs lead to the ranking and dividing of people. I again found his story-esque approach extremely effective as it allows me to immerse myself in the history and follow the timeline of the invention of race. The main points from this section revolved around exactly what brought us to the idea of race, and I found the progression to be fascinating.  Projection of the soul    The story starts with early Christian churches' depictions of "monstrous men" to teach the illiterate peasants of people who had sinned. These men had disturbing shapes and faces and animalistic features, taking this form because they had sinne...

A Brief Introduction     Greetings! I've just finished reading through page 67 in the book  Race  by Marc Aronson. This book looks at racism through a historical scope, examining when and why racism originated and how it came to its modern role in society. He takes an investigative stance on the origins of the concept of race as well as racism. When I was first deciding which book to read, this one immediately caught my attention. I've never been much of a history buff, in fact, I quite dislike history and I find it confusing. However, I was intrigued by the idea of understanding the roots of racism. I often found myself wondering how race arrived at its highly controversial meaning and connotations. On the news, I've seen the devastating effects of racism and I wonder why and even how humans can treat other humans in such a way for no reason other than skin color. I thought it was absurd and disgusting and I've been truly curious as to why the color of our skin...