Race: A Connection to Current Events

    Hello everyone, and welcome to my blog. If you're here for a second time, I'm so glad you've decided to join me again. Today I'll be picking back up with Race by Marc Aronson. I'm about halfway through this book now, and I must say I have thoroughly enjoyed reading it thus far. It's detailed a rich historical background of how race came to be, and I'm seeing multiple patterns, themes, and connections as Aronson recounts the past. I finished up my previous reading with the Crusades, which had Europe in a state of conflict and chaos, wondering who was an "insider" and who was an "outsider". My most recent reading illustrates how these growing questions of us vs. them in medieval Europe would eventually lay the foundation for race as we know it.

    Aronson establishes a critical point for the development of race during the Crusades when it became important for European Christians to be able to distinguish themselves from their enemies. While Europeans fought to take back the Holy Land and hoped to save themselves in the process, their cities became prosperous and complex. The scholars of these successful cities relied on ancient teachings for information about the rest of the world's people to pass on to the largely illiterate population. Such teachings included Aristotle's theory that people born to particular regions are predestined to live particular lives, have particular statuses, and bear particular characteristics (Aronson, 71). However, alongside these ancient teachings developed a new belief, based on the Bible's story of Cain who murdered his own brother, and as a punishment, was condemned to produce disfigured and unsavory offspring (Aronson, 72). His offspring and their descendants, known as "monstrous men", were set apart by their obvious differences in appearance: "dog-headed men who spoke in barks" and "men with no necks whose heads were in the middle of their chests" (Aronson 73).

   With rumors of such people existing in other parts of the world, the big question became whether or not they were human like the Europeans. Could their souls be saved, or were they the very essence of evil? Many suspected that they represented the antichrist, and could be identified by their appalling features. Other men who had been "condemned by their sins" also suffered physical consequences like Cain. For example, Jewish people were largely condemned for their rejection of Jesus Christ, and were therefore depicted as hard and cold, and were often identified as wearing strange hats or having large noses. According to other biblically derived information, dark skin was linked to sin, so the question of humanity and salvation extended to Muslims for their skin color alongside the Jews for their religious impurity. It soon became very important to be able to identify and distinguish people based on appearance, to know who was a friend and who was an enemy. This point in history was crucial to the establishment of the first pillar of race: unchangeable physical differences that set people apart.

   From here, Aronson's narrative continues to emphasize the influence that religion had on the history of race. As the Europeans became more preoccupied with religious purity, they became less tolerant of the non-Christians, which include Jews and Muslims, as outlined above. They forced these particular people to wear certain clothing to identify themselves and exiled them to ghettos to remove them from the "good" part of society. They even led intense interrogations and torture against some of their own who they suspected of disloyalty to weed out the deceptive believers and purify the nation. Although race was still not a formal concept at this point, it's clear that its development was well underway.

  Aronson's narrative has not only been fascinating and insightful, but it's also very relevant to today's issues. Though we may not be seeing such widespread examples of explicit and brutal prejudice, race is still a relevant topic. With the recent uprising of the Black Lives Matter movement, many Americans find themselves in a tricky position. Many want to stand with the movement and do their part to spark positive change, but they don't know how they can be helpful or supportive. I am one of those people who doesn't know how to be a productive part of the movement, which is why I was particularly affected by the advice of Emmanuel Acho, a creator on YouTube with a series titled "Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man".

Emmanuel Acho. WBUR, 13 July 2020, www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/07/13/emmanuel-acho-uncomfortable-conversations. Accessed 11 Mar. 2021.

    Earlier today, I saw the very first video of this series (linked below), and to both open and close his video, he emphasized education as a way to support the movement. He said the best way to stand with the movement is to learn about it and be well-educated on its relevant issues. It's simple advice, but it stood out to me. I've never really known which information to believe or what to think about other people's arguments, and I know I'm not the only one. As with many other things, though, I've never been entirely where to start "getting educated". Only now do I realize that books are a great resource for this particular endeavor; in particular, Race by Marc Aronson. This book starts at the beginning- before race was invented- and in my opinion, there's no better place to start. I've already learned so much about the foundations of race- how the "us vs. them" mindset has persisted across time, how religion has influenced the divide between groups of people, and how it first became important to identify and distinguish people as friends or foes via physical features. So far, Aronson is doing an excellent job explaining the foundation of race as we know it, and I think learning the fundamental definition and history of race is a solid way to begin to understand it. Towards the very beginning of this book, Aronson writes:

"The very first step in uncovering the history of race and racism is the hardest. For it involves overturning what you think you know." (Aronson, 22).

   I think this mindset is so powerful, and overturning is exactly what Aronson does. From the very beginning, he uncovers a huge misconception of race, being that racism and slavery are mutually exclusive. Every time I've heard of race in the classroom, it's gone hand in hand with slavery, so naturally, my understanding of race and racism was influenced by a misconception. Aronson's deconstruction of this misconception- which seems so obvious now that I know it- fundamentally changed my understanding of race, which is a prime example of the importance of education regarding racial matters. Understanding the history of race may very well help us shape its future, which proves Race to be a relevant work now more than ever as Americans face a country divided by that very same issue.

The first episode of "Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man"

                                                        

Works Cited

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

Emmanuel Acho. WBUR, 13 July 2020, www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/07/13/emmanuel-acho-uncomfortable-conversations. Accessed 11 Mar. 2021.

"Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man." YouTube, uploaded by Emmanuel Acho, 3 June 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8jUA7JBkF4. Accessed 11 Mar. 2021.