Final Thoughts on Race

  Hello readers! I'm glad you're here to join me for my final thoughts on Race. If you're here now, you've likely been here before, but I'll provide a quick summary of the book just in case. Race traces the ancient roots of race as we know it, tracking beliefs, prejudice, and conflicts across the history of the world to portray the turning points in the development of race and illustrate its complex history. Aronson encompasses this development over thousands of years, from the ancient Western Civilizations of 1200 B.C. to the scientific theories of 1600s Europe, to the Holocaust in the mid-1900s and beyond. This book has been fascinating and insightful, and I must say that I've thoroughly enjoyed it. The author employed effective stylistic and rhetorical strategies which made it pleasant to read, and the structure and content of his writing made his points clear and his ideas easy to follow. I've also found this well-organized book to be particularly helpful as a stepping stone to understanding race, which is important perhaps now more than ever in this period of high racial tensions. In case you haven't been reading along these past few weeks, I'll quickly the parts of this book that I found to be worth mentioning.

  The first thing that stood out to me in this book was Aronson's voice and style. It can be tempting when making an argument to push your own perspective as the "correct" perspective, but that was obviously not Aronson's intention: "Readers, I am not asking you to agree with me, but to think with me" (Aronson, 31). He explicitly encourages his readers not to agree with his ideas, but to develop their own in response to his writing. I found that this portrayed Aronson as more qualified to write about race than I was originally expecting. I don't know about you, but when someone acknowledges different perspectives and understands that their opinion isn't the only one, I'm much more likely to respect their argument and take a close look. Aronson maintains this open-minded, flexible attitude throughout the book and leaves a lot of room for readers to draw their own conclusions, while still guiding them with general ideas, and this made me really interested in reading what he had to say.

   Another aspect of Aronson's writing that made this book feel so comprehensive is how he organized his ideas. As a book about history, the entire work is written chronologically, so that each time period and event built upon the previous ones. This really helped develop a complete story in my opinion. Once the main ideas and themes were established in early history, it was easy to see them repeating and understand how they connected throughout the rest of the book. He also makes several mentions to previous ideas or events to directly tie them into newer ideas, like how his mention of Aristotle's climate theory from Part 1 resurfaced again as he was discussing the reign of Alexander the Great. Aronson also consistently provided clear, concise conclusion statements to recap the main idea of a larger chunk of writing, so his ideas weren't lost in rambling or simply forgotten after reading a long passage, which I appreciated.

   Finally, this is less of a writing aspect and more of a general opinion, but I feel this book remains an asset in today's society. With racial justice being such a hot topic, it's becoming more and more common for young people to weigh in on the matter and act as agents of change. However, it's also pretty intimidating as a young person to be faced with such a complex issue that yields so many different opinions and so much different information. I feel that this book is a great place to start as a young person trying to better understand race, because it literally starts at the beginning, before race existed, and details the entire history of its development. I think the parallels between a student beginning to understand race and a book that aims to understand race from the beginning are wonderful. I also think that having a thorough, fundamental understanding of race is critical to becoming part of the solution to the racial tensions we face today, which is why Aronson's work is still valuable and relevant today.

Why is the concept of race so powerful?

   Given its focus on such a complex topic, this book is bound to raise some questions. After reading and reflecting on this book, I've realized that it does a phenomenal job answering one such question: why is the concept of race so powerful? The answer to this has two parts, which I'd like to explore a little more through the context of Race. First and foremost, even before it existed formally, race was a way to distinguish one's friends from one's enemies, which has been extremely important to civilizations throughout history. Aronson introduces this idea at the beginning of the book when he talks about how prejudice is formed. One way he describes the formation of prejudice is through "the tribe", which basically says that distinguishing between groups and hatred of these groups was a basic survival skill. He describes the Munduruku tribe and their word "pariwat", which signifies "stranger", "enemy", and "those who are not like us": "This is prejudice in perfect form: we are human, you are not" (Aronson, 11).

   A particularly strong historical example of this survival skill is the Inquisition, a period of religious persecution across Europe starting in the 1100s. According to Aronson, this time period deepened the divisions between Christians and non-Christians, and efforts to distinguish the two groups grew violent and hateful in a "crisis of purity". From the times of the Jews enslaved in Europe, to the rise (and Fall) of the Roman empire, religion played a huge role in social divisions and conflicts, but the Inquisition is a particularly grim example of just how important these religious differences were. The goal of the Inquisition was to purify Europe religiously; to weed out "fake believers" and other non- Christians. Religious minorities such as Jews and Muslims were persecuted in a variety of ways during this time. They were forced to wear clothing that identified them as non- Christians and banished to ghettos to separate them from pure Christians. They "grew fanatical about separating themselves from the sinners", which is revealed through Aronson's description of the cruel torture Christians carried out against non- Christians. 

   This ultimately relates back to the main idea of the Munduruku tribe anecdote: those who are different from us are enemies, and we must be able to distinguish ourselves from them. Although these religious conflicts may not seem directly linked with the power of race or prejudice, they are certainly connected. Not only does this resemble "prejudice in perfect form", but it also echoes one of the pillars of race mentioned early in the book: physical differences. By forcing non- Christians to identify themselves physically, they imply that part of what makes them "others" is their appearance. It makes sense, especially in times of conflict, that communities would want to defend themselves and their values, and be certain of who their friends (and enemies) are, so it's not surprising that these early prejudices had so much influence over people. They wanted to feel safe and secure within their groups so badly that they allowed prejudice and hatred to run rampant to achieve it Simply put, the idea of race is powerful because, historically speaking, similar ideas have been crucial to distinguish friends from enemies, which is a basic survival trait.

   Secondly, race-related ideas and theories have worked throughout history to explain differences between people that the general public otherwise could not justify. For hundreds of years, people turned to God to answer their questions about themselves and their lives. However, around the seventeenth century, people began to turn to science. A period known as the Enlightenment revived the people's faith in science, logic, and reason, and current events of the time period offered the enlightenment thinkers a new challenge: to figure out why differences between people existed. If they couldn't find these answers through God, they were determined to find it through science. And after a long history of wondering where everyone stood in terms of God and suffering numerous bouts of religious persecution, they were eager to have their answers. At first, this was a powerful movement that sought to dismantle prejudice and bias, but it quickly became the most explicit expression of what they sought to destroy.

"One of the most heartbreaking ironies in this book is that even as Enlightenment thinkers broke the chains of superstition, they forged the iron bonds of race" (Aronson, 122).

   Through the skull-measuring work of German scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenback, people were soon divided into several distinct groups based not only on physical characteristics, but temperamental ones as well, and this was essentially the invention of race. By trying to scientifically explain differences between people, Enlightenment thinkers created new theories that essentially just confirmed old beliefs and reinforced old prejudices that they'd meant to leave behind. Even while attempting to find a purely scientific explanation for human differences, Blumenback concluded that Caucasians were the "oldest, most beautiful race", which basically solidified the modern-day definition of race, and encompassed all four pillars of race. Aronson points out that his shift from objective science to personal opinion should have been recognized as the major flaw that it is, but society wasn't looking out for those errors. They wanted answers to the questions their ancestors had been asking for thousands of years: "It was easy to overlook his switch from thinking to feeling, because what he said sounded so good and felt so right" (Aronson, 126).

I think this explanation of the power of racial theories is beautifully put by former economist Elinor Ostrom: "The power of a theory is exactly proportional to the diversity of situations it can explain."

Actual Final Thoughts

   All in all, Race has been an incredibly fascinating and insightful read. I must admit that it took me a little while to warm up to the primarily non-fictional content, but upon completing it, I can say I'm glad I did so. I've learned so much from Race, like how race and slavery aren't strictly exclusive, despite the way it seems in history class, and that some of the most explicitly racist and deeply prejudiced ideas in our history were byproducts of what was supposed to be a scientific reformation based on logic and fact. I'm almost certain that I will be giving this book a second read, which is truly shocking to me. I wasn't expecting to genuinely enjoy reading or writing about this book, but I have. This book has given me a new lens through which to view the racial tensions our country faces, new foundational knowledge of race, and new inspiration to continue to learn about and understand these issues, both past, and present. I thank you for visiting my blog one last time, and I hope you all find yourselves as inspired by your literary choice as I was. Take care!

                            

                                                                        Works Cited

"'The power of a theory is exactly proportional to the diversity of situations
     it can explain.'." QuoteFancy, quotefancy.com/quote/1758518/
     Elinor-Ostrom-The-power-of-a-theory-is-exactly-proportional-to-the-diversity-of.
     Accessed 1 Apr. 2021.