R-A-C-E

RACE. What a loaded word that means absolutely nothing. As a nation, we are all bound up in the question of race. Every application you will ever see, every time you are called to jury duty, EVERYWHERE, there is the question of race. My best friend, Rachel, got a jury summons last week and was told she had to answer the race question. She didn't know how. By all appearances, she looks "white," but her father is from Armenia - a country often assigned to Europe, but formerly referred to as Asia Minor. She said, "What do I put? Asian?" We laughed about the options - White and Black (colors), Hispanic (a language classification), and Asian (an area of the world). I told her she simply had to decide if she wanted to be a color, a language, or a land mass that day! Laughable for sure.

Merriam Webster's Dictionary defines race as a family tribe or nation belonging to the same stock. This same term is used for animals belonging to the same stock. Simply said, race refers to animals or people who come from the same ancestry. This seems a rather limited definition. "Race" is more broadly seen as any grouping of humans which shares the same inheritable phenotypical (visible) characteristics or geographical ancestry. So we group people by how they look? This is a bit archaic of an idea and yet we talk every day about race.

We use terms like African-American to refer to those would otherwise be called "black," even though many South African immigrants are "white." Aren't they still African-American? And what about my college roommate, who was black but became quite upset at me referring to her as African-American since she was, in fact, from Jamaica? Is a student who is from Germany anything at all like a rancher from Texas simply because their skin color is similar? Do students living in East Gainesville have anything in common with students living in East Uganda? These are questions that must be asked. We MUST challenge a system that groups us into "races" of people without regard for culture and regionalities.

In his 1175 text "The Natural Varieties of Mankind," Johann Friedrich Blumenbach established five major divisions of humans (Caucasoid race, Mongoloid race, Ethiopian/Negroid race, American Indian race, and Malayan race). In layman's terms, this reads like a box of crayons. Are we really all distinguishable into simply white, yellow, black, red, and brown? Apparently so. Blumenbach believed that these were the identifiable groupings of humans, an anthropological observation based on phenotypic traits; eugenicists of the early 1900s would take this a step further, noting that the heritable traits within each of these groups would either elevate or limit their fitness to exist within society, thus creating a "science of racism."

Natural selection, after all, showed us that some within a species were less valuable to the gene pool and, therefore, they would die out over time and all would be as it should be. So, said Social Dawinists, was it within society (Biologists clearly believe that Darwin was misinterpreted). Those who were less "valuable" to the gene pool would naturally die out due to both their heredity and their social environment. So should they. It was not the job of society to try to help them or change that. In fact, some eugenicists believed that they should help the process along with forced sterilization and euthanasia. Sound creepy? I think that it is. I am a little taken aback by the fact that 65,000 Americans were sterilized through forced sterilization projects during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I am also a little bothered by the fact that early efforts at birth control were not about women's rights but about stopping births in minority and immigrant communities so that they might reproduce less offspring who fell into the "unfit" category. I suppose, however, that it is reassuring to know how inspirational these "scientists" were; after all, they inspired Hitler and that must speak for something.

Sarcasm aside, we must acknowledge that the issue of race has been pivotal for generations in American society. This 4-letter word, which means so little, has meant so much. I have learned in my life that Americans are experts at division. We are a diverse society. We are a society of many peoples from many places with many voices to be heard. Does it follow, however, that those voices must be singular to be heard? Should they be segregated and sometimes silenced? The beauty of a symphony is not a single instrument, it is all of them intersecting and dancing around each other. Why can people not be the same?

When we discussed this in class, one of my students asked, "What should I put, then, when they ask the race question?" My reply: "The question is not, 'What should I put?' it is 'Why should I be asked to put anything?'" What will it take for us to become the human race?

This topic is so interesting and sometimes so infuriating. Rachel, who teaches at Lincoln, and I often rant about it in private, and now, I am giving a little public rant. I think we should shout from the rooftops (sometimes in the form of a blog) when we want to be heard. I think we need to not be afraid to speak what we see as truth even if it might offend. I admit that I am intimidated by the great race debate. I am intimidated by other teachers who have told me that I can't understand my students because I am white. I am intimidated by people who get angry because I don't teach "black history" during February and by those who think that teaching it at all is keeping the division between us present. I embrace the concept of teaching history and literature as HUMAN history and literature, but when the argument over the greatness or inferiority of an author is purely based on race, it cannot be ignored. I want to scream at the top of my lungs that the failure of students in East Gainesville is about parental involvement and social pressures and financial strain, not about skin color! I want people to see with my eyes because I want to stop fighting and because I want to have unity and, well, because I want to be right.

Now, I want to hear your voices. You deserve to be heard as well.

Freedom in any lanquage, in any age

It's been awhile since I have written. I guess I have been distracted by the unseasonable warm winter that has lured me away from my computer and into the great outdoors. Yes, I will blame it on that ;) It has been truly beautiful outside. We have had perfectly cool mornings and warm afternoons and I have enjoyed every minute of it. I don't think I have turned on my heat more than a few days the whole winter. I hope it lasts. For now, belly full of grits and coffee on the way, I have plenty of time to kick back and think about what we've been studying in school.

Between our recent studies, and what is going on all over the world, my mind full of ideas of revolution. If you don't know about the Arab Spring and the events that have transpired in the last year in the Arab world, then you should become informed. The world is changing at a rapid pace. Sometimes that change has come through peaceful protest (think Thoreau and King) and sometimes through unfortunate violence, yet in whatever form it occurs, change is happening. People round the world are longing for rights and freedoms that their governments have long denied them. They are desperate to believe that their voices will be the catalyst for that change, and they are not willing to back down. They seem unafraid of death. Martyrs for a cause? I guess that remains to be seen, but how similar they seem to me today to the voices of the past.

The Transcendentalists spoke about the value of being true to yourself. They called for personal growth and those like Thoreau called for governmental change. Their voices echoed in the ears of people like Whitman who wrote of equality. Slowly, the match lit the paper and the paper lit the sticks and the sticks set the nation on fire. The words of a few men became the voice of a people who spoke against the institution of slavery. Escaped slaves added their own voices and the power of the abolitionist movement drove the nation toward change. Change came - in the form of a war. And while perhaps Emerson had a point when he quipped, "Sometimes gunpowder smells good," let us hope that the seeds of change grow at a lesser cost for Arab citizens who seek to find new life.

Today, I encourage you to think about what it means to be a revolutionary. Not a rebel. Any punk can be a rebel. Anyone can yell about an "unfair" rule or whine about what they didn't get or break the law just because it can be broken. None of that is revolution. Revolution is seeded somewhere else. It grows out of desperation. It grows from the soul. And when it is sparked, it cannot be killed. It's leaders might be slaughtered. It's people might go into hiding. But true revolution is built on the power of an unsilenceable voice.

EC. Write a one page summary (all in your own words) of the events referred to as the "Arab Spring."