Race

INTRODUCTION: Race On a broiling hot day in June I was standing on line with one of my sons at the community pool, waiting to buy an ice cream and a drink. We were all sweating and impatient. But the line did not move. Why? Crowded around the order window was a knot of young black males, all about eleven to thirteen years old. We, the rest of the mainly white parents and younger kids, were in a line. They, an ever-changing huddle of boys, were coming and going, arguing and laughing, dashing in and out to get money or change an order, but never moving on. I was mad -- it was like being on the school lunch line and having kids cut in, over and over again. Suddenly the order taker accused one of the kids of taking a bill out of the tip jar. Did he? Yes, I was sure he stole the money. Teenage boys in a pack do steal; I did. But my conviction that he was guilty did not come because he was about the same age as I was when I grabbed a drink from a grocery store and strolled out. I felt angry at him right away. Hard as it is to admit, I believed he was guilty because he was black. Prejudice. I am prejudiced. As in a nightmare, a boy I have never met suddenly looms as a monster. Everyone knows that it is wrong to be ruled by that kind of feeling. But that is useless in that flash of an instant when we see another person and form an opinion about him or her. It happens to all of us,all the time. I wrote this book to help understand why I, why we, Americans of every background, experience race as such a powerful force, even as we dutifully state that it is just a difference of skin color and has no significance. Because I am a historian, not a biologist, this book is not about cells and DNA, but about the deep roots of racism, and the astonishingly short history of the idea of race. People have always noticed differences in skin color, hair, eye color, language, and religion. But the idea that human beings are members of three, or five, or fifteen biologically distinct races is extremely new. In fact, it was invented in the 1700s, precisely the same time period when Americans struggled their way toward independence. Not until the late thirteenth to sixteenth centuries did the English word "race" (and its equivalent in some other European languages) begin to take on its modern meaning. Before that it implied speed -- as in a "horse race" -- or lineage -- as in a "race of kings." What exactly is race? In this book I borrow a clear definition given to me by Margot Minardi, a thoughtful and generous scholar who is studying the development of ideas about race in the 1700s. "Race" is a way of explaining human difference and organizing people into categories. It rests on four assumptions -- what I call "pillars": 1) Physical differences matter.The color of our skin, the curl of our hair, the size of our nose or lips -- these are important. How we look is not just a personal matter; it identifies us as part of a larger group. 2) These differences in our bodies cannot change.They are given to us at birth and remain fixed. 3) That is because they are inherited.Our personal features are actually the characteristics of our group, which are passed down from one generation to the next. 4) Each group has a distinct level of brain power and moral refinement, thus they are naturally and unchangeably ranked.Groups can be rated from more primitive to more advanced, more animal to more thoughtful, more savage to more civilized. This whole book is devoted to tracing out how, in the Western world, these four ideas grew, developed, were linked together and came to be regarded as true. We have forgotten that we did not always have these beliefs, and that our ideas have changed over time. In fact, today "race" has become such a standard way of viewing people, we don't even have to think about it. We "know" that people are the same, under the skin. Yet we "knAronson, Marc is the author of 'Race ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780689865541 and ISBN 0689865546.