Relevance to Recent History and Current Events

Welcome back to my blog. I have finished reading parts one, two, and three of Race by Marc Aronson. In this blog post, I want to talk about the ways in which Aronson's writings relate to our current world despite being a discussion of the history of race.

In some ways, Aronson makes it his mission to make relative connections through his historical narrative. This occurred most clearly on pages 84 and 85. Aronson describes a Los Angeles school in crisis: "The school had planned to put on West Side Story, with silver-voiced Maria playing her namesake opposite heartthrob Terrell playing Tony. The school is in what used to be a black neighborhood but is now increasingly Mexican[...]In periods when borders between groups blur, tensions over purity rise." Similar analogies begin new topics and chapters. I think that Aronson develops these types of stories to demonstrate the truth behind the phrase "history repeats itself."

Another part that stood out to me was the talk of the original Ethiopians actually being dark-skinned Africans. During the medieval time period, "blackness was associated with sin[...]and dark skin suggested that these were particularly demonic people" (pg 74). This immediately made me think about the media's current portrayal of demons and particularly, an incident that occurred with a star from Riverdale. 

Lili Reinhart, who plays Betty Cooper in the hit show, Riverdale, was called out last year for posting an image of a person dressed up as a demon. Here is her post:

(Courtesy of Refinery 29)

It reads: "Found my Halloween costume!! Inspired by the color of my soul." Many fans immediately jumped online, calling the image a distasteful display of blackface. Reinhart quickly took down the post, claiming that she didn't mean to hurt anyone. The part of Reinhart's response that stood out the most to me, was when she said how she could see her post being misinterpreted as racially insensitive. I never would've predicted this reaction from the fans. It makes me wonder if this idea of dark skin suggesting demonism stuck around somehow. It seems absolutely absurd to me, but I can't think of any other way to explain what happened here. 

Lastly, I felt a strong sense of deja vu towards the end of this section. It occurred when Aronson delved into the efforts of Christians to mark off Jews and Muslims from the year 1215 on. Personally, it was surprising to see just how similar these efforts were to the efforts of Adolf Hitler during World War II. Of course, I knew the tremulous relationship between Christians and Jews has been there for a long time, but I never recognized that nearly everything Hitler did had been done before. For example, after a church ruling, it was "insisted that [Jews] sew yellow stars on their clothing" (pg 83). This was done because they were beginning to look too much like Christians and needed to be told apart. Other efforts included, "section[ing] off a part of the city to house Jews" (pg 83). This site was referred to as the "ghetto." 

History is important to our understanding of the current day. It tells where we came from and why we think and act the way we do. Most importantly, it shows us the mistakes we don't want to make again. It is disappointing to see in just these few examples that perhaps we haven't learned what we need to from history. I look forward to seeing how this idea will continue to play out in the book.