What if we were all the same race?

Lara had commented, "All of these instances of present-day racism make me wonder if there is a way to for this to stop. How can our society enforce equal treatment of black and white people? As you said, we have come a long way in terms of racial equality, but there is still lots of room for progress." on one of my previous blog posts, and it really got me thinking for a while. I replied to her comment, but realized I still had loads more to say, and so here I am blogging about it. Personally I think it's an inherent human characteristic to judge others based on outward traits and physical attributes beyond one's control. Our society, and all the societies that preceded ours, place such a huge emphasis on appearance that its hard for us to not give it any importance. But who defines beauty? Scientists say that symmetric, even features make people beautiful. But then why do cultural perceptions of beauty differ? Why can't we all see past beauty and judge people based on merit and morality? Why do first impressions, mostly visual, make such an impact about what we think of a person? Would it be any different if we were all the same race? There is tons of speculation about how, after years and years of interracial mixing, a new dominant human race will take over, and that eventually all people would look the same, we'd all be beige. But even if we were all the same race, I think its just biologically built into our nature to find ways to group others. None of us want to be grouped or typed, but we have no problem doing it to others. Most of the time we don't realize we're doing it, or that by doing it, we don't realize that we're doing anything 'wrong'. I don't think, as an entire species, we'll ever come to a point of absolute equality. Just like in ways how women and men are essentially equal nowadays, there are still differences that set us apart. I mean, women still like chivalry, but doesn't that go against the whole 'we want to be completely equal' idea? Either way you look at it there isn't really a fix all kind of solution. Maybe it's race and religion today, but it can easily be shoe size and hair color in the future.

On the Turning Up of Unidentified Black Female Corpses

While I was leading the poetry discussion last Friday about On the Turning Up of Unidentified Black Female Corpses by Toi Derricotte, I brought up a point about racism in social justice today, and I specifically mentioned a special case about a 17 year old girl named Phylicia. Since we were pressed for time I didn't get to elaborate on the case more, but Phylicia Barnes had been an honors student from Baltimore who was getting ready to graduate and looking forward to attending university. She was also pretty, which apparently impacts whether or not a case gets substantial media coverage. Unfortunately for her, she was also African American, which was a point that hindered her case more than helped her. There was no reason for her to run away, no leads, no one with motives, it was just an extremely puzzling case, and it needed a lot of attention, but didn't get too much at all. One Baltimore police offer even explicitly said that Phylicia's murder may have received more attention if she had been white. Ultimately Phylicia's sister's ex-boyfriend was found guilty of the murder, a man that Phylicia had exchanged over 500 texts with, and who she had been called a 'little sister' by. How she was murdered, how the police got the lead, and even why a protective big brother like figure chose to murder her, are still mysteries that police refuse to disclose. Sometimes we like to think we've come a long way, and we honestly have, it's great to see how much progress we have made, but other times it feels like some things haven't changed at all. I guess that's what keep people going.

Big Fish and Invisible Men

This might be the strangest comparison ever, but while reading Invisible Man, especially the first chapter, I was strongly reminded of Tim Burton's Big Fish, (which I later found out was actually based on a book). If you haven't seen Big Fish, then you might be confused by my oversimplified summary of it, but you should definitely add it to your list of movies to watch. These two stories are too different to have much in common at all, but what really struck me as similar between the two was the skewed sense of reality that both protagonists held. The first chapter of Invisible Man started of realistically enough, in fact, though the grandfather's parting words were confusing, and even appalling, it never stuck out to me as unbelievable. As I got deeper into the chapter, namely the 'battle royale' bit, I had a hard time absorbing the information that was being thrown at me, and almost couldn't believe that any of it was real. I had to reread it a bunch of times to actually take in what I was looking at, and I was still left with mixed feelings because I couldn't quite believe half the things that took place. As I contemplated the veracity of the narrator, I remembered how I had the same feelings while watching Big Fish. Big Fish starts off with some background information about the strained relationship between a father and his son. They reluctantly reconcile when the elderly father falls ill. We then find out that the main conflict between the two was because the father, Edward Bloom, constantly told fantastically, tall tales about his life that he adamantly argued were true. I won't go into details, but some of his stories involved wild giants living in caves and conjoined singing twins. Throughout the movie I was on the same page as the son, I didn't believe any of the old man's stories, but seeing him continue to enthusiastically tell his tales, while literally laying on his deathbed definitely generated some sympathy. At the end, Edward dies, and while attending his father's funeral, the son comes across some of Edward's estranged friends. Among them, he recognizes a 7'6 tall man as the so called giant, and a pair of normal, twin women as the conjoined twins. The son then realizes that while his father's stories weren't entirely true, they were exaggerated versions of real life events. In the same way, I think, especially since we're reading about the narrator from a point earlier in his life, many of the stories we come across might actually be exaggerated variants of real incidents. Why they are exaggerated, and even if they are exaggerated is still a mystery that I hope we'll be able to solve as the story goes on.