Abby Jiminian- actual 7th blog post

I found the conversation around the end of English class on Friday rather stimulating. I liked the end of the discussion when we started to get into the book because it was more of an open conversation and I personally found that more interesting. I really liked Maddie's point of how race is defined. I do not want to speak for her but I remember Maddie asking along the lines as to why in America we refer to all black and brown people as African American almost immediately. I remember Maddie saying that there are black people in Fiji and how they are form Fiji just because they are black and American doesn't automatically make them African American. I found her insight very valid and insightful. It gave me a lot to think about. 

When Professor Stockman asked the difference between calling someone African American or Italian American etc it prompted a lot of questions in my head. While I know that the history of the country has been practicing either De Jure or De Facto segregation I didn't realize how something so small as calling a black person or person of color "African American" is truly dehumanizing and stripping them of their individual rights. Africa is a whole country not a country, not a town, not a city. Why is it that people of lighter skin complexions are given the luxury to be tied to their roots, ethnicity and culture but people of darker skin complexions cannot be. I personally do not have the answer but I feel like there are many contributing factors as to why there are simple things trying to box in constituents.

I think another thing that Coates does in his book that calls out to me is how he does not refer to a group of people as white people. At first when Professor Stockman brought this up I was confused and did not entirely understand what he meant. I mean when I was reading that page the night before I briefed over it not giving that small phrase of " those that refer to themselves or consider themselves white" that much thought. After reading beyond the assigned reading for Friday I noticed that Coates uses that terminology quite frequently in his book. So what does that mean directly? I mean after trying to wrap my head around it and think about it I think I have gathered some ideas as to why Coates would articulate this. I think it has to do with in part those that identify as white because they feel like they need to, because they are forced and boxed into this category or they do it for their benefit. But history shows that at a time in this country Italians and Irish were not seen as white but now they are or how lighter skin latinos are white until they open up their mouth and say that they are Portuguese or Colombian. At this point I am convinced that Race is fake and was created to box people into certain groups so that generational wealth could be promoted for certain groups and push other groups as unworthy. 

There are a lot of factors that contribute to this conversation and it is really hard to pinpoint or determine those factors but I think that an open conversation is a great starting point. There are lots of questions and things that people just don't know and that is across all demographics of people not just a certain group.