Race Unites People In a Toxic and Misleading Way

While it is common to think of race as a dividing force between people of different skin colors, religious affiliations, and social situations, the concept of race can also be a cohesive force but in an ultimately negative way. Race seems to imply that the greatest divide between people is their skin color even though, like mentioned by Gates, has no biological backing. The components of the racial divide suggest that people within particular races resemble each other to the greatest degrees of comparison which is disgustingly inaccurate. A white man can resemble a black man in humor, style, taste, and so on just as equally as two people of the same race. Because we have comprised a concept of race, race has now become a prominent literary component, in a way that really is not necessary if this sort of divide had never been created.

Race started as a visual indicator for obvious cosmetic differences, which has now morphed into a demeaning social divide for unnecessary reasons. Race has created two major divides; the 'others' and the majority.The 'others' are the group of people who exhibit alterity, they have the smaller voice and are largely less understood. There are levels to the 'others' nonetheless. Some are buried deeper in differentiation than others, which bring a uniting factor that is dependent on exactly how different a group is from the rest. In the primary portion of the excerpts by Cooper, she discusses the struggles of most specifically, dark skinned women. Cooper describes their presence as a "little Voice" in an "already full choir"(pg. 380). Obviously, this choir is dominated by white males, but the magnitude of voice is ranked in a tiered fashion, leaving black women at the lower ranks, with a severely lesser amount of presence and voice. The fact that black women are a combination of not one, but two minorities (their womanhood and their skin tone), makes it even harder for them to be reflected accurately by the majority group (white males).

Cooper speaks of this issue of double misinterpretation. "...if they cannot quite put themselves in the dark man's place, neither the dark man can reproduce the voice of a black women"(pg.380). From my understanding of this excerpt, it is suggesting that the white man would likely believe the word of the black man about the black woman to be an accurate depiction, when in reality the true accurate depiction can only come from the black woman herself, but this voice will often not be heard do to the drowning nature of this tiered racial tower. This highlights the necessity for all races and subsets of 'different' people to speak of and about themselves to limit misconceptions, but that this is not always possible. This leads to people of merely similar appearance to form inaccurate assumptions about an already misunderstood group of people. People are uniting over difference and ignorance.This concept offered by Cooper, in regard to levels of difference and misinterpretation, mirrors a point made in the Gates excerpts. Taine discusses the role of race in a metaphorical sense. He refers to race as, "no simple spring, but a kind of lake, a deep reservoir wherein other springs have discharged their several streams."(pg. 3).

What I have gathered from this association, is that the deeper a 'group' is minoritized, the more adulterated their supposed identity becomes. Minorities are unfortunately tied to prejudice created by more 'elite' majorities. These majorities with literary and discursive power are consequently the ones who get to fuel and sculpt the misleading assumptions about these minority groups. Cooper discusses the dangers of opposing groups having the privilege to illustrate minorities to those not included within them. She stated that on cannot simply put themselves into another's place and that accurate portrayal and understanding is "impossible to acquire without a background and substratum of sympathetic knowledge" (pg. 383). Something that upper classes of white males generally always lacked, especially in earlier times when they were the only ones provided the cannons for literary text and created the content that everyone read. Cooper then goes on to divide writers into two groups, class I and class II. Although division between generalized groups is the problem I am ironically discussing, Coopers two classes helps us understand writer's intention, especially when discussing people other than themselves. Class I writers are described to please and "to be true to themselves and true to nature is the only cannon they adhere to"(pg. 381). Contrarily, Class II writers are those who are trying to preach or dictate "whether righteous or unrighteous"(pg. 382) and unfortunately this is the type of writer that generally represented African American culture in American literature. These types of white male writers just had a point to prove and were willing to contort the truth to do so. Its probable that these class II writers ultimately had no idea how far off they were. They, like everyone they preached to, were so caught up in their fabricated ideas in regard to the darker race and their customs and culture, that they likely had convinced themselves that they were being truthful. It is this type of intent that "perverted the art" (pg. 381) that coincides with early African American literature.

Another ideal that I feel Hum tackles and both Cooper and Gates address, is race as a metaphor. Both Cooper and Gates are guilty of referring to race in a metaphorical fashion. It is easy to form assumptions based upon a metaphorical standpoint. Although the metaphors presented by Cooper and Gates are not malicious, they certainly can be. I think the danger in viewing race as a metaphor is that it gives room for generalizations about groups of people which again can lead to misassumptions. Hum tackles this in her discussion about the racial gaze. "The racial gaze as design encompasses both the choice making process of design and the available resources used"(pg. 193). Racial metaphors are undoubtedly a component to this gaze. Metaphors are a creation based on the information, or lack there of, regarding a certain topic. In this case, it is race. Hum discusses the dangers of taking other's words too close to heart, thus forming biases. What we "see" and how we see things is often "culturally inflicted"(pg.194). "No one approaches images with an innocent eye"(pg.194). Metaphors I believe feed this notion. Thats why race must be more than a metaphor. Its a work in progress and may actually never be achievable, because of our past, but for race not to be an abused term with derogatory meaning, we must seperate ourselves from the toxic cloud that infects a fresh personal gaze that is based on facts and experience. Race as a metaphor takes away authenticity. Grouping people based upon their differences takes away from authenticity. Difference shouldnt be punished or made into something negative.

Both the choice-making processes of design and the available resources used.