One of the
readings of this week that particularly interested me was The Historical
"Problematization of Mixed Race" in Psychological and
Human-Scientific Discourses by Thomas Theo. The reading starts out discussing Adolf
Hitler and how he thought of race mixing as a problem, it also includes
miscegenation and ideas of segregation, as well as ideas of very influential
philosophers and historians on race mixing. Basically, the goal of this reading
is to let the reader know that race mixing was historically created into a problem
and the idea that race mixing was a problem was endorsed by many important
people throughout history. The ideas that the author presents are easily agreeable
with, especially because he uses so many real examples of how influential
people like important philosophers, scientists, zoologists, nation leaders and
psychologists thought about the mixed race. This leads me to think about today
and the ideas we have about racism and colorism. With our current president,
similarly to the historical view on race mixing, many things are beginning to
be seen as bad, or they are given more negative attention, because of his views
towards those specific things; for example, people are heavily prejudiced and
even harassed and assaulted if they are non-white or if they speak a different
language other than English. I have seen many videos of people being harassed by
white people because they are not speaking English. I personally believe this
reading does a great job in making us understand that we have a lot to work on.
Many of the ideas that were problematic in the past are still considered
problematic today. Normal people, races, and ideas are problematized in the
present day, just like mixed race in the reading. The most important question
here is how do we go about fighting these dominant ideas about mixed race/different
races? Who are the experts and leaders of today and what ideas are they bringing to the table?
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