Last Post

This must be the last post in my blog at least as a Sociology blog assignment. Before I start taking about two articles for this week, I need to talk about what I’ve learned in class in general. Before I take this class, I haven’t put some effort on thinking about race, and ethnicity. It is because my country, Korea, is nearly homogeneous. Like I said in class, I didn’t have to think about it, because unless you go abroad to travel or study, you are not going to meet other ethnicities much in your whole life. For me, race was just blacks It wasn’t even white or black. It seems like in my perception, the ordinary are whites, and something called “Race” was representative of blacks. Even though I am an Asian, ironically, I excluded Asians from race. I learned what the words exactly mean now. I don’t have to tell what the word means from what I think of the word seemingly means. I know what they are now clearly, how to divide them by characteristics, and what criteria they should meet to mean a certain thing. Overall, I was not always happy about a lot of readings and assignments, but I learned a lot from the professor and classmates as well. I really value both professor’s and classmates’ enthusiasm for learning, which taught me a lot.

I jabbered enough, so let’s get to the point. I read two articles: “Race Matters” by Cornel West, and “A different Mirror” by Ronald T. Takaki. Both of articles mainly talk about race and ethnicity themselves. The main difference was that the article, “A different Mirror” focuses on history perspective, while the article, “Race Matters” pays attention to economic perspective to discuss race in American society. I realized that being a white has a distinctive benefit in the society. I had never looked up blond girls with blue eyes. However, there is a reason why it is so popular, which I didn’t know. It was not just out-looking. Having blond hair and blue eyes can not only have a lot of meanings in the society, but also convey information to others. Both articles question “What does it mean to be an American?” or “Who are Americans?” Only certain people can be called and defined as Americans, whereas others are marked as “fit in”. The most important thing was in the articles that America was not just built from nothing in a newly recovered territory. Almost every ethnicity dedicated to build American history, culture, or even America itself. We can’t just ignore our history as the past memories. Each ethnicity’s status in American society grounds on cultural and historical background.