What is the "Dream"? by Mariam Guseva

What is the dream? If we try to answer this question in no connection to any particular person, we will encounter an insuperable problem. Everything is likely to have a definition, but evidently the definiton of this term differs from one person to another. Our dreams cannot but express our personality. In one way or another they reflect our background, character, family upbringing, education, social status. Against a background of the incompatible differences 'dreams' have

 definitely one thing in common: lack for something. We dream of something we don't have, but we want to.

In 'Letter to my son' Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates, an american writer journalist, and educator, discloses his dream:

It is perfect houses with nice lawns. It is Memorial Day cookouts, block associations,and driveways. The Dream is tree houses and the Cub Scouts. And for so long I have wanted to escape into the Dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket. But this has never been an option, because the Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies. (Coates)

Earlier I mentioned that a dream can say pretty much about a person this dream belongs to. What does Coates's dream reveal? It is not likely to characterise a Ta-Nehisi as an individual, but it reveals again one of the most problematic issues-racism. The symbol of 'black and white bodies' goes through the whole piece of writing. The author dreams of enjoying normal and ordinary things of everyday life but  in 'another body', in 'a white body'.

The 'dream' of Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates reminds me of Martin Luther King's speech ''A Have a Dream'', made 54 years ago.For such a long period of time African Americans were denied equality and suffered hatred because of the color of their skin. The presidency of Barack Obama in the USA serves as a significant index of the progress made toward a more equal and fair society without discrimination since 1944.  But numerous cases of police arbitrariness towards black Americans, that served one of the reasons of writing ''Letter to my son'', show that our society is far from destroying racist views in our minds. And afterhalf a century African Americans still continue to dream of racial justice, freedom, equality.

In spite of the fact that officially everyone gets access to the 'dream' independent on skin color or other physical or mental features, in reality black Americans regularly encounter racial unjustice that proves that the 'dream' is not applicable to African Americans to full extent. The dramatic conclusion and a piece of advice that Ta-Nehisi gives to his son: except the things as they are and try to live with that prove the lack of equal treatment, justice, lack of 'access to the dream'.

What  does Prof. Hill mean by "nobody" in the context of this interview, and what does being a "nobody" entail?

Prof. Hill is the author of the book “Nobody: Casualities of America’s War on the Vulnerable, Ferguson to Flint and Beyond”, in which he examines the intertwining mechanisms that exclude vulnerable parts of the population, especially a lot of Afro-Americans.
 Concerning the Afro-American community Prof. Hill refers to Malcom X  who already stated that Afro-Americans were “the losers of democracy” as they had to face state violence for centueries and still have to face it today.

However, "nobodiness" does not only concern young black males but also members of the LBGT community, women, disabled persons as well as marginalized white men who lost their jobs due to technological progress and neoliberal politics.

According to Prof. Hill the feeling of nobodiness of vulnerable parts of the population results from the obsession with austerity and a neoliberal market logic as well as globalization, the feeling of many black people additionally from systematic racism.  (Prozeugma).

What socioeconomic factors does Prof. Hill maintain lead people to identify themselves as "nobodies"?

The neoliberal paradigm, the obsession of efficiency, the deregulation and globalization lead to nobodiness (Hypozeugma). In that context Prof. Hill refers to a politics of disposability which erases the vulnerable and gives them the feeling to be nobodies.  He applies this concept to young black males who suffer from systematic racism and over policing in their communities. Furthermore he applies it to a part of the white workers class that was fired, outsourced, and excluded from the labor market (Diazeugma).

 Why, according to Prof. Hill, have a certain subset of white people taken to identifying as nobodies?

According to Prof. Hill a part of the white population does not benefit from neoliberal politics and globalization. Thus, this part of the population is economically and socially disconnected and disaffectected, the wealthier part of the population more polarized (Prozeugma). The shutdown of factories and the progress of technology rendered them to nobodiness, a condition without political influence and perspective.

According to Prof. Hill these are tragically people who are vulnerable to rally around whiteness instead of rallying around labor despite of the common interests with the Afro-American community. In this context Prof. Hill draws an allusion to WEB Du Bois who already claimed that the end of slavery has been in the interest of white workers because slavery were outpricing their manpower. Nevertheless republican leaders such as Trump use the vulnerabilities of impoverished white workers to embrace the concept of whiteness, which is a concept of privilege and power that excludes many people a priori. Thus, instead of unifying those who are losing out from the current global economic situation they rally against each other on racial and political lines.   

Blog on Nathaniel Comfort's “Under the Skin“

Blog on Nathaniel Comfort - Genetics: Under the Skin

In his text “Genetics: Under the Skin“ Nathaniel Comfort wonders at the enduring trend of misrepresenting race and and starts off with the answerless question if race is biologically real. He presents a handful of works by several scientists that deal with this very question  producing highly diverse results and than calls it accurately “a dead end, a distraction from what is really at stake in this debate: human social equality.“. Comfort says that race is certainly genetically real in the sense of sets of “phenotypes and stereotypes“ that “correlate with haplotypes, clusters of genetic variation“, but he marks that those correlations “depend on judgement calls.“ and he therefore argues that “race is real and race is genetic, but that does not mean that race is ’really’ genetic.“!

As said in the first paragraph, Comfort presents several assertions of scientist dealing with the question of race is biologically real and gives examples of their opinions. For example, he talks about their idea that “Europeans have become the world’s richest and most powerful people mainly because they are genetically the most open, curious, innovative and hard-working“, or that, talking about developing nations, “foreign aid is probably wasted because poor countries are not genetically prepared for the institutions necessary for wealth“. I myself totally disagree with all kinds of thoughts like that, since I feel like there is not a single persuasive evidence proving the relation between your genes and your development or success in life. 

I prefer the other kind of statements of other scientists and Comfort himself presented in his text, when it comes to the view that debates over the genetic reality of race “are not mainly scientific, but social“. So I would agree with Montagu, who wanted to call race a fiction and a product of culture, since I assume that every category a human being develops in life is not more than a cultural product of getting one’s head around the world easier—And so is the category called “race“.

Blog: Biological Determinism as a present issue?

Blog: Biological Determinism as a present issue?

While having a look at many texts and successful films about the life of black people—let me give just some examples like Twelve Years a Slave, Django Unchained—that deal with the history of discriminating colored people, with their suffering facing the injustice and especially with slavery in the earlier centuries, the first question that comes to my mind is: In the context of these works, can we really talk about the past or is isn’t still a present issue? 

We are reading scientific texts from the past, for example about the biological determinism and horrible opinions from those bygone days that should not come to our minds nowadays, but is that really the case? 

I might be wrong, but whereas scientific beliefs like the biological determinism are—or should be— totally outdated by now, I think that also discarded theories like that have influence on how people think about each other nowadays while looking at outer appearance and this thinking about each other affects the way we treat each other. As unfortunately many news terribly visualize us how this way of treating each other looks like in our everyday life, one can say that the society holds on to the idea of biological determinism since some people obviously still seem to believe in the opinion of making a statement about one’s mental capabilities accounted for by a different skin color. 

But what does different skin color mean? Who decides about the term different and isn’t difference always a question of perspective? But why do people always use the term different when talking about black people or the ones who aren’t white but never when talking about whites? If a white person talks about a person with different skin color, this person might logically not be white, but it has to be the same term used when a black person talks about a white person, since he definitely has a different skin color than him, so the question that might come up from this discussion is which color is the standard and where starts the difference from that? It brings the chicken-egg-question to my mind, which leads to the answer that no one will ever know it and no one should waste their time with it. 

Modern scientist found out that the gene pool within a group is even more diverse than between members of different groups and by different groups, one can mean such thing as a „race“. So if the genetic difference within the „race“ is more diverse than between the „races“ this group of people can’t be put together because of it’s genes. This fact, after my understandings, proves that the so called „race“ is not a scientifically proven but not more than a by society cultivated thing, since people try to make life easier by categorizing things, which in the case of „race“ might be our outer appearance. 

Race is such a huge issue in the United States, that its importance can barely be overstated. When Barack Obama was elected as President of the United States, he broke a glass ceiling that had existed for people of colour in the US for hundreds of years and proved that it was possible to lift racial limits for everyone. It was a dream come true, a groundbreaking achievement, a lasting gift to the American people. For some it was proof, that the colour of your skin no longer matters in politics.

Unfortunately however, Obama's skin colour still very much seems to influence the way his presidency is now being perceived by the media in hindsight. As people are now scrambling to assess how successful his two terms in Office really were, they are neatly divided into his supporters, who never fail to praise what he achieved for people of colour and his opponents, who accuse him of never truly having been a President for all Americans, especially not for the white middle- and underclass now supporting Donald Trump. By leaving them out of the equation, the accusation goes, he was in the essence a big part of laying the groundwork for Trump's campaign.

Whatever conclusion one might come to favour, this kind of thinking presents a backwards thinking worldview where the President Barack Obama is not rated by what his policies achieved, but by the way he was perceived by the American population, which in turn often reduced him to the colour of his skin.

"What is the 'Dream?'" by Dilletta

Letter to my son, written by the journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, not only is a personal and direct charge against American history and democracy, but also an outspoken statement about pessimism.

Being asked about his black body, he answered with a clear idea that the dilemma of race existence, and the possibility of improving the conditions of black men in America is a mere utopia. This is the so called “Dream”, the dream of a better world, of tolerance, of equality, the illusion of black men to be accepted by the white majority.

According to him, what man, especially black man have been mistaken in the course of history was not the acceptance of this dream but the belief in the need of a dream itself, which created our hopeless world: “[n]o one of us were “black people”. We were individuals . . .”.

His idea of pessimism is connected with the concepts of failure, impossibility and deification of democracy and depends on fear. There is no hope for impartiality in a world where, although the oppressors have made amends for their errors, black culture is still not integrated, not known, and black men who appears in history pages are always considered exclusively by reason of being the “firsts” of having achieved attention and respect.

His criticism finally reaches the peak when he explains his son that, being a coloured person, he will always have to carry more responsibility for his actions, he will need to fight in order to make black men’s history acknowledged, and those “who believe themselves to be white” will not probably abandon this idea “and begin to to think of themselves as human”.

Du Bois and Biological Determinism

In "The Souls of Black Folk," W.E.B. Du Bois talks about how black people are still seen as a problem and are still deemed as less worthy in our society. Du Bois says that the Negro i iste o do to was te pted towa ds ua ke y a d de agogy whi h was asi ally caused by the way other people looked at them and has nothing to do with the actual value of their work.
One could say that our society holds on to the thought of biological determinism and that some people still seem to believe that someone having a different skin color makes a statement about his mental capabilities—which is of course not true. However, theories like that have an influence on how people treat each other and as long as some stick with the opinion that our genes define our personalities, behaviors and mental capabilities, biological determinism will remain a problem.
Du Bois claims that issues like that will someday be overcome by the Talented Tenth. The Talented Tenth are—as he says—the ten percent of the human population that improve our society and build a better future. Can these ten percent really influence our society or is it our society that influences them? The Talented Tenth might just be the Lucky Tenth in that sense because they—unlike the other ninety percent—had the chance and the right opportunities to reach their true potential. Saying that only ten percent of all humans are naturally able to achieve such a status would mean that these ten percent are biologically determined to be leaders and would claim that their environment had little to no influence on them. 

Nele R. on Ta-Nehisi Coates and Racism

     In the text “A Letter to my Son”, the African-American author Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about the issue of racism and the life of African-Americans. In a letter dedicated to his son which was published in July 2015 in The Atlantic, Coates presents his experiences as being a person with a ‘black body’ living in America, describes the cruelty that black people encounter throughout their lifetime, and tries to raise his son’s awareness of the hatred with which African-Americans were/are confronted.

     In particular, Coates speaks in his letter about the fear that “ruled everything around me, and I knew, as all black people do, that this fear was connected to the world out there”. Above all, violence, criminality, and humiliation stoked this fear. Since many people misleadingly thought and probably still think that people having black skin are inferior to ‘white people’, African-Americans were oppressed in American society and were even treated as slaves for a long time, as Coates states: “We were black, beyond the visible spectrum, beyond civilization. Our history was inferior because we were inferior, which is to say our bodies were inferior. And our inferior bodies could not possibly be accorded to the same respect as those that built the West.”

     This racist treatment evoked widespread discussion all around the world and even the concept of ‘race’ as well as the description of African-Americans as being ‘black people’ caused sufficient criticism in recent years. Coates even accuses the ‘white people’ by saying: “They made us into a race. We made ourselves into a people.” Accordingly, one might argue that the concept of ‘race’ leads to racism, racism to hate, hate to ethnic discrimination and war. Thus, there seems to be a necessity that humans should change their attitude as regards to other people having a different ethnic background like African-Americans. Consequently, I am convinced that it is essentially important for contemporary’s societies to prohibit and destroy the idea that some people are inferior to others because of their skin colour or that the ‘black body’ is a commodity to be damaged. Instead, it should be internalized that everyone in our world should be treated with equality and respect – regardless of his/her outer appearance or ethnic background – so that each human could live comfortably in our world without being afflicted by any kind of fears.

By Nele R.

 Aaron's Edit:

     In the text “A Letter to my Son(”,) [St - ^,”] the African-American author Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about the issue of racism and (the life) [foc,E - the hardship endemic to the lives] of African-Americans. In a letter dedicated to his son [P - ^,] which was published in July 2015 in The Atlantic, Coates presents his experiences as (being) [E] a person with a (‘black body’) [St - ^“black body”]  living in America, describes the cruelty that black people encounter throughout their lifetime, and tries to raise his son’s awareness of the hatred with which African-Americans (were/are) [T/Asp - ^have been and continue to be] confronted.

     In particular, Coates speaks in his letter about the fear that “ruled everything around me, and I knew, as all black people do, that this fear was connected to the world out there(”.) [St - ^.”] Above all, violence, criminality, and humiliation stoked this fear. Since many people misleadingly thought [P,Gr - ^,] and probably still think[P,Gr - ^,] that people (having) [W,Gr - ^with] black skin are inferior to (‘white people’,) [St - ^“white people,”] African-Americans were oppressed in American society and were even treated as slaves for a long time(, as) [Gr-sentence fragment - ^. As] Coates states: “We were black, beyond the visible spectrum, beyond civilization. Our history was inferior because we were inferior, which is to say our bodies were inferior. And our inferior bodies could not possibly be accorded to the same respect as those that built the West.” 

     This racist treatment [T/Asp - ^ has] evoked widespread discussion all around the world [P - ^,] and even the concept of (‘race’) [St;P - ^“race,”] as well as the description of African-Americans as (being ‘black people’ caused sufficient) [St;W,M;T/Asp;W;W,M - ^“black people,” has incited significant] criticism in recent years. Coates even accuses (the) [no det] (‘white people’) [St - ^“white people”] by saying: “They made us into a race. (We made ourselves into a people.) [foc]” Accordingly, one might argue that the concept of (‘race’) [St - ^“race”] leads to racism, racism to hate, hate to ethnic discrimination and war. Thus, there seems to be a necessity that humans (should) [Gr-subjunctive mood] change their attitude (as regards to other) [E - ^toward] people (having) [W,Gr - ^with] a different ethnic background [P - ^,] like African-Americans. Consequently, I am convinced that it is essentially important for (contemporary’s) [WF - ^contemporary]  societies to prohibit and destroy the idea that some people are inferior to others because of their skin (colour) [SP,St;P,Gr - ^color,] or that the (‘black body’) [St - ^“black body”] is a commodity to be damaged. Instead, it should be internalized that everyone in our world (should) [W,rep - ^must] be treated with equality and respect ( – ) [St-no space, then em-dash, then no space] regardless of his/her outer appearance or ethnic background ( – ) [St-no space, then em-dash, then no space] so that each human (could) [Gr,W - ^can] live comfortably in our world without being afflicted by (any kind of fears) [foc,E,reg - ^fear].