Marrow Of Tradition. Literature & Language. Essay

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Marrow of Tradition
I read and analyzed the followings text texts; Steven Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man’, The Marrow of Tradition by Charles W. Chesnutt and White debt by Eula Biss. The three books discuss different views regarding human race in separate historical periods. The authors discuss issues such as racial ranking, i.e., the inequality between black and white people, racial prejudice and diverse views held by political leaders, who ranked people according to their races.
There was a prevalent opinion held by the people in authority people who regarded the black people to be inferior. In The Mismeasure of Man, Gould captures some of their sentiments. “Some argued that proper education and standard of life could "raise" blacks to a white level; others advocated permanent black ineptitude” (Gould 63-64). Some white people held that the two races were different and that black people could never be of the same level as white people. Famous politicians, whose opinions regarding race become very popular, created myths regarding the racial superiority. For instance, Thomas Jefferson argued that blacks “are inferior to the whites in the endowment both of body and mind” (Gould 64). The biased opinions by these powerful politicians were not as a result of scientific tests or actual thinking. Instead, they came from the social beliefs that were spread among people. People of different races very often were ranked not only by their physical appearance but also by mental abilities.
There are also two models of racial ranking. In the first model monogenism, it is believed that all human races origin from a single source. While, in the second model, polygenism it is considered that human races were separate biological species. Chesnutt pictures how some white people depicted the black people regardless of the skills and qualifications they possessed. For example, some displayed their “unrelenting hostility to anything that savored of recognition of the Negro as the equal of white men” (Chesnutt 80...