TOW #24: "The Color of Water" (Part 2)

          The issue of race has become such an integral part of our culture. There are distinct divisions between black and white neighborhoods and stereotypes fill social media. This wasn't always a widespread issue, shown in The Color of Water by James McBride. He wrote the rest of his novel in the same fashion as before, with chapters illustrating his own life and then his mother's journal entries in between. The first half of the book centered on the fact that people would look at McBride weirdly as a child because of the difference between the dominate race in the neighborhood and his mother's skin color, yet as a child, he was blissfully unaware. The second half of the book focuses more on how his mother influenced him using her ideas on race, religion, and education.
          At first, I thought that the book's purpose was to establish a different perspective on race. Usually, the books on race involve tales of those fighting for their freedom or against segregation, yet this novel was completely different. It showed a white woman living in the world of the black race and how she kept her head high and acted honorably even when everyone discriminated against her. While it was first believed that McBride's idea was to show how prominent the idea of race could really be, after reading the rest of the story, it displayed something else: He wanted to express his feeling that to understand the present, one must be familiar with the past. Towards the end of the book, McBride explains, "I felt like a Tinkertoy kid building my own self out of one of those toy building sets; for as she laid her life before me, I reassembled the tableau of her words like a picture puzzle, and as I did, so my own life was rebuilt." This comes from his description of the idea that his mom's life was completely bound to his, and that his mother's history helped him understand his own life. Also, to more understand McBride's dual racial identity, he needed to know what happened to his mother and why she would choose to make a family with a black man as a white woman even with all of the ridicule.

TOW #23: "How Not to Explain Success"

This article was found at nytimes.com.

          There are many ways to define one's success. One individual might believe they are successful for the rest of their life if they win a basketball trophy in the seventh grade, while someone else bases their conclusion on raising a healthy family and avoiding divorce. The author of this article was looking at another book that said success depended on a certain combination of three specific traits: a belief that their group was superior to others, a sense of personal insecurity, and a high degree of impulse control. Christopher Chabris and Joshua Hart then made this their own personal argument and tried to figure out a way to prove it without including all of the anecdotes and stereotypes that were in the original book.
          One way they were able to create some specific evidence and avoid stereotypes was through two online surveys. They surveyed 1,258 adults in the United States where the participants had to complete a variety of standard questionnaires to measure his or her impulsiveness, ethnocentrism, and personal security (all of the components of success). After this, the participants completed a test of their cognitive abilities, so they reported their income, occupation, education, and other achievements that could have defined their success. After the data was analyzed by the authors, it was found that more successful people, based on these standards anyway, had parents that were more educated, made more money, and had higher cognitive ability. Also, it was seen that more successful participants did not possess greater feelings of ethnocentrism or personal insecurity, and actually the opposite was true.
          The authors of this article had an argument that they tried to prove right through an experiment that actually showed the exact opposite of what they were trying to prove true. So, they obviously didn't pick good enough evidence for their topic and actually disproved their argument. This might have been their purpose, to abolish a theory that seemed weird to them, and I believe it to have been achieved. Their evidence didn't help their argument, but it allowed them to show this interesting theory and disprove it. They could've helped their argument by including other types of evidence like more statistics or personal stories that could've further explained what they were trying to say.
       

TOW #22: "Why Slaves' Graves Matter"

This article was found at www.nytimes.com.

       
          Sandra A. Arnold grew up in a small rural town in West Tennessee, surrounded by where her ancestors were once enslaved. When she was a teenager, she realized that the old church they went to was a short distance from a cemetery that housed many individuals. The cemetery contained an area with graves marked only with plain rocks of various sizes, and these people were those who had been enslaved and lived and died in Arnold's community. For a while, she felt no personal connection to her great grandfather Ben who was born into slavery around 1855 and actually buried in that cemetery. Yet, after visiting his grave, that completely changed for her. Instead of referring to him as "just some distant relative who was enslaved," she called him "Grandpa Ben."
          The author argued that memorialization keeps us connected to what is most significant about those who are no longer with us. She wonders what it means that the grave sites of countless enslaved Americans have not been afforded the recognition they deserve. She uses substantial anecdotes from her childhood that support how important it is to her that these people receive the memorial they should get. Besides just telling experiences she has had with her family, Arnold continued her research to the National Burial Database of Enslaved Americans, and also looking up burial grounds that are in danger of being lost. She mentions a community in Shelby County, Alabama, and a church congregation in Queens, New York to support her argument. All of this specific evidence displays what a horrible problem this has become, and also opens up to the reader's eyes about how relevant and disturbing this problem actually is. I didn't know that this was an issue before, so I am certain that she was able to achieve her purpose because her evidence as so specific and intellectually moving.