Race... Does It really Matter?

Today's reading were a bit more normal than most. What I would like to touch base on is the terministic view when it comes down to race. All the readings demonstrated the variety of critical approaches through which an author may discuss a text -- race being a meaningful category in the study of literature and the shaping of critical theory I think its only right that it is discussed. All of today's reading focused on Race: Cooper on African Culture, Johnson on Indians, but Gates's reading is what really drew me in. 


In his text, Gates discusses the issue that race has on texts,and  how race isn't really needed in literature. At first was was against what he meant but after a while it made sense. He states, "Race, as a meaningful criterion within the biological sciences, has long been recognized to be a fiction. When we speak of "the white race" or "the black race," "the Jewish race" or "the Aryan race," we speak in biological misnomers and, more generally, in metaphors." (Gates 4) he also ask us the question   "What importance does "race" have as a meaningful category in the study of literature and the shaping of critical theory? 

If we attempt to answer this question by examining the history of Western literature and its criticism, our initial response would probably be "nothing" or, at the very least, 
"nothing explicitly." (Gates 2) But I think race does have something to do with it, when it comes from a standpoint of another race. But there has been people that have wrote African history theories and they were no where near the black race. So how credible is there literature?  “'race' was the source of all structures of feeling and thought: to 'track the root of man'... is 'to consider the race itself... the structure of his character and mind, his general processes of thought and feeling'” (Gates 4). 

I think depending on the view or the terministic screen the information is being interpreted is what matters not the race (my opinion) Although reading lit on African culture written by a black race would resignate better with me, and would be more credible ... that one sees it necessary.

   
Work Cited 
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. “Writing ‘Race’ and the Difference It Makes.” Critical Inquiry 12.1 (1985): 1-20. JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343459