Week Four, Post 1

Ok, well, I just wasted about 20 minutes trying to find the program for making videos on my laptop with the webcam so I could do a vlog. Fail. But moving on to Huck Finn...
Let's talk about one of our favorite controversal issues: Racism! Yay!... not really. It's a pretty big deal, and obviously it's not just a problem of today - it was a dark part of 19th-century American society as well. Aunt Sally hears Huck talk (lie) about a black man being killed on a steamboat, and she doesn't care at all about his death. She only cares that no white men were hurt in the explosion. I think Twain makes a good point here. Through this brief portion of a conversation, Twain shows the reader a sad reality of life. So not only is he telling us an interesting story, he's giving us a history lesson. However, it's not realistic to think of racism as only part of the past... or - dare I say it? - only something that whites do to blacks. Racism is alive today, too, and I'll be honest - sometimes I think that the issue of racism against blacks is escalated too much, just making people more hateful and vindictive about things that are part of the past, not the future. Don't get me wrong though. What Americans of "European descent" did to Americans of "African descent" in the past has been wicked, and they have no excuse. I wish racism didn't have to be such a big issue though. Like, who cares if I'm "white" (which doesn't make sense - nobody is actually white) or "black" (yeah, that doesn't make any sense either). I think that what makes racism come out in people is not so much the other person's skin color, but their different culture. They don't speak our language, so, we think they're dumb. Or they treat people differently than we would - we assume they're mean people - now we're racist against them too. I think it's more than just color. It's about culture. So, maybe we should just get over ourselves and try to enjoy the way other peoples live. :) Maybe then we'd find a cure for the problem of racism.

~Huckleberry's Friend