Stories tagged race
Climate. It gets in your blood.
in Diversity of Organisms, Heredity, Biological Populations Change Over Time, and Human Organism
Or at least your genes. A new study has found that men in Arab countries carry two different versions of a gene set called “Haplogroup J.” Those with one set come from wetter lands, and are descended from farmers. Those with the other set come from drier lands, and are descended from herders. Scientists speculate that climate change in the Middle East some 11,000 years ago split the population in two. As lands grew drier, some people were still able to farm, but others had to give up the farm and turned to sheep herding and similar pursuits. The two groups didn’t mix much thereafter, and eventually evolved slightly different genes.
The division of the population into two groups also affected material culture, such as the pottery each produced; lifestyle; and possibly even religion.
Tags : A recent study at the University of Minnesota debunks the link between prostate cancer and race. The study finds that different treatment is the more likely cause of different outcomes between races.
Did you miss the RACE exhibit at SMM? I meet a lot of visitors who ask if it's still here, even though it ended in May and is now on display in Detroit. But this Sunday, on public television TPT 17, you can see a rebroadcast of "What is Race?," a program that the Science Museum produced with Twin Cities Public Television's Minnesota Channel for the exhibit. It airs at 7:30 p.m.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Huckleberry Finn and Jim, on their raft, from the 1884 edition, that copied from English Wikipedia. Source: Project GutenbergI moderate the queue for the Scientists on the Spot and Dr. Alan Goodman was asked a really good question about Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn. It's getting a lot of great feedback, so I thought I would move the thread over here where other folks can chime in on the discussion.
Here was the original question:
A high school student in Minnesota recently raised concerns about reading Huck Finn as part of required curriculum for their English class. Their concern is Twain's use of racially charged language. What are your thoughts on educational standards that involve "classic" works, literary-historic-artistic value to culture that include language and sometime arguments and ideas that can be experienced as bigotry by today's students?
Dr. Goodman's reply:
Although I do not teach fiction and literature, I actually have the same sorts of concerns with historical sources and even science books and articles. For example, students in my class frequently critically read scientific and popular writings from the 19th and early parts of the 20th century that are virulently racist. While such writing can cause pain, I think in the end the worse problem is to ignore the past. There are many valuable lessons.
I have a couple of thoughts about how to present “racist” literature. It is important to put the work in its historical context and in the case of fiction, to provide a sense of what the author’s intentions and motivations may have been. I think it is also critical to understand what was acceptable and common in the past. Finally, these are the ideas and worldviews that shaped our society. Such racist language – and the thoughts behind the language – are still around today. Reading Huck Finn could lead to a valuable class discussion about how the forms of acceptable language have changed compared to the underlying idea about race and racism.
What do you think?
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