Sunjay

  University Laboratory High School  1212 W. Springfield Avenue  Urbana, IL 61801  October 1, 2008   Marc Aronson Author Atheneum Books 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020  Dear Marc Aronson: I never thought I would read a book about the history of an idea. So far, I have only read history books about major events, civilizations, and time periods. Your book is unique in the way that it looks at a kind of human behavior—prejudice—that exists across times and cultures. This shows how important it is to study prejudice and how difficult it is to overcome it. I found it helpful when you compared ideas of race in Europe and in the United States and showed how African Americans were the main targets of racism in America, just as the Irish were in England, and the Jews were in Germany and other parts of Europe. Your book analyzed the modern problem of racism, and this makes it relevant for understanding how society works today. I hadn’t realized, until I read the book, how far back in time I would need to go to find the roots of prejudice. I did find certain parts of the book difficult to follow, especially chapters 10, 11, 12, and 14, because the discussion moved quickly across many different cases and contexts. It might have been easier to have the discussion of being white in the United States in a separate chapter before discussing how being white was defined in Europe. The other weakness of the comparisons was that sometimes I felt that the differences between the treatment of racial groups such as the Irish and blacks were blurred. There were a few times when comparisons between Irish and African Americans were made without making clear that the status of African Americans as slaves set them apart from other racial groups. Sometimes, it sounded as if the treatment of the Irish was just as harsh as the treatment of African Americans, though probably this was not your intention. Finally, the conclusion of the book was a disappointment because so much of the book had focused on the struggles against racism and then, in the conclusion, we are told that “the impulse to hatred is imprinted in us” (p. 268). This seemed contradictory. Even if individual prejudices exist, isn’t it possible that the fight against institutional racism can be won? Sincerely,  <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> Sunjay Koshy