JoEllen

University High School 1212 W. Springfield Ave, Urbana IL   9/30/08 Marc Aronson Author Ginee Seo Books 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 Dear Mr. Aronson, In my classes I have been reading your book //Race//. In the book I was presented with a lot of interesting and thoughtful questions about race that made me think. I really liked how honest you were with us about your views. The book brought up a lot good points about race and the troubles that humans have with the concept of race. I really liked how you always presented, compared and supported two or more views. You put the book into a form that people my age could understand. In the book I did disagreed with some of the statements that you made. In the beginning of the book you said that everyone is prejudice, you even said straight out that you are prejudice. I think that that is not enough of an explanation and/or apology for what you say later in the book. In one part in the book you say straight out that you don’t like Germans, but in the book you show your own prejudice against Germans when this is supposed to be a book about the history of racism and prejudice. Even though you said you were prejudice I don’t think that it is right for you to just say you don’t like Germans. It affected how I thought about some of the ideas. For example on page 153-5 you talk about the Germans and the Jews. You talk about all the faults of the Germans and not many of their accomplishments I liked how you were honest about it but I think that you should have kept that opinion to yourself. Also in the book you always spend more time on the points that you support and think are right. For example on page 132 you spend more time on Blacks than any other race you talk about in that chapter. I think that you should have made a greater effort to put all points in an equal lighting. The last main problem that I have with the book is the ending. I would have liked to have more ideas to what we can do to try and stop prejudice. The ending seemed too broad like the starting of a new book. Overall I think that the ideas were good but could have been presented with less prejudice on your part. Thank you for reading this letter. My thoughts, Jo Ellen Machesky