This picture I found is of two African children. Although they look incredibly different, they are in fact of the same ethnicity, and furthermore the same parents. The difference in color is at first shocking, and almost refutable, yet with the proper education this phenomenon becomes increasingly understandable. Esteemed historian Audrey Smedley has devotecd her life’s work to examining the worldviews encircling the ideal of race. The most recent complitation of her studies, Race in North America, includes a thorough analytic discussion of the antecedents and eventual entrenchment of racism in western culture. Her explicit critique not only denounces this ideology but completely discredits it. the innovative perspective she brings to examing race creates a variety of a undeniable arguments that ultimately dismantles it; according to Smedley race only exists a social construction.
The foundation of her arguments and truth seeking approch correlates directly with the idea of post-modernism. She suggests that there is no one truth and everything is relative. The strength of this claim is illuminated by the importance the world race holds. In our society, so much is reliant on the existence of this idea, for a historian to abolish the entire concept is product of an entirely post-modern outlook. The brother and sister pictured in this photo serve as evidentiary support to her one of her central arguments. If so many varieties exist within the same race, how is it possible to categorize people according to differences of physicality between races? It is unethical and inaccurate to force conformity in suggesting truth in racial determinism. Audrey Smedley is not only inspirational in her thinking, she is revolutionary in her actions. She is a prime example of post-modernism in America.
