Burke's Screens and Gate's Defenition of Race

    After reading Henry Gates essay, “Writing “Race” and the Difference It Makes”, the key factors or theory that Gates discusses, I feel, have a strong connection or correlation with Burkes terministic screens. We a individuals of society, have our perception and symbolic action in the world, determined by the language we surround ourselves in. While both essays stress many different things about how language works and is developed, I think that the strongest connection between the two is that language, is developed by where you are and who you are. In this blog I will discuss the key points that I feel best represent each theory, and the connection between them. 

   Race, as defined by Taine, “was the source of all structures of feeling and thought: to “track the root of man” he writes, is “to consider the race itself...the structure of his character and mind, his general process of thought and feeling…”. (Gates 3) While reading this one could assume that this changes with not only each type of race but the region or area that race hails from. Although Americans and Russians are technically the same race, is it liable to say that we have the same structure in character, mind, thought and feeling? I feel not. The region you are from is the region you reflect. So could we consider the Russians and Americans as the same race? I feel that gates would disagree. Gates discusses that, “dissociation of sensibility resulted from colonialism and human slavery. Race, in these usages, pretends to be an objective term of classification, when in fact it is a dangerous trope.” (Gates 5) When considering race as a dangerous trope, Gates mean that we see race as differences. Which in reality, Gates says, that when talking about race, ““difference” in sex simply do not hold when applied to “race”. What he means by this is that race shouldn’t be determined on how you look, but the culture you came from. Males and females are different in the sense that we have different reproductive parts and our bodies grow differently, but we considering race, the only differences between a white man or black man is none. Are bodies are formed and for the most part grown and function the same. This brings me to the key point and connection of Burkes terministic screens and Gates discussion on race in writing. 

    Gates discusses how “Since the beginning of the seventeenth century, Europeans had wondered aloud whether or not the African “species of men,”… could ever create formal literature” (Gates 8). As soon as this was brought up I thought of Burkes terminstic screens. Which in basic terms are, how language effects our perception and understanding of the world. So considering the facts between both theorist, one could say that if and African man, were to be surrounded and emerged in the formal literature, that he could learn to use this knowledge to better himself and others around him. 

    When “New necessities arise with new conditions and the emphasis has to be shifted to new times.” (Cooper 381) This quote from Cooper’s, “Excerpts from A Voice From the South” directly correlates with Gates and Burkes ideas. That races, based on knowledge, can not be seen as different. After clearly seeing that Africans can learn an understand formal literature, they just needed to be surrounded by it, there is no reason to consider them different based on knowledge. These reading open up a heavily debated part of our past that, for some ignorant people still discuss today. But after reading these two essays, one could clearly see that knowledge is not based on race, but how your own screens one surrounds themselves in determines knowlege.