Class Reflection Week of 3/17/08

I know this class I didn’t contribute a lot, but it surely wasn’t for a lack of ideas running through my head.  This class, one of the topics we discussed was how colored people and white people were segregated.  Another thing I remember discussing was how they used to determine whether or not someone was white, colored, or Indian.  I find it comical the people were so bent on separating whites from other races that they went to the lengths of creating living parameters so that colored people couldn’t live on the same street, or within a certain number of houses from a white person.  I don’t know, that’s just so absurd to me.  Obviously beliefs and things like that were far different than they are today, which is most likely the main reason I have a hard time understanding why certain things were done they way they done back then, but I just don’t know how they thought what they were doing was actually going to benefit them or help preserve the white race, or even help it evolve.  Thankfully we were able to realize our wrong doings and change things, but clearly not before a lot of damage had been done.  The other thing discussed was how they used to determine whether or not a person was a certain race or color.  Sure they had a system for stating who would deemed white, colored, or Indian, but I don’t know how they actually enforced it.  I mean as it was, the majority of the colored people that were now freed slaves had no documents whom they were or where they came from, but it’s completely impossible that decades later they could somehow determine that they were indeed 1/16 colored, ultimately deeming them unworthy of so many privileges.  Something was said about how they could determine someone’s race by interpreting their actions and personality.  That’s just completely absurd.  I mean did they not realize that everyone’s different.  I mean regardless of race, white or colored, people just act differently.  That’s what makes being you, YOU, and I really don’t know how they could actually go about enforcing those ridiculous rules.