Hills Like White Elephants

                The short story „Hills Like White Elephants“, written by Earnest Hemingway, is about a couple talking indirectly about an upcoming abortion and its consequences.

                While waiting for their train in a Spanish train station, an American couple has a few drinks and talks, at first sight, about trivial objects around them. The girl named Jig looks at the line of the hills, thinks of white elephants and tells the man about her thoughts. Reading between the lines, the reader understands that the couple will have a baby and is in fact discussing about an abortion. The white elephants and the two felt pads for the glasses can be seen as symbols for the pregnancy. The man, to comfort the girl, tells her about the operation which he considers “awfully simple”, and which has been done many times before. In his opinion, the baby is the only problem that bothers their happy relationship and everything will be fine after the abortion. Jig agrees finally to abort her child but she seems to follow the man’s wish and is rather unsure about her own opinion on the topic.

Racial Categorization

1)  Brainstorming

What?       Existence of races as sociopolitical constructs and of geographical races genetic   variation, ancestry, racial categorization

Who?         R.C. Lewontin

                   Armand Marie Leroi

                   Genetically different individuals and populations all

                   over the world

              

How?          A list of benefits of racial categorization

                    - name for a group,
                    - improvement of medical care and medical treatment,
                    - creation of a 'genetic recipe',
                    - protection of marginalized groups

                  
                   Arguments against racial categorization 

                    - genetic variation from individual to individual,
                    - no objective way to form human races,
                    - no clear criterion or genetic boundaries,
                    - ancestry versus race

When?        Leroi 2005 

                     Lewontin   2006

Where?      In Europe and in the United States

Why?          Scientific discussion about the existence of racial categorization for    

                     humans, animals and plants.

2) Thesis Statement

                Researchers and scientists work steadily on the question whether racial categories do really exist. Subdividing populations systematically into smaller groups, people have built up a concept that still has its impact on our social and political understanding of population and society.

In 2005, Armand Marie Leroi’s essay “A Family Tree in Every Gene” has been published in “The New York Times”. In his opinion, races exist and even offer several benefits. But do they? Can populations really be put into groups according to several visible or genetic differences?

This controversial question has been discussed heatedly and there are different opinions on the question whether populations can be grouped into races because of genetic variation and a striking appearance.

In my opinion, genetic variation is not a valid proof for racial categorization. In many cases, two individuals from one population differ much more genetically than to members of completely different populations. Additionally, more and more people migrate from one place to another and it is just normal to have ancestors of different origins.  Thus, a race would only be based on a few visible characters which cannot be considered as a scientific argument.