Gates

Gates talks about race being connected to history in the context of black slaves writing "out of slavery".  He speaks of the challenge of blacks in the 17th and 18th centuries to establish oneself as a human being capable of reason and enlightenment by way of writing.  I thought his point about the Enlightenment was interesting in that the while the Enlightenment "is characterized by its foundation on man's ability to reason, it simultaneously used the absence and presence of reason to delimit and circumscribe the very humanity of cultures and people of color" (Gates 593).  Previously, when thinking about the Enlightenment I thought about it as a time where culture, the arts and sciences, and innovative ideas flourished.  While this may be true, Gates brings up the point that the Enlightenment in a sense established a status quo of knowledge, reason, and mastery of the arts and sciences,  and if one did not fit that, then they were consequently not enlightened, and possibly less human.  This is a strange notion, to be so enlightened that you can decide who is human and who is not.

Another interesting point about Gates' essay was when he wrote that slaves were writing themselves out of slavery.  His line at the end "black writers wrote as if their lives depended upon it" seemed to me reminiscent of Mahiri's "Writing for their lives" (Gates 596).  It appears as though writing for survival has been almost a constant for some in the black community for hundreds of years, just in different contexts.  I am not really sure what to make of this insight. I just could not help but draw the parallels between the word choice of both men.  Something to consider I suppose.