One of the things that has interested me about Equiano's narrative and the readings alongside it, much like many earlier readings in the year, is how they can still speak to issues today. While it is true that we look at race differently than people in the eighteenth century, when looking at some of the descriptions of and attitudes towards race, it is amazing to see the connections.
The first place where I started to make connections between the text and today is in the Encyclopaedia Britannica article "Negro", and the physical description given for blacks, notably "a short, broad, flat nose" and "thick lips" (669). These are stereotypical images of black people that have survived even to today. Furthermore, the entry goes on to describe black women as having "very large buttocks". When I read this it reminded me of a story a professor related to me last year, when he said he'd had everyone in the class write the first few things that came to mind when they thought of black women and one thing that was more or less constant was something similar to that particular portion of the encyclopedia entry.
Equiano's narrative also shows some issues of race that have continued to be prevalent beyond the eighteenth century. One instance of this is in Chapter IV, when Equiano states "I no longer looked upon them as spirits, but as men superior to us; and therefore I had the strongest desire to resemble them; to imbibe their spirit, and imitate their manners" (93). For me, this quote provoked a number of ideas. One relates to the Harlem Renaissance, and how early on many believed they had to imitate European art forms, whether in literature or visual arts, and do things a so-called "white way". The only way for black artists and poets to equal their white counterparts was to imitate them, so to speak. This, of course, led to many black artists, such as Langston Hughes, responding by saying there was a definite black culture and that it should be displayed in black art.
In addition to this there is an incidence in Chapter V where a black man is brutally punished for being connected to a white prostitute, and how Equiano states "it were no crime in the whites to rob an innocent African girl of her virtue; but most heinous in a black man only to gratify a passion of nature where the temptation was offered by one of a different colour" (120-121). Again, our views on race are not the same as those held by people in the eighteenth century, but the idea of interracial dating is still a taboo topic among many. While certainly many people do not care, there are still those of any race who would oppose a relationship which crosses racial boundaries.
While I'm not saying that race is still viewed in the same way as it was in Equiano's time, it is undeniable that race itself is still viewed today. And furthermore, some of the older views of race have accompanied us, whether it be in jokes we tell each other or in some of our views on people of another race.
I like how you included the Harlem Renaissance in your post, as I actually took a class just on this time period in high school. It was a time where black culture was thriving in a very small section of America, with some referring to this movement of the early 20th century as a sort of "Black Enlightenment." This itself relates nicely back to your idea of how racism still persists today in certain sects, and how black culture was generally not accepted in mainstream society. However, I believe that as of recent this is somewhat changing with the genre of rap music (which started as an anti-establishment movement in the late 1970s) and its national and global popularization since then.
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