The Homo Sapiens

Homo sapiens: Latin for “wise man” or “knowing man”. But most people instead identify themselves as humans or people. What makes someone a person? For some a human is a being who looks, talks, breathes, eats and drinks like they do; a mirror image of themselves. For others a human is a being with emotions; capable of feeling hurt, regret, love, happiness etcetera. The scientific definition of a human is the only living species in the Homo genus, with a highly developed brain that is capable of abstract problem solving, reasoning, introspect and communication through diverse spoken and gestured languages. If humans are all highly developed, intelligent species then why does the human race still discriminate amongst their own species? Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible and Mary Louise Pratt’s essay Arts of the Contract Zone identify and confront the racism and the dehumanization humans as a species seem to continue to struggle overcoming. Each text demonstrates how the human species continues to view other societies as barbaric or savage simply because the society is different than their own. If humans all originated in Africa over 500,000 years ago, then why have Western cultures continued to colonize Africa and even use Africans as slaves? The texts show that humans discriminate and dehumanize amongst each other both consciously and subconsciously.

For thousands of years humans have fought against each other claiming to be fighting for the common good. But what happens when the line between is blurred? There is no real black and white definition for good and evil. Humans have fought repeatedly throughout history for what they perceive to be righteous, killing anyone who stands in their ...

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...and think like others think then there could be a much more peaceful world with less discrimination and killing. We as humans would be able to learn and accept lessons they have learned throughout their life and interactions with one another if we learned to humanize others like Leah, “I copy down each new word and vow to remember it always, when I am a grown-up American lady with a backyard of my own. I shall tell all the world the lessons I learned in Africa” (Kingsolver 101).

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. 1st ed. New York: Anchor Books, 1994. Print.

Kingsolver, Barbara. The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel. New York: Harper Perennial, 1998. Print.

Pratt, Mary Louise. "Arts of the Contact Zone." Situating Inquiry: An Introduction to Reading, Research, and Writing at the University of Washington. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. Print.