Homo sapiens: Latin for “wise man” or “wise man”. But most people instead identify as humans or people. What makes someone a person? For some, a human being is a being who looks, speaks, breathes, eats and drinks like them; a mirror image of oneself. For others, a human being is a being endowed with emotions; capable of feeling pain, regret, love, happiness, etc. The scientific definition of a human being is the only living species of the genus Homo, with a highly developed brain capable of solving abstract problems, reasoning, introspecting and communicating through several spoken and gestured languages. If humans are all highly developed and intelligent species, then why does the human race continue to discriminate between 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 address the racism and dehumanization that humans as a species seem to continue to struggle to overcome. Each text demonstrates how the human species continues to consider other societies as barbaric or savage simply because the society is different from its own. If all humans 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 each other both consciously and unconsciously. For thousands of years, humans have fought against each other claiming to be fighting for the common good. But what happens when the line is blurred? There is no true black and white definition of good and evil. Humans have fought repeatedly throughout history for what they perceive as right, killing anyone who stands between them... middle of paper... and thinks like others think, so there may be a very more peaceful with less discrimination and murder. We as humans would be able to learn and accept the lessons they have learned throughout their lives and interactions with each other if we learned to humanize others like Leah: “I copy every new word and promise to always remember it, when I grow up. an American lady in the foreground with a garden of my own. I will 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. “Contact Zone Arts.” Situational Inquiry: An Introduction to Reading, Research, and Writing at the University of Washington. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. Print.