Race The Power of an Illusion
Video Documentary Title: Race – The Power of an Illusion
Utilize elements of the documentary to write about the idea of “structural racism.” My expectation is for you to reflect on the elements of the documentary to describe and analyze the ways in which racism becomes embedded in our society.
This essay is open in terms of the many things from the documentary that you can discuss as well as your interpretation of the term structural racism.
However, a strong essay will utilize examples of racism from the documentary to explain how the social construction of race as a historic and ongoing process has become rooted in our society as expressed through consistent forms of racial inequality.
A strong essay will also show how historic forms of racism have transformed over time into the modern forms of racism that we see today. Think about and utilize sociological concepts such as socialization, social institutions, norms, ideology, etc…
What is this thing we call race? Where did the idea come from? “Race: The Power of an Illusion” compels viewers to examine some of their most fundamental beliefs about concepts of race.
The Difference Between Us
Episode one in this three-part series follows a dozen students, including African American athletes and Asian American string players, who sequence and compare their own DNA. The results surprise them—and us—when they discover their closest genetic matches are as likely to be with people from other “races” as their own. Much of this episode is devoted to understanding why. Looking at skin color differences, disease, human evolution, even genetic traits, we learn there’s not one characteristic, one trait, or even a single gene that distinguishes all members of one “race” from another. One by one, our myths about race—including “natural” superiority and inferiority—are taken apart.
The Story We Tell
The second episode in this series questions the belief that race has always been with us. Ancient peoples stigmatized “others” based on language, customs, and especially religion, but they did not sort people into “races.” This episode traces the race concept to the European conquest of the Americas, including the development of the first slave system, where all enslaved people shared a physical trait: dark skin.
Ironically, it was not until slavery was challenged on moral grounds that early prejudices—emboldened by the need to defend slavery in a nation that professed a deep belief in freedom—crystallized into a full-blown ideology of white supremacy. By the mid-19th century, race had become the “common sense” wisdom of white America, explaining everything from individual behavior to the fate of whole societies.
The House We Live In
This final episode focuses not only on individual behaviors and attitudes, but also on how our institutions shape and create race, giving different groups vastly unequal life chances. Who is white? In the early 20th century, the answer was not always clear. Often, the courts had to decide, and they resorted to contradictory logic to maintain the color line.
After World War II, whiteness increasingly meant owning a home in the suburbs, aided by discriminatory federal policies that helped whites and hindered nonwhites. European “ethnics,” once considered not quite white, blended together as they reaped the advantages of whiteness—including increased equity as property values rose dramatically—while African Americans and other nonwhites were locked out. Forty years after the Civil Rights Movement, the playing field is still not level, and “colorblind” policies only perpetuate these inequities.