Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Race: Power of an Illusion
This second episode of the PBS series, "The Story we Tell" discusses how race and racism developed in this country. Surprisingly, the series experts believe race has a history, and develops over time, and "that it is constructed by society to further certain political and economic goals" ("Race"). The episode begins with narration that leads into the controversial words of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that he found blacks inferior to whites in "body and mind." The episode suggests that Thomas Jefferson was then the first American to theorize race in the country. The episode then goes on to discuss the juxtaposition of Jefferson's theory that "all men are created equal" with his own slaveholding and clear approval of slaveholding in the United States. Does this mean that the founding fathers felt those of color were "less than" men?
The episode then discusses early history in the colonies, before race was an issue. The narrator states, "Blackness and whiteness were not yet clear categories of identity" ("Race"). In fact, religion...
Before the influx of slaves into the country, the lowest class in America was the indentured servants from Europe, who came to the country for a new start, but first had to serve their owners for a specific amount of time. When this source of cheap labor began to disappear, planters began to turn to black slaves for their work-intensive crops like tobacco, and later cotton. The white indentured servants began to move up the social ladder, leaving the blacks on the bottom rung. It was during this time that "white" and "black" began to take on additional meaning, and whites, even at the lowest social levels, began to distance themselves from blacks.
Indians, at first, were not seen as a separate race, but as descendents of the European race, and so, they were salvageable and worthwhile, unlike the lower-class blacks. Indian wars changed the way many people viewed Indians, but one of the reasons Indians were sent to reservations was because the people felt if they could convert them to white ways, they could…
References
The Story we Tell." Race: The Power of an Illusion. Prd. Larry Adelman. California Newsreel, 2003.
Race: An Illusion The concept of race has no place in today's globalizing world. In fact, it is a damaging illusion. Not only does the idea of race allow false beliefs to develop, but it allows the concept of "them against us" to develop. In such a reality, race becomes a pride-producing rallying point around which blatant discrimination, injustice, and atrocities spring. The idea of race as a meaningful concept is no
Nowhere on earth is a thirteen-pound, six-foot long unit of 'scandal' or 'integrity' to be found, for example. Nor apparently can someone find a benchmark unit of 'race'. The second thread runs through the slides 1887, 1934 and 1997. Jim Crow led to better homes for whites than Blacks even after they fought WWII side by side. What this demonstrates is one clear way we very literally live within the
Race: The Power of an Illusion The constructed notion of race, as reinforced through good science, is also reinforced throughout the first episode of this PBS documentary. In the past, poor and racist science has attempted to classify human individuals according to racial categories and failed miserably. However, good science shows that the very notion of racial separations between individuals of different geographies and cultures is in fact specious, and genetically,
After all, it was only a few generations ago that the FHA was discriminating against black applicants. Schools are still highly segregated. Race in many ways determines access to social and cultural capital, as well as financial capital. Throughout successive generations, it has been difficult if not downright impossible for the sons and daughters of non-white individuals to achieve social and economic parity with whites. The government could do
Race exists, suggests the social view, even in the biological categorizations of science, out of cultural customs and habits not reality. Race is a powerful illusion in culture, even amongst certain pockets of the culture of the scientific community, but it is just that -- an illusion and a delusion. Question Who has benefited from the belief that we can sort people according to race and that there are natural or
Race Personally, I define race as the different tribes of the earth. In my definition, race has a strong affiliation with color. In terms of color, there are a couple of different races such as Blacks, Whites, Asians (who are more or less yellow), Native Americans (red), and the various hybrids associated with the intermingling of these races. Race was defined in the movie "Race the Power of an Illusion" somewhat