What Color are You?

When people see the election of President Barack Obama, they assume that America has conquered racism. People think this country is a “Post Racial Society”, and no longer live in racially divided times. In a 3 part video series entitled, “Race – The Power of illusion”, which deals with how Americans are fascinated with dividing individuals into distinct groups of color, red, white, or yellow people. The film also questions the idea of race as biologically playing a part in the creation of the human species, suggesting that a belief in race is no more real than, Saint Nick coming down the chimney. What we do know as fact is, that race definitely shapes your life chances and future opportunities.

Episode 1 examines genetics, and how common sense perceptions, and the obvious physical differences we see between each other, develop into patterns of human variation. Noticeably, some gene forms are more mutual than others. To add, student from different racial backgrounds conducted an experiment testing the DNA of each student, and found that, in their genetic findings were similar to Richard Lewontin's genetic findings thirty years ago. Because of our history of moving, mating, and mixing, most human variation, especially that of older complex traits can be found within any population, most of it from a common source in Africa. In fact, people do believe black people are superior when it comes to performance in athletics. Furthermore, 100 years ago, people believed that the black race would die out, being that disease and mortality rates were so high, but in reality, it was poverty, poor sanitation in their neighborhoods, and most important, the Jim Crow segregation laws that made it bad for blacks. We all have abilities, again, blacks play sports well, Asians have great music ability, but what does this mean biologically?  Race may not be biological, but your race will dictate where you live, where you go school, where you will work.

In ancient times judged by language, custom, class, and mainly religion, people weren’t sorted by their race, or physical differences. According to the film, race is a recent term that was created a couple of hundred years ago, which could be traced back to the United States. The second episode, called, “The Story We Tell”, traced the origins of the creation of the word race back to the European takeover of the New World and American Slavery. Historian James Horton points out, enslavement of Africans was a choice, and it had nothing to do with beliefs or ancestry. The whites made a choice, and their choice was to enslave Africans and use them as an unlimited labor supply. Social inequalities are real, and this film shows that America promoted this, and still promoting this today whether people realize it or not.

In part 3, called, The House We Live In”, focused on the ways our institutions and polices of the government, are built to empower whites, and hurt minorities. In America, it’s clear the caucations usually are the ones that benefits from this countries policies. For example, the Rockefeller law was built to give stiff jail penalties for selling crack cocaine, because they know, it’s a drug that’s heavily sold in minority neighborhoods, but if you get caught selling cocaine, you get a slap on the wrist, because cocaine is an expensive drug, which most white people sell.  It’s not because of hard work, or merit, but because of policies, and the laws, and most important, HOUSING. The film also speaks of how Italians, Hebrews, Greeks, and Spanish were considered separate races. I found it crazy that the film stated that their “Whitness” had to be earned. Furthermore, I found the net worth of an average black family is about 1/8, that of the average white family, with most of the differences coming from the value of the family and your residence. For example, Houses in white neighborhoods, sell for much more than those in a black and Hispanic communities.

In closing, we continue to have laws, and policies, built to keep racial inequalities alive whether we have a black president or not, this lets you know how powerful this thing we call racism is. Our President can’t even do anything about it. The customs of racism are embedded into the fabric of this country, and we have a long way to go, if we want to have change in the future.