User talk:Kabuejames

Issues of Race Race is a term that we are all familiar with. This term is socially significant to us as it is the basis of thinking about the perceived differences between various ethnic and racial groups. However, rarely do people question what it really means. The three-part documentary series, Race: the Power of an Illusion by California Newsreel is an attempt at confronting the myth surrounding race. The term race rings same in people’s ears. Because of the fact that the world is varied, many believe and have come to accept the idea that race is basically the biological and social division of people into “red,” “black,” “white” or “yellow” distinct groups. This division takes into account the innate biology of people. The documentary however challenges this notion. It confronts the idea of race that people have come to believe in and that they tend to use whenever race is mentioned. It scrutinizes the thing that we call race and in the end helps us think deeply about race and in turn explore how our social divisions are not natural but are ideally man-made. Through the documentary, we learn that race is not biological but is a social construct, one that has series implications in our everyday lives. The documentary’s three part series draws serious implications about race even as it challenges the ideas that have come imbedded in our psyche when we talk about race. The first part of the documentary series is titled “The Difference between Us.” It explores the question that most people ask: if we can tell apart a white person from an Indian, why not divide these people into races? This part of the series explores scientific discoveries that show why it is impossible or rather illogical to divide people into races since there is not a single gene or trait that can be used in distinguishing members of a race from members of another. As a result, the idea that race is biological and that racial traits can be useful in explaining group differences is challenged. The second part of the series titled “The Story we tell” traces the origins of the racial idea to North America and questions the belief that race has always been with us. While in ancient times people stigmatized “others” different from them based on their language, religion and customs, they rarely did sort them into races. This term race came about during the European conquest of the Americas when slavery boomed and all blacks shared a similar physical trait: dark skin. When slavery was challenged, the ideology of white supremacy took shape and by the 19th century, race had become a tool by which the white America explained everything including individual behaviour and the fate of some human societies. This series explains how social inequalities became natural and was a cushion to the whites who enjoyed social privileges which others did not. The third part of the series “the House we live in” focuses on how institutions and policies have fuelled the superiority of other groups while making inferior other groups. From this part of the series we learn how race since it does not reside biologically, is a product of politics, economics and culture (racepowerofanillusion.org). The documentary’s three-part series settles at no definite meaning of race but leaves us with an understanding of what race is not and what it has come to mean. Through the documentary we get to learn that we cannot define race based on our biological differences for though we have different physical traits, our genetic traits can be similar with people that come from “races” not our own. Therefore, our physical differences do not define our race. The social construct of the term race arose from the mid-19th century. At this time, race came to be the basis of separation of the inferior people from those that were superior. Race as a term was used to place the white on a pedestal enjoying rights and privileges while the black minority and the native Indians suffered from lack of access to opportunities. Presently, race is an idea imbedded in our institutions and policies that give advantage to some groups and not others. The “unmarked” race, the whites enjoy extreme benefits including housing, education, and wealth while those on the other side of the color are denied these same opportunities. Race is basically, used to divide colour and those not of the same colour as the superior colour, the white people, are victims of lack-lustre opportunities and advantages. This tracing of history of use of the term “race” shows how our assumptions about race has come to be rooted in cultural norms and in stereotypes. Our culture and the stereotypes that exists places people at different levels based on their race. One’s identity can easily be defined and rest upon such stereotypes or cultural norms. Identity can be individual or collective and these qualities, beliefs, personality or looks can easily come to be the basis of one’s identity. One that is born into a certain ethnic identity takes on how that group is represented and how he is identified whether good or bad may be a limit or an opportunity to how that individual relates with members of another group. If for example, a person is born into the white privilege, how the whites consider themselves supreme and how they treat members of a different race may brush on that individual and he soon starts treating others the same way. The self-esteem of the individual that defines their sense of belonging or community may be influenced by their identity. Thus race, though rooted in age-old unfounded cultural norms and stereotypes may easily be the basis of one’s identity. Race is a social construct and the documentary denies the fact that it is rooted in our genetics and biology. This is to mean that race is a product of the society that we live in. A closer look at our biology and genetics confirms that we are more similar than we would like to imagine. Though we use how we look and how our traits make us similar as the substance of our differences, this does not at all justify the idea about race. Race was shaped and created to justify the unequal life opportunities that others enjoy at the expense of others. The society gave it shape and breathed life into it and it as well defines it. It changed how we interact socially and in our communities by deeming others to be of a weaker race while others superior. The racial categories and distinctions basically mean the differences that exist between individuals. It is a fact that humans vary. The racial categories and distinctions that are so common means using the observable differences that we note in individuals in order to place them into either “blacks,” “whites” or “yellow”. These racial categories and distinctions are decided upon by our society and culture that we grow up in. The government policies and our institutions shape and form these categorizations despite history saying otherwise. History traces our origin to have emerged from a single source in Africa more than 100,000 years ago. Humans began migrating from this place of origin roughly 70,000 years ago and spread across globes and as populations spread, they mixed and interacted thus mixing their genes. This becomes the basis for our categorization. These distinctions however fails in scientific inquiry for our skin colour is no more than skin deep for beneath us, we are all the same. Therefore, being white or black means being put into a certain class through which our access to certain privileges is limited. It means being judged based on the social constructs that exist rather than our physical differences. In conclusion, issues of race and in particular our divisions of people into different groups, “black,” “red,” “white,” or “yellow” are so common that we have never sat down to reflect what this implies. The documentary “Race, Power of an Illusion” demystifies what we know about race. It questions the very idea of race and suggests that claiming that race denotes our inborn racial differences is false. While our biological differences do not make up race, it highlights just what race has come to imply. Race as fuelled by politics, culture and our economy, has come to be the basis of how resources, power, wealth and status are fuelled to the white people at the disadvantage of other people. This makes issues of race a matter of social construct rather than the assumptions imbedded in our cultural norms and in its stereotypes. Race the Power of an Illusion. An online Companion. Retrieved from https://www.racepowerofanillusion.org/