View the video "Race: The Power of an Illusion, Episode Two- The Story We Tell". https://www.facinghistory.org/books-borrowing/race-power-illusion
-------(Create an account then skip when it says admin or educator) & watch video 2 the story we tell.
Answer questions below about the video.
View the 57 minute video on Facing history.
As you view the film, take notes to thoroughly answer these questions. Give specific examples from the video. In your submission, include the numbered question before writing your answer.
According to the film, what is “race”? What are the ways the scholars defined it?
What are some ways that race has been used to rationalize inequality (to make inequality seem rational, logical or natural)? Include information and/or ideas that were provided in the film?
Why was the concept of race "needed" to justify slavery in the early U.S., as the US was fighting for independence from England and writing the Declaration of Independence and Constitution? Why does the concept of race persist after the abolition of slavery?
Contrast Thomas Jefferson’s policy to assimilate American Indians in the 1780s with Andrew Jackson’s policy of removing Cherokees to west of the Mississippi in the 1830s. What is common to both policies? What differentiates them?
Give examples from the film of how science has been used to support the concept of racial inequality.
What role did beliefs about race play in the American colonization of Mexican territory, Cuba, the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico? Give examples.
What does it mean to say that "race is an idea constructed by society to further certain political and economic goals"? According to the film, what purpose did and does the concept of “race” serve?
How did watching this film make you feel? Does it relate to things you experience or observe in society today? Explain.
- How do you feel about the idea that race has very little biological basis but is actually a social and political construction? Do you agree or disagree? Have you heard this idea before? What kind of freedom could this lead to? What is wrong or makes you uncomfortable about this idea, if anything?
Sample Solution