Race, The Power of an Illusion
I missed last night's showing of the first episode. If it even approached the quality of tonight's episode that was a grievious error. This may well be the best exposition on the nature and history of race and racism produced to date. I bought a copy of "Africans in America," an earlier PBS series. Actually, I joined a PBS station at the $120 level to get it… quite a premium over the price of the tapes, but I did it to signal to PBS my approval of the show. I may wind up doing the same with this one.
"Africans in America" was a powerful, important series on the development of slavery in the USofA, but it turns out the history of racism, though rooted in slavery, isn't the same thing as a history of slavery. Episode two of "Race" points this out by documenting the vagarities of racial classification, making interesting observations like:
- In Virginia, a Black person was legally defined as a person with 1/16th or more African ancestry. In Florida it was 1/8th. In Alabama it was one drop. So you could change race by moving to another state.
- Citizens had to be either Black or white, with full citizenship rights going to white people.
- A Japanese man who applied for citizenship was denied on the "scientific" basis that he was of the "Mongolian race"
- Three months later the same Supreme Court denied an (Asian) Indian his bid for citizenship because "science" didn't matter… the Supreme Court ruled that white was what white people thought it was, so the fact that he had Aryan ancestry was overruled by the opinion of the "common man"
But it also has a strong focus on the development of the disparity in wealth between the Black and white communities. In the process it delves into the Federal regulations that caused the near absolute segregation we now have in housing and schools, actually forced property values to fall when minorities of any race bought suburban property, and created an economic reason for "white flight."
The third and last episode airs tomorrow in my area. I won't be missing this one.
I've previously mentioned
the web site supporting the show, which is an
excellent resource. The only problem with it is it pops up new windows for all the content. Some of that content is of particular importance, so tomorrow I intent to post links to the background reading they provide. I want to make it as easy as possible for interested people to get to this information. This isn't a list of books, it's a collection of essays and transcripts of interviews used to prepare the series, in three categories: Race in science, history and society. You'll see strong support to dispute racist positions, explain the nature of structural racism-that racism that's actually built into the system that penalizes minorities without any conscious intent necessary on the part of those that benefit from the imbalances. And I'm going to research up documentation for a statement that was made: that when you control for wealth and income, there is no difference between Blacks and whites in any area of social concern.
I got work to do. And I'm going to enjoy doing it.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/20/2003 11:58:29 PM |
Posted by P6 at May 20, 2003 11:58 PM
| Trackback URL: http://www.prometheus6.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/585
