Thursday, August 30, 2007

Blog 4-Race: Power of an Illusion

Blog 4- Race: Power of an Illusion: The Difference Between Us

If there would be a thesis it would go something like this, Race is simply an external difference lead to a complex inside difference, the idea of race is a biological myth. In the video Race: Power of an Illusion: The Difference Between Us there was about five students that were all different races and ethnicities and they tested how different each others gene were from one another.
The argument of the film was does race make people different from each other, and do people who are a different race have different genes? In the film they discussed how individuals are different from one another by skin color, hair color, eye shape, and in this time by looking at the particular person, you can see what race they are. Race is simply external by skin color and hair texture, which leads to more complex internal difference. For example in the film they were discussing how different races are better at certain things like black’s are good at sports, and whites were good at music. They were trying to find something extremely different in an African American’s to prove they had something superior that made them better in sports. Race and biology are real. In the biology class the five different students were trying to find out who was similar to whom, and every student picked the closest to their skin color. The results where completely different, one of the African American girls was not similar to any one in the classroom including another African American girl.
The idea of race and biology is a myth. Who decides how many races there are? Genetically we are most similar then out of all the other species. Biology becomes an excuse for social differences. In the film they are trying to explain that even though we look different, come from different places, and act different, we are not that different. An African American can have the same or similar genes then a white American. So the question is we created the term race, now can we un create it? I believe this day and age race has gone down, but I still think race will be with us forever. It’s planted in our heads and even though there are tests that can prove we are not that much different from one another we still are going to think certain things.
We get our genes from our ancestors, and our race can be extremely different from our genes. I thought the film was very interesting, informative, and good. I learned a lot and it defiantly opened my eyes. I did not know that race and genes can come fome two different places, and how two people who look the most alike have such a different gene path. I understand how we made race and how some people think we can unmake it. But I don’t know if race will ever go away.

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