- Full Text
- Scholarly Journal
Race: The Power of Illusion; Examining the Myth of Race
Full text preview
A THREE-PART videotape documentary entitled Race: The Power of Illusion explores the genetic basis of race, its evolution, and how race still retains its influence in society today. With a powerful narrative by C.C.H. Pounder and interviews with scholars from Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and New York University, the series examines various myths about race and "how what we assume to be normal, common sense, even scientific, is actually shaped by our history, social institutions and cultural beliefs."
The first in the series, "The Difference Between Us," follows a group of racially diverse high school students to a workshop where they compare their own DNA. The students guess which classmates they believe will share similar genetic traits. White students assume they share similarities with other white classmates, while black students choose other black classmates. Much to the students' surprise, they discover that they are far more similar to those from other races. The documentary asserts that for over 200 years scientists armed with their own predetermined notions have searched the human body for a biological basis to race. Evelynn Hammonds, a professor of science and African and African-American studies at Harvard University, contends that "if we just take African Americans as an example, there's not a single body part that hasn't been subjected to this kind of analysis. You'll find articles in the medical literature about the Negro ear, and the Negro nose, and the Negro leg, and the Negro heart, and the Negro eye, and the Negro foot -- and it's every single body part. And they're constantly looking for some organ that might be so fundamentally different in size and character that you can say this is something specific to the Negro versus whites and other groups." In fact, as the series concludes, it is shown that...