Reflection To Race: Power Of An Illusion

Reflection to Race: Power of an Illusion

I can honestly say that growing up, I have not been ignorant to race. However, within a few short weeks of this class and watching supplementary films such as Race: Power of an Illusion, I have gained a further understanding of race: how it came to be and its portrayal throughout societies. Firstly, this basic point is one that was repeated consistently throughout the movie, throughout our textbook, as well as in class: Race is a social construction. However, I like the way that the film expressed it in “The Story We Tell”: “Race is constructed by a society to implement economic goals.” That sentence holds more truth than it solely being a social construction; the classification of people by the color of the skin was created in societies in essence so that the Caucasians can deem people of a darker skin inferior so as to …show more content…
Whiteness was not open to all nationalities in the turn of the century. In fact, according to “The House We Live In” those who we would deem “white” today were also seen as laborers; Slavs, Islamic and Jews are a few of the groups which were not seen as white upon migration. White being the most powerful race was found at the top of the hierarchy while blacks, along with the other non – white groups were laborers working in factories and other lower level jobs. While the slavery – age was over, the “non – whites” were still labor forces benefitting those at the top of the social hierarchy – the whites. This is also seen in chapter eight of the textbook: in the Caribbean today, “Africans, by far the largest group in these lands, remain at the bottom of the social hierarchy” (Azevedo, 156). While the Africans were the largest population in the Caribbean islands, the people that held the positions of power on a hierarchical scale were the Caucasians, Chinese and Indians. This is more profoundly described when Azevedo stated