Race The Power Of An Illusion Summary

The United States of America has always been a nation of many different cultures and races, and since the first European settlers have arrived we have used these differences to divide ourselves into distinct categories. The video “Race: The Power of an Illusion” highlights how race has been used to create barriers between people based entirely on something that is not scientifically measurable.
The beginning of America’s trouble with race reaches back to the institution of slavery. Unlike other countries and cultures throughout history that have relied on slavery, America was unique in the way that it based social standing and class upon color and appearance. In early colonial America, Africans and working class white people were treated much the same, because indentured servitude was the popular mode of labor, not slavery (From Indentured Servitude to Racial Slavery, 1999). However, reclining numbers of indentured servants from Europe and unstable populations of Native
Early colonists wanted to keep Africans enslaved generation after generation in order to exploit a cheap source of labor, so European colonists justified the institution of race based slavery on the idea that physical characteristics like skin color are tied to intelligence and inherent superiority or inferiority (Smedley, 1997). For example, early anthropologists like Samuel Morton studied skulls sizes of different races and concluded that since Caucasians have larger skulls than others, Caucasians were the most intelligent and naturally superior (The Science of Race, 2016). Even today, many people are under the assumption that race is a distinct genetic or biological trait, when in fact there are no genetic markers that are indicative of race (Herbes-Sommers, 2003). This has led to the construction of racial categories in a hierarchy that effect one’s standing in a social and economic class (Ore,