Family Points on Video Series

Below are the results of our first family exercise. As I noted in class, I did some editing, but I kept it to a minimum. I included all the families from both sections of this course.

Part I: the difference between us

BLUE FAMILY: (1) Race is a social and historical construct. Black, white, and brown are simply skin colors but we attach meanings and social expectations to them. Despite superficial differences, we are all the same.
(2) Biology is used to describe social differences. However, there are no genetic markers in one race that are not in another race. Genetically, we are the most similar of any species.

RED FAMILY: (1) There is more genetic diversity among members of the same race than there is genetic diversity between members of different races.
(2) Race, as determined by (superficial) differences in skin color, does not determine one's athletic ability or other traits such as intellect.

GREEN FAMILY: (1) The perception of race will continue to change as we evolve. People are always being criticized and judged by their color or the way they present themselves. The idea of who is white and who is black will continue to change. The idea of race is very flexible and will take on different meanings as time goes on because it is a perception that we as humans make.
(2) Differences between human's genetics came through migration not because of race. Humans originated from east Africa and spread from there. As they migrated racial mixing was going on.

YELLOW FAMILY: (1) There is no evidence of racial differences in biology or genetics.
(2) Biology is used as an excuse for racial differences -- to justify or explain obvious social inequality.

BLACK FAMILY: (1) The eugenics debate, says that we are not very different genetically; in fact there is more genetic diversity within a race than between different races.
(2) Race is defined by the power of illusion and that race does not define intellectual superiority, athletic dominance, or any other concept or misperception that are stereotypically viewed as race defining.


Part II: the story we tell

RED FAMILY: (1) Thomas Jefferson wrote "all men are created equal," yet he owned over 200 slaves. He wrote texts claiming African Americans are inferior physically and mentally, yet he had mixed children and used their "inferior physicality" for labor.
(2) The whites believed Native Americans were closer related to themselves. That being said, they believed that they could eradicate the "savage" within them and make them more civilized.

BLUE FAMILY: (1) Racial theory used to naturalize ideas of power between the races; science used as a justification for some types of people lower than others.
(2) It would have been different if we said that we need these people for their labor and we have the power to enforce that, but we said there's something about these people that rationalizes their being slaves. Therefore, once slavery is gone, the rationality for slavery is still there.

GREEN FAMILY: (1) Before race started to emerge into American society as a defining factor into one's character, one's status and charachter were defined by their religion and/or wealth. But as slaves were brought over to America in the shiploads, Americans needed a scientific answer to why blacks were inferior. Groups of philosophers, scientists, and even politicians decided slavery was justified in that Africans were not just of another race but a different species entirely, different from Americans, to be put on display at events such as the "World's Fair." When scientific books "proving" that blacks were inferior were made accessible to the less knowledgeable public, why wouldn't they believe the new literature? It was coming from "qualified scientists."
(2) These books on race could explain to some extent why racism became so prevalent. Educated whites so persistently proved blacks were inferior that in effect after the Civil War, when blacks were freed, the rationale for slavery still lingered.

BLACK FAMILY: (1) Originally, other factors such as Christianity and status were more important than race, but race became the defining factor of status. Race is how people defined meaning to how people looked.
(2) The process of defining race is constantly changing based on public opinion. The more power the white race gained the more inferior other races were seen and treated.

YELLOW FAMILY: (1) In the beginning (early colonies) people were separated by religion and wealth rather than by skin color and physical features. It was faith and morally based instead of physically based until they realized they could use Negro slaves as cheap labor. Race is constructed by a society to further certain economic and political pulls(?) (I believe you meant, goals).
(2) "All men are created equal." It is central to America's foundation yet we had slaves and mistreated the Indians and Mexicans, and what allowed us to do this was creating a story of race which placed these groups in an inferior status.


Part III: the house we live in

RED FAMILY: (1) The Supreme Court contradicted itself when it denied the naturalization of a Japanese man due to science, then in turn denied a Hindu man due to social reasons.
(2) Fair Housing was not really fair. The government used home value as a reason not to involve minorities. Even after the Fair Housing Act there was segregation.

GREEN FAMILY: (1) Want to be a "colorblind" society and be able to overlook skin color. The video mentioned how we don't want to see color, we want to see people.
(2) The unequal treatment in housing developments. Came up with fair housing for all. This included non-whites, but when non-whites moved into the Roosevelt neighborhood the white people began to leave and this caused the neighborhood to decline.

BLUE FAMILY: (1) Institutions, as well as legal and political authority, reinforced segregation between the races. Such institutions were the Housing Authority, National Appraisal, Urban Renewal.
(2) Another main issue in this section of the documentary was the emphasis placed on races other than black and white as being "in between races."

BLACK FAMILY: Laws and practices that affect opportunities define race, not physical characteristics of the individuals.
(2) Segregation according to housing was very significant. Houses depreciated when colored people bought them or when white people moved out. Laws defined the levels of poverty and federal aid but these were only available to white people and no one else.

YELLOW FAMILY: (1) The court had to make decisions on who was white and who was not. Virginia law defined a black person with one-sixteenth African ancestry. Alabama said if you have one drop of black ancestry you are black. You could literally walk from state to state and change from black to white. What does this mean? It means race was CLEARLY a political illusion.
(2) When the housing market adopted the innovation of housing at the end of World War II, it reinforced the racial divide because they made it impossible for minorities to purchase the homes that were offered and made the neighborhoods they lived in receive a lower rating. This triggered the creation of suburbs and solidified the idea that any race that was not considered white was inferior. To get beyond racism we must first acknowledge it.
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That's it. I tried to be faithful to what was submitted, warts and all. We will be doing something with these points in the future, but I need to give some more thought to what that will be.