Race The Illusion Of Power Essay

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Race for the past centuries in the United States has become a fundamental concept that determines where an individual falls within society, whether it is on the top of the social hierarchy or the very bottom. In the series, “Race: The Illusion of Power” in episode one, the idea of race is challenged on what it has thought to be historically, it defines race as not real in science but rather “a biological myth” (California Newsreel 2003). Race, on the other hand is a constructed idea brought upon the differences among individuals such as skin color and facial features. Through numerous tests by scientists it can be concluded that race is not at all linked with human genetics, for the human species itself is most similar with one another than …show more content…

Continuing on, Jefferson noted that Native Americans appeared to have the same values as whites, he claimed that Native Americans “were good human material, and the problem with them was not race but culture, that the Indians were savages but they could be civilized,” (California Newsreel 2003: Episode 2). Later on the whites enforced the “civilization” policy which encouraged Native Americans to assimilate into white society by turning them into the Christian religion and educating their young ones with the customs and norms of whites. As time went one and although many tribes successfully assimilated into the white culture, the land the Native Americans occupied where still wanted by the whites. Thus, as a result the Indian Removal Act of 1830 came into effect by president Andrew Jackson who claimed that the Native Americans could never “have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement” (California Newsreel 2003: Episode 2) as the superior race has, making it a necessity to remove them from land surrounding the whites and move them on west. Scientists during this time determined what the superior race was and which one wasn’t based solely on theories of the skull and concluded that the whites were the smartest human species in the planet, pushing the Native Americans and African Americans to the bottom of all

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