Race: The Power Of An Illusion: Film Analysis

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After watching the documentary “Race: The Power of an Illusion, Episode 1: The Difference Between Us” I believe the conclusion of the film is that Race has no biological base or significance, rather race was created by humans and then ascribed to biology in order to explain why certain groups of people shared similar traits. Throughout the film there are many pieces of evidence to support this conclusion. In the following paragraphs I will give an example and explain each of the four types of evidence which are all utilized in the film. The four types of evidence are, analogical, anecdotal, testimonial, and statistical. The first piece of evidence presented in the film is an example of analogical evidence. Alan Goodman states that “to understand …show more content…

Testimonial evidence is when a viewpoint or opinion of an authority or person of power or great knowledge of a certain suspect is used to substantiate a claim. The most important thing to check when it comes to testimonial evidence is the legitimacy of the authority or source the information is coming from so this way it can be decided whether their viewpoint has any validity or not. In the film, Joseph Graves Jr., an evolutionary biologist states that “the measured amount of genetic variation among the human population is very small, and that is something that people have to wrap themselves around is that genetically we really aren’t very different”. This is a perfect example of testimonial evidence because a viewpoint of an authority, Mr. Graves, is being used to substantiate the claim that race is not based in or has anything to do with biology. Next the legitimacy of the claim has to be taken into consideration and since Mr. Graves is an evolutionary biologist I would say that he is a legitimate source or authority to present as evidence and thus I also believe that his viewpoint is absolutely valid. For example, if Mr. Graves was a chef or bake he would not be a legitimate authority for the topic of the correlation or connection between race and biology, however since he is an evolutionary biologist he is a legitimate authority on this

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