Marrisa Reh Nura Mowzoon SOC 101 5 December 2013 The Difference Between Us: Race The Power

r of an Illusion The key point that was stated over and over again in this video, and also in Sociology 101, is that race is a purely social idea. Race has nothing to do with our genes or the traits weve inherited in our families. Race was created by people, as a way to categorize groups of people by social equality. I found a lot of what was said and studied in the video to be related to our chapter on Race and Ethnicity. Around the middle of the video, images were shown about the extensive research that was done in the far past about the history behind race. They showed the categories, or racial types, that people were sorted into, which were: Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid. Its extremely interesting that scientists were really trying to prove that the differences in our skin, eyes, hair, etc., were based on our genes. It also seemed that the ideas of stereotypes and discrimination were also in effect a few centuries ago, and has only continued. Human variations are seen as stereotypically belonging to one group. Though, biologically, those traits can belong to any population. There has been no scientific evidence that one ethnicity is any different than another in skill. While this is ultimately true, the world sees race in a different light. In the 20th century, the social ladder began to be built, always with

whites residing on top, as the most successful, while other races seemed poor or weak. As covered in Chapter 14, this is a prime example of Bogardus Social Distance Scale in 1925. It was surveyed that there is the greatest social distance between people of Hispanic, African American, Asian, etc. heritages. We, as a society, have formed these groups of race based on peoples physical traits. Or as said in Chapter 14, race comes into being only when the members of a society decide that some physical trait actually matters.

As the students learned in the video, there is a large span of differences within genetic variation as opposed to between. Simply because two people may have similar skin color or hair texture, does not necessarily mean they have any genetic similarities whatsoever. Just like when the students picked out who in the class they believed they would be most similar to or different from, as does the rest of the world. Its this kind of profiling that in a broader scheme of things leads to racism and discrimination because of the way someone looks. Its impossible to know somebodys ethnicity simply by their outside appearance.

I found this video on race to be extremely insightful, and I saw a lot of correlation with what was taught in class and also what I learned from watching Crash. Before this unit, I was quite oblivious to the actual facts surrounding the history of race. The fact that it is not simply scientific or biological, but social, is an outstanding idea. There is a huge difference between someones ethnicity and their race. Society has put limitations and markers on groups of people and labels it as science. In class, the example of twin girls with different skin colors was used, and in the video it was people like Tiger Woods. By looking at them, you would classify anyone as white or black or Asian. Its impossible to look at a person and know their ancestry, the environment they grew up, what ethnicity their parents are. Defining somebody by their race is a

social organization of groups of people. All in all, every person, no matter what group they are put into, will have similarities and differences in their DNA with other humans that seem to belong to a different race. That part is the science and biology of who we all are.