Race-The Power of an Illusion

I attended the video and discussion event Race-The Power of an Illusion for this week’s event analysis. The event showed two films approaching race from different perspectives and a discussion, which was very interactive and challenged the students with many questions. Racism is something that continues to plague the world that we live in and hold people back from their true potential to succeed. The event provided many facts and insights into the myths that accompany segregation and the roots of racism.
The first film addressed the biological aspects of racism. Many people believe the notion that people of different races are genetically different. But data shows there are no known genetic markers that distinguish different races from one another. In fact, Homo sapiens have very little genetic variation among our species with 1 in every 1000 nucleotides differing from human to human. For over 200 years scientists have mapped the human body looking for differences. All published scientific research into this has been simply formed by societal influences, not based on the data observed. Societal differences have become naturalized by society. One paper even hinted towards the inevitable extinction of American Americans because it is encoded in their blood. This is just outrageous and makes me furious, let alone other African Americans. Science points towards skin color being related to UVB absorption. This impacts vitamin D levels and people very in skin tone due to the fact that they live in geographic regions that receive different intensities of light. Skin color is important in preventing sunburn and skin cancer as well as acquiring nutrients. It has not been shown in any studies as a correlation between height, weight, or any other physical features. There is no doubt that we live in a world of racial smog. Our skin color influences where we live, what schools we go to, job opportunities, meanings/assumptions, and even laws. And of course, since money seems to be everything in the world that we live in, wealth increases the capacity to do well in life.
During the intermission, it was really nice to see Loyola’s diversity in one room, interacting as friends and students alike. I felt very comfortable the entire time and enjoyed every minute of it. But the next video really hit me hard because although I have received many privileges by being born white, I have also inherited the merciless history of what my race has done to that of nearly every other race in the world. The video began with introducing the “American Melting Pot” notion of everyone who has immigrated to America becoming a homogeneous uniform white people. But one sociologist said that the Asians and Blacks could only be used as firewood for this melting pot. It was a humorous, yet agonizingly true reality reflecting on our social and political structure. Laws were even made distinguishing what it means to be black, with each state providing a different percentage as proof. So literally one could walk across a state line and be a whole different person. One story that really touched me was that of Takao Okawa. He was a Japanese-America who filed for citizenship on two bases. One was that his skin color was as white, if not whiter than many American Caucasians. The other was the race should not matter. Being an American should be based on beliefs, but the Supreme Court felt otherwise.
The next portion of that video deals with the economic factors of race. The New Deal Housing program set up to aid returning G.I’s was intended to help them build a home with only 10-20% down and the bank loaning them the other 80% which was to be paid back with a small interest rate over a 30 years period. The American Dream took a new name as Suburbia. Integrated neighborhoods were viewed as unstable socially and economically and were considered a financial risk. Less than 2% of all federal loan money went to non-whites. Even with the Fair Housing Act of 1968, Blockbusting and White flight occurred. These facts are astonishing and embarrassing because they have shaped the separated communities that we see in Baltimore and nearly every other area around the country. And whites have taken the resources needed to succeed economically with them leaving integrated communities to degrade and become slums.
The discussion was focused more on the power of illusion. We want to be colorblind and see the character of people, but the wealth gap continues to grow from one generation from the next. Wealth is as powerful a tool and biology because it refuses to be shared. Assets accumulate in life, but income does not. This is why Americans of different races that earn the same incomes generally have to the same opportunities and succeed accordingly.
I could go on for a long time discussion the various facts that were presented. But together, these facts basically just ask one question. What are we going to do about this? And this is the question that no one has seemed to be able to provide any true insight into besides saying that we all must begin to make a small difference in the way we treat others and act. This will cascade into much larger productivity and influence legislation and economics. But I feel like this struggle is so deep and intense, that many people will continue to inherit prejudice and fail to act the way we ought to towards one another. It is easy to say that I am not a racist, but it is harder to live a life absent of racism because there are always questions that point towards us being different than one another and hint at a failure to become acclimated with one another because we chose to. We make our judgments based on what we think instead of actually challenging ourselves to erase out comfort zone barriers and step into the worlds of others fully and naturally. It is a very difficult thing to do at Loyola because of the lack of diversity but it really is not a burden if only we try and look beyond our own preconceived notions.