The Episodes of Race: The Power of an Illusion on Youtube

[student’s name] [professor’s name] [course] [date] Race: The Power of an Illusion Living in America, I have always been fascinated by the different races – how individuals living in the same geographical area can be so different from each other, and how, despite these differences, people can live peacefully together. But over the years of my study, I have realized that although the races are able to live side-by-side without causing civil wars, the White man/woman has been most privileged over others. Moreover, I came to the realization that throughout my life, I have been unknowingly socialized to respect racial boundaries. I vividly remember the shock I felt when I first saw a couple, a Black American woman and a Caucasian man, walking down the street, obviously enamored with each other. I remember asking myself “How can they love each other despite the obvious differences in their races? Will it work out for the long term? Can this be true love?” Watching the three episodes of Race: The Power of an Illusion reminded me of this moment, when I realized that I have been blind of the racial segregation that penetrated my society. The documentary helped me discover a lot of things, the most shocking of all expressed by Pilar Ossorio: “We can't find any genetic markers that are in everybody of a particular race and in nobody of some other race. We can't find any genetic markers that define race” (Adelman, “The Difference between Us: Part 1 of Race: The Powerful Illusion” 3:46). And yet, despite this biological fact, racism is very real – my own reaction to the mixed-race couple is one indication, but history shows us that many horrors have been committed on the false belief that there is a fundamental difference between individuals of different skin color. African Americans were segregated from the rest of the population, while Native Americans were banished to reservations in order to protect the White man from being “infected” by other races. It is heartbreaking to realize that the very founders of the United States of America, the land of the free, engaged in the ideology of white supremacy (Adelman, “The Story We Tell: Part 2 of Race: The Powerful Illusion”). I cannot imag...