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Dismantling Racism Resource Book

RACE – THE POWER OF AN ILLUSION, Produced by California Newsreel
(2003) 56 minutes per episode

Race - The Power of an Illusion questions the very idea of race as biology, suggesting that a
belief in race is no more sound than believing that the sun revolves around the earth. Yet race
still matters. Just because race doesn't exist in biology doesn't mean it isn't very real, helping
shape life chances and opportunities.

EPISODE 1- The Difference Between Us (56 min.) examines the contemporary science - including
genetics - that challenges our common sense assumptions that human beings can be bundled into
three or four fundamentally different groups according to their physical traits.

EPISODE 2- The Story We Tell (56 min.) uncovers the roots of the race concept in North
America, the 19th century science that legitimated it, and how it came to be held so fiercely in
the western imagination. The episode is an eye-opening tale of how race served to rationalize,
even justify, American social inequalities as "natural."

EPISODE 3- The House We Live In (56 min.) asks, If race is notbiology, what is it? This episode
uncovers how race resides not innature but in politics, economics and culture. It reveals how
oursocial institutions "make" race by disproportionately channeling resources, power, status and
wealth to white people.

Dismantling Racism Project 119 Western States Center