Good Essay On Race And Ethnicity

Social construct has been embedded in various societies by implementing a form of functional and structural laws that govern individuals in a given community. The Power of Illusion is a film that examines how race and ethnicity is a social construct through biology. The film is about students of different races taking a DNA test as a replica of the eugenics movement. Most students of different race and ethnicity presumed that their DNA would be closely linked based on their phenotype. This was not the case. Instead, race and ethnicity is an illusion that has been engrained in the society to divide people.
The second episode, “The Story We Tell”, demonstrates how race was socially constructed by Americans to enslave the African people. For example, the Romans enslaved their own people not based on race and that people could be bought out of slavery. However, the American people socially constructed a given race as an inferior complex over the other to use the cheap available labor by the African people. The film demonstrates how the white Americans killed the Native Americans in Mississippi, the train of tears, to take over their land based on greed. As a way of fueling the white superiority complex, the White Americans enslaved other races and treated them harshly in order to establish a sense of power. Thereby, this concept has taken root in that the white Americans tend to enjoy certain privileges in the country whereas other races have to deal with stereotypes.
The third episode, “The House we Live in”, portrays how there was a form of hatred between Irish, Italians, Hebrews, and Greeks among other ethnicities based on who was superior over the other. Historically, the Italians were mainly Catholics whereas the Irish were Baptists thereby had conflicting beliefs. Different ethnicities fought for power despite the fact that they had similar phenotype. Ethnicity is a socially construct because one’s culture has been linked to the type of power that one has in the society.
The Eugenics movement was a form of science that was used by the white Americans to prove that the African Americans were inadequate. The movement wanted to use science as a way of proving that White Americans are superior and better than African Americans. This failed. The DNA does not distinguish one’s race or class thereby, making race and ethnicity as social constructs incorporates in the society. Social construct has been used to elevate one race over the other.