Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Movie Race I

The focus of the movie Race I that was shown during class was how different races were not genetically different. The show started out by introducing several students of various racial backgrounds who were testing their DNA to check for similarities and differences. From there several topics were discussed such as athletics, intelligence, and musical ability. The history of segregation was also talked about. During that time, interracial marriages were thought bad since a superior race should not “mix” their genes with that of a inferior race. Regarding athletics, black people were thought to be better than whites in sports like track and basketball. Back then, people assumed that it was in a black person’s genes as to the reason that they were good at sports and commonly beat white people. Now however, scientist have come to the conclusion that race is not based on biology, but more on the environment. At the end of the show, the kids who were testing their DNA found that their DNA was often more similar to someone of a completely different race. Watching this made me think about all of the racial stereotypes that I subconsciously regard as true. One that came to my mind was the generalization that a majority of Asians are skinny. Scientists have proven that a person’s metabolism is partially heredity, so how can that factor not be biologically passed on by race or is it from passed just parents to child? Another question that came to me was about when they mentioned that all people originated from Africa. I just didn’t understand how people eventually produced things like blond hair since dark colors are dominating traits. Overall, I enjoyed the movie and thought that is was very informative. I believe that every person should be educated on such topics. There are many people that are racist and I would like to think that if this scientific information was made known to the general public, the number of racists would decrease. But that is an issue that cannot be solved by such information but I hope that it would help.

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