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Making Whiteness
Assimilation into Whiteness

Who counts as white has changed over time depending on circumstances and social conditions. But at a group level, becoming white is about ascending the social hierarchy and participating in the exclusion and disempowerment of those “outside” whiteness.

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Segregated Housing and the Racial Wealth Gap
by Larry Adelman
This explainer shows how government-mandated policies of segregated housing led to the creation of the extreme racial wealth gaps experienced across the US today.
episode 1
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Differences in Skin Color
If we were to walk from the tropics to Norway, what we would see is a continuous change in skin tone. And at no point along that trip would we be able to say, "Oh, this is the place in which we go from the dark race to the light race."
episode 1
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The Difference Between Us: Racial Classification as Cultural
Think about race in its universality. Where is your measurement device? We sometimes do it by skin color, other people may do it by hair texture... There is no way to measure race.
expert connection
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Immigration & Citizenship: Interview with Leti Volpp
Leti Volpp, the Robert D. and Leslie Kay Rave Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Race and Gender at UC Berkeley, discusses the problematic racial triangulation of groups in legal arguments, how we saw a new racial category post 9/11, the need to study pockets of resistance in response to legal rhetorical structures, and looking critically at the concept of a "model minority" as a symptom of anti-blackness.
episode 3
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Race Invaders
By 1910, 58% of American mining and factory workers were immigrants. Like Mexicans and African Americans, Italians, Slavs and Jews were often desired as laborers ­but also feared, seen as promiscuous, lazy, or stupid.
episode 3
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Melting Pot
<p>The melting pot never included people of color. Blacks, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, etcetera, could not melt into the pot. They could be used as wood to produce the fire for the pot, but they could not be used as material to be melted into the pot.</p>
expert connection
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Social Inequalities: Interview with Joanna Reed
Joanna Reed, Continuing Lecturer of Sociology at UC Berkeley, discusses how she relies on the film as a historical foundation for her students, tying it to scholarly articles and current events, and using it to introduce key sociological theories, such as Racial Formation.
expert connection
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Interview with Michael Omi
Michael Omi, Associate Professor of Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, talks about the pivotal role he played in the production of RACE: The Power of an Illusion and relates the series to current issues.
episode 2
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2020 panel discussion on Race—The Power of an Illusion, Part II
On Friday, September 25 we hosted a screening of Part II of Race—The Power of an Illusion: The Story We Tell, followed by a one-hour panel discussion with experts.
Q&A
How is racism distinct from ethnocentrism?
episode 2
interview
Ira Berlin
What was early colonial Virginia like? How are race and freedom tied together? What is the tension in American history with regard to race?

Ira Berlin (1941-2018) was a Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Maryland.  Among his many books are, Generations of Captivity: A History of African American Slaves and Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in America.

interview
Dalton Conley
What is the relationship between housing and wealth? Why does wealth matter and what does this have to do with race?

Dalton Conley is currently (2019) Henry Putnam University Professor in Sociology and a faculty affiliate at the Office of Population Research and the Center for Health and Wellbeing at Princeton University.  He is the author of Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America.

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Copyright 2018-2019, California Newsreel and Regents of the University of California. This website was jointly produced by California Newsreel, the Othering & Belonging Institute, the U.C. Berkeley Library, and the American Cultures Center at U.C. Berkeley, based on original material created by California Newsreel in 2003.