This segment of the video(The Power of Illusion) drove home the point of how pervasive white privilege truly is in our society. We have inherited an unfair system in which all whites, racist or not, benefit from the system. Due to practices like “red lining” in the housing market and courts determining which races are “white” or “non-white” for purposes of citizenship, people of color have never been granted equal access to American society. We were disturbed to learn that people were denied citizenship due to race until 1952. Even more disturbing is the fact that this institutional racism is so embedded in American society that the United States government actually sanctioned such practices. These “details” tend to become hidden and forgotten because they're a part of "the system" that we all live in, but they still have extremely detrimental effects. Amazingly, people today still fail to comprehend or see the whole picture and the damage that has been done.
In the Power of an Illusion, we see racial markers like skin color, hair texture, etc., mean nothing, until they are judged by American society. Experience has shown that where there are inappropriate policies and repressive laws coupled with a systematic stifling of a people’s entrepreneurial skills, the whole society, both the oppressor and the oppressed suffer. If American society fails to come to terms with this “beast,” she will live “arrested” forever. It takes courage, sacrifice, and humility to come to a point of an all-embracing and crystallization of a whole society’s inner hopes and dreams. Without it, that society remains an empty shell, a rudimentary and fragile caricature of what it might have been.
This is our group response after watching the Video 'The Power of Illusion' in the Race, Class & Language class at Grand Valley State University.
