BakerMoviePost

This screening was to show that different races are not inherently biologically different but are culturally different and most of the differences are perceived. The biggest differences between people are about ten times less than houseflies. A small part of the video was a group of volunteers who tested their own oral swabs and mitochondrial DNA to check and see how close each one was to the others. The volunteers were asked to guess which others they thought they were more closely related to, and to no surprise each thought they were more like the ones which had the same racial background. When the test results came out the students were surprised to figure out that the majority of there similarities and differences were not who they though they would correlate to. The movie also discussed how many Caucasian scientists back during slavery were ruthlessly attempting to figure out the biological difference between whites and blacks. The findings were that there is actually no biological trait to make someone a different race. The scientists would test everything from toe shapes in length to forehead sizes to leg lengths. The movie also talked about the supposed physical benefits from being a different race. Many people believe that blacks have a genetic disposition to be better athletes than whites along with other races and that whites are smarter. The thought was that blacks had an extra muscle or something that whites don't have which allowed them to excel at sports and that they didn't have the brain capacity that whites had. What sparked this thought was when the Olympics were held in Germany and Hitler's Arian race was put to shame when Jesse Owens dominated all of the running events. Jesse Owens was tested, retested and critiqued after his performance at the Olympics and was made to feel as a lower being when in actuality was a hard working man who was just really talented.

One question I have is why were whites so persistent at trying to find a reason about genetic differences when it just continued to be obvious there were no real differences?
Another question is why didn't the people doing the studies understand that comparing privileged whites to poor blacks couldn't work because of so many different externalites? Even back then we understood that different environments caused multiple findings.

My thoughts throughout the movie was how could the white race really be so idiotic and stubborn about the way they think. All their starting ideas were not something that they had tested but just illogical superiority complexes. It makes me sick to think that so many people are actually so stuck in their ideas that they cannot comprehend that we are all one species and no one color has an advantage over another, whether it is physically or mentally.