The myth of race - Vox
What if race isn’t fixed, but something made and remade over time? This short 3-minute video from Vox uses the shifting definitions of whiteness and Blackness to challenge the idea that race is biological or innate. Drawing on the work of Nell Irvin Painter, it shows how racial categories have always been shaped by political needs; depending on who needed to be excluded, controlled, or brought in. Race, it argues, is not a natural fact — it’s a tool used to organize power. But if race is constructed, then how is it being constructed now — by whom, and with what consequences? And are we, through our everyday behaviour, helping construct it too?
[U]nderstanding that racial categories are made up can give us an important perspective on where racism came from in the first place.