PBS hosts a wonderful but flawed attack on racism called "RACE - The Power of an Illusion."  This site provides scientific ideas that debunk racism such as the fact that any ethnic group contains 85% of human diversity.  This shows that each ethnic group genetically overlaps and that instead of human diversity being between races, it is actually contained within each race.  This site explores the history of racism and how it developed over time.  It is found that dividing people by their physical characteristics is a relatively new idea.  Finally, it is shown that colored people are still discriminated against, and because of this discrimination their opportunities and wealth is far inferior in general to that of people of European descent. 

This website shows the ineptitude of categorizing people into dichotomized racial groups because people exist along a spectrum of races and a good number of people are biracial.  This is the same message as that of the essay "Menu-Driven Identities" written by Lisa Nakamura.  She finds that the racial dichotomizing that exists in the real world has been transferred to the virtual world of the Internet in the form of online menus that makes the user pick a race (p. 104).  These menus dichotomize race.  Nakamura finds that identity should be based on culture rather than race (p. 130). 


The interactive PBS article vaguely agrees with this because it sees race as a recent innovation and should be done away with.  It is mentions that Indian tribes should not be based on race but on ancestry.  The article does mention that dichotomizing skin color is wrong but it never really mentions that culture should  replace race.  The PBS article does miss the point a little because their alternatives to the modern dichotomization is the multiracial and bi-racial model, and a model based on ancestry.  These ideas are related the the idea of culture, but are not the same.

The debate over race is as confusing and complex is it is sensitive.  We should make sure to create rational alternatives to our current baneful model of race and avoid replacing one form of racism with another.  If we continue to think of people and divide them by their skin color we will be creating identities which don't matter and can be used to further injustice. 

Even the multi-racial and bi-racial models of categorizing people is wrong because it still creates identity around skin color.  Ancestry is very much related to culture but is also not the same.  Some people may be related to a certain culture but may contain completely different cultural norms.  The cultural model of identity should be used because culture is what really defines what people are and how they act. 




Bibliography:

Adelman, Larry. "RACE - The Power of an Illusion | PBS." Weblog post. PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. PBS. Web. 28 Oct. 2010. <http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm>.

Nakamura, Lisa.  Cybertypes: Race,  Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet.  New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.