Someone has to play devil's advocate to this ABC documentary with its immunity from criticism guaranteed by academically enforced Political Correctness.
So here are a few off-the-cuff thoughts after having watched part one of the documentary last night.
For a start, it seemed long, slow and BORING - one of the traits of any didactic film designed to include the slower learners among its converts. It was based on a clbutt exercise which will no doubt soon be a standard part of the curriculum; a bit like the similar exercise designed to prove what a social disadvantage it is to have brown eyes when there are people with blue and green eyes available who can be made to feel guilty about it. (What are the totally pbuttive inheritors of blue eyes supposed to say? "Sorry my ancestors didn't rape yours", or something?)
The basic thrust of 'Race - The Power of an Illusion' is that it tries to prove there is no such thing as "race". But whose definition of "race" is it trying to demolish?
One scientist pointed out that people tend to believe erroneously that, just because there is a specific gene for eye colour, there must also be a gene for running speed, another for playing the violin, another for slam dunking...
My response: Whose beliefs are those? And, if anyone does simplistically believe them, whose fault is that?
The idea that there is a separate gene to account for every distinct biological trait was unknown even to 19th century slave owners, in spite of what the docco tried to imply. Mendel did not publish his groundbreaking discovery of "genes" until 1865 and it was not until their rediscovery by plant breeders in the early 1900s that his ideas encountered anything more than their hitherto blanket rejection at the hands of scientific snobbery.
And if the public of certain countries began being educated to the existence of such genes half a century later, whose fault is it that their education was limited to that kind of simple gene which appears to work in isolation from other genes? (The latter point being stressed by other scientists at points where it favoured the docco makers' own pov. For example, when stressing that skin colour is totally independent of other genetic traits).
The concept of "race as a social construct" as presented in the documentary seems very much an American perception based on American history. The idea that, beyond that limited context, "race" might also have been "invented" to further the economic interests of those committed to slavery, is simply false.
The idea that black skin defined a slave to the extent that the children of slaves were born into slavery was NEVER relevant in Australia, for example. Indeed, charges of racism against indentured coloured labourers in Australia are usually based on the fact that they were repatriated to their former homelands after their contracts expired. Children born to those imported labourers in Australia turned out to be their best tickets for remaining here - on the basis that they were the parents of free-born Australians who knew no other way of life...
As for the Yanks thinking they (or their Southern counterparts) *invented* slavery, and an ability to perceive 'race' as part and parcel of it - they should take one of those 'longer views' of history themselves. I recall reading primary sources from 10th century europe which described the Mongols is extremely "racist" terms - "tiny eyes placed wide apart" being one phrase I specifically remember. The inhabitants of somewhere in the Eastern Balkans were described when first encountered by Imperial troops as "hideous". Contrary to how the docco tries to re-educate us, an ability to perceive 'race' predates our ability to express it in writing.
I suspect scientists arguing against "racism" are stuck in a time warp, still "refuting" the remnants of their own profession's former teachings (negative points accentuated) as a backdrop for promoting their more recent and otherwise less radical "discoveries".
Another thrust of the docco makers' argument was that observable racial differences are really a continuum - that people got darker as you got closer to Africa and lighter as you approach Norway - that there was no clear line after which people ceased to be biologically European and became biologically African. True enough. But the obvious counter - such an observation is merely a artifact of the political boundaries being more numerous (and thus more finely calibrated) than the so-called "racial" ones, provides a licence for self-deception and skullduggery.
I remember being taught by an equally empbuttioned convert to science in high school that there was no such thing as "cold" (merely "absence of heat" - Absolute Zero representing total absence of heat) and no such thing as "suction" - merely relative differences in air pressure. All of which is not only true, but groundbreakingly so at the time of its first realization by scientists. Nevertheless you can still buy suction pumps that will suck the flesh off your bones if you are gullible enough to believe without further thought everything your teachers tell you. TV commercials still exhort us to "keep out the cold", and we still get goose-bumps from it, scientific illusion or not.
As for the need for clear dividing lines? I seem to recall a much older song thumbing its nose at such appeals to pedantry when it enquired "How high is high, how low is low, and when will we have snow?"
