Race: The Power of an Illusion : The House We Live In (2003)

Genres - Science & Technology, Historical Film  |   Sub-Genres - Race & Ethnicity, Sociology, Biological Sciences, Social History  |   Run Time - 60 min.  |   Countries - United States  |  
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Synopsis

Conclusion. "The House We Live In" explores reasons why race matters---economically, if not biologically---as it traces shifts in racial attitudes during the 20th century. At first, being "fully white" (as historian Mae Ngai puts it) did not apply to immigrants, but by World War II, enough had "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps" to join the club. Left out were blacks and Latinos, who were largely excluded from postwar suburbs---thanks in part to Federal Housing Authority lending policies. "It was constructing whiteness," says legal scholar John Powell. "Geography did the work of Jim Crow laws." C.C.H. Pounder narrates.

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Keywords

race/ethnicity, social-conventions, misconception, human-origins, biology, culture [social culture], economics, social-inequality, wealth