Race: The Power of Illusion

After last critique, I realized I needed to try and start with a clean slate. I think Matt's comments were the most beneficial - I really hadn't pushed any new ideas that hadn't been done or seen before - the images were only representations of racism - it spoke very little of whiteness, which i've found really difficult to make work about, seeing that it is everywhere yet completely invisible at the same time. I've been trying to educate myself on current issues dealing with racism, mainly those I get from the media, and I think I've just gotten caught up in the things I've been reading, which don't really speak to the idea I'm trying to express. Ideally, I want my images to expose white "normalities" to show their underlying racism. Like the flesh-toned band-aid - Something so overlooked, yet obviously catered towards a white society. I want my images to be so effective that even extremely white anti-racist liberals might even question their own anti-racist beliefs. (I know that's a stretch, but wouldn't it be nice...) So in order to make better images, I've decided to increase my researching efforts in hopes of finding the best way to express whiteness.
This week, I watched Race: The Power of Illusion, an educational video about the history of race. Race - does not exist. It was something created for economic purposes, to establish white people as superior. When Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, he did not include blacks because at that time, they were not even considered people - they were chattel, things to be owned as property. From then on, the white government has been created to maintain that white superiority by not giving equality to all people. After WWII, when the G.I. Bill was established, it gave veterans the opportunity to buy a home and start a family. The same opportunity was not given to blacks. In the documentary, one Vietnam Veteran who moved to Levittown, believes that this was the government's missed opportunity to establish equality. If only they had provided housing for blacks, then perhaps everything would be different today. When President Lyndon B. Johnson eliminated all statements that denied blacks their rights, blacks were then able to move to the suburbs. But within a few years, whites moved out of the neighborhoods, making the homes undesirable to other white people. This became a selling point for realtors. They would inform whites that someone not white moved in next door and would ask, "Do you want to live next to negro?" Then the whites would say no, sell their house, and abandon the neighborhood to be ignored by the government without recieving the funds and attention it needed.
In the 1930's, during the Olympics, Jesse Owens, an African American athlete, won 4 gold metals in track. This shocked white people because he was black - and he was better! After this, scientists set out to determine what made Owens different from white people. They thought, maybe he has an extra muscle in his leg because he;s black? Or maybe he has a genetic dispostion to being a good runner because his ancestors are from Africa and they must have run a lot in the jungles? The search to find the reason why Owens was better was pointless and ridiculous- it had nothing to do with the color of his skin because THERE ARE NO GENETIC MARKERS THAT DEFINE RACE. The human race is the most closely genetic species in the world! Not one DNA can only be found within one race. Someone considered white can have DNA that closely matches someone considered black. It does not matter where you are from, or what you look like. Race only exists in that we are told certain physical attributes define a single person to a certain category, whether it be white, black, asian, or hispanic. Race is only an illusion!