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How do the films from Week 8 & 9 help your learning about race and Racial Formation? Try to focus on a specific example.

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Watching these films in weeks 8 and 9 gave me a deeper understanding of how our structure and representation have built our notions of race, and the stereotypes that uphold the hegemony in our society. Specifically looking into redlining, white flight, and the construction of urban ghettos is highly informational about how we view urban areas today, and the culture around suburban regions.

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"What my grandfather thought was so important that he risked his life for was his birth certificate and several letters of recommendation from white people that he was a legitimate American Citizen" Asian Americans: Breaking Ground (PBS 2020)
This passage really honed my perception of racial formation in America, in which legitimacy is attained only through whiteness or the association with whiteness. Those who came to America and fulfilled all the criteria for citizenship were still not accepted because of the hierarchy of race and American identity that set American as equal to white/Anglo-Saxon. The construct of race permeated legal scopes, and "others" constantly risked their lives to prove themselves in a society that constantly discriminated against and devalued them.

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It was interesting hearing from the Race: Power of an Illusion film that genetically, we are all very similar to one another despite our physical appearances. This made me think about the idea that race is a social construct with real consequences for marginalized groups, and it is not even based on hard scientific evidence.

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The example of Anna May and her experiences in the film industry in early 1900s Hollywood helps me better understand how representation and structure can severely limit and shape one's position in society. Anna May was never able to get the leading role, and was always forced into side-roles and villains, even though she was in every aspect of the industry, even in a film recorded in her home country. This shows how representation influenced the structure that kept her trapped in the background of every film she starred in, and then further how that representation influenced structure that impacted Asian Americans to come, in both the film industry and in general society.

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The film from week eight helped me understand how media impacts how we view race. An example from the video that stood out to me was the example of Anna May Wong, and Asian American actress who was only offered roles that perpetuated Asian stereotypes. Since these were the only things being said about Asian people, this began to form how everyday people viewed Asian people.

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In the "Breaking Grounds" video specifically, it helped me to better understand racial formation because with every group of people, they initially come to the U.S. to just live a better life, but the white people always found a way to connect a social meaning to their race. Examples of this could be placing the Igorots into exhibits or only limiting the Asian American actors to villainous roles.

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The examples of the court cases like Ozawa and Thind that determined that those of Japanese and Indian descent weren’t Caucasian (and thus not eligible for citizenship) shows how fluid the idea of race is and how the power of determining race is really within the hands of those who are part of the bigger political and social structure. In Thind, the Court overruled their “scientific reasoning” for why Ozawa wasn’t considered Caucasian and in the act of doing this, this shows that race isn’t concrete/unchangeable, rather it can be changed to keep certain people disenfranchised. In this case, the power of the Courts are the structure that has the power to implement policies based on race.

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Structure and Representation Feedback Loop

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Structure and Representation Feedback Loop

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Both films provide examples of how structure and representation rely on each other to create racial identity and attach social meanings to race. For example, the first filmed discussed how the Chinese Exclusion Act racialized citizenship and who could be defined as “truly American”. This legislature (structure) sought to preserve a homogenous white society by labeling immigrants as “inferior”. Thus, representation is used to justify structure, and structure is often used to reinforce representation.

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I believe that they allow the watcher to see the different kindS if race and racial formation that is holding throughout the world. Also it helped me get a clearer understanding of how race and racial formation.

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The films from weeks 8 and 9 helped me learn about racial formation because they both talk about how hegemony is an important factor on how races are created in society and the changes they undergo. For example, in both films they talked about the court case of Thind vs. The US, and how the court decided that although Southwest could be caucasian they were not white. This ruling took away the citizenships from many of the southwest asians that had successfully stablished roots in the U.S. and considered themselves Americans.

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These films taught me that race only has power when there is structure and representation to support it. For instance, the Chinese were initially welcomed America because they were able to provide cheap labor for railroad and mining during the 19th century as shown in Breaking Ground. However, the system was set up so that many whites were not able to get labor jobs, so they were angry. This overrepresentation of Chinese in the labor force causes Anti-Chinese sentiment and changes in the structure. This caused Chinese to be discriminated based on their race because they were not seen as American.

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The films from Week 8 & 9 helped me better understand the foundation of this country and the Master Narrative behind it. We saw in the Asian American video the work that many immigrants put into the history of the United States. But this is not taught in schools. Rather, when we think of the US, we think about the "founding fathers" and white people.

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The films from Week 8 and 9 have helped me in learning about race and Racial Formation as they have allowed me to see the ways in which race has been constructed within society. As in the film for this week, they talked about the housing issues that occurred to African Americans after WW2. Many African Americans were not allowed to purchase homes in certain areas due to the fact that the area was mainly white families. White Americans started to see African Americans as a threat to their neighborhood in which I realized that race started to be used within different aspects of society. In the end, race essentially meant nothing without Americans giving meaning to it.

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the asian american films really helped me learn about race and racial formation because they resonated with me becuase i relate to their struggles and identity, im a filipino american and having experienced and learned about our pasta nd connecting it to the films really nailed it to my head. the stories about the family who wanted to be americanized in order to gain more social power in a predominantly white world helped me learn what it was to be asian american and all the social views and understandings it comes with it.