Race: Power of an Illusion This second episode of the PBS series, "The Story we Tell" discusses how race and racism developed in this country. Surprisingly, the series experts believe race has a history, and develops over time, and "that it is constructed by society to further certain political and economic goals" ("Race"). The episode begins with narration that leads into the controversial words of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that he found blacks inferior to whites in "body and mind." The episode suggests that Thomas Jefferson was then the first American to theorize race in the country. The episode then goes on to discuss the juxtaposition of Jefferson's theory that "all men are created equal" with his own slaveholding and clear approval of slaveholding in the United States. Does this mean that the founding fathers felt those of color were "less than" men?

The episode then discusses early history in the colonies, before race was an issue. The narrator states, "Blackness and whiteness were not yet clear categories of identity" ("Race"). In fact, religion...

Before the influx of slaves into the country, the lowest class in America was the indentured servants from Europe, who came to the country for a new start, but first had to serve their owners for a specific amount of time. When this source of cheap labor began to disappear, planters began to turn to black slaves for their work-intensive crops like tobacco, and later cotton. The white indentured servants began to move up the social ladder, leaving the blacks on the bottom rung. It was during this time that "white" and "black" began to take on additional meaning, and whites, even at the lowest social levels, began to distance themselves from blacks.
Indians, at first, were not seen as a separate race, but as descendents of the European race, and so, they were salvageable and worthwhile, unlike the lower-class blacks. Indian wars changed the way many people viewed Indians, but one of the reasons Indians were sent to reservations was because the people felt if they could convert them to white ways, they could…