Episode II: The Story We Tell

Episode II: The Story We Tell

Before viewing (Short Answer)

1. How long do you think the idea of race has been around?

2. Where did the concept of race come from?

3. How do beliefs about race influence beliefs about what it means to be civilized?

4. Do you think Africans were enslaved in the Americas because they were deemed inferior, or were they deemed inferior because they were enslaved? Why?

Viewing (Short Answer)

5. What are some ways that race has been used to rationalize inequality?

6. How has race been used to shift attention (and responsibility) away from oppressors and toward the targets of Oppression?

7. Why was it not slavery but freedom and the notion that “all men are created equal” that created a moral contradiction in colonial America, and how did race help
resolve that contradiction?

8. Contrast Thomas Jefferson’s policy to assimilate American Indians in the 1780s with Andrew Jackson’s policy of removing Cherokees to west of the Mississippi in the
1830s:

A. What is common to both policies?

B. What differentiate Jefferson from Jackson?

REFLECTIONS (Essay Responses)

9. What is the connection of American slavery to prejudices against African-descended peoples? Why does race persist after abolition?

10. What is the connection of World War II to prejudice against or stereotypes of Asian Americans? Why do these stereotypes persist?
11. What is the significance of the episode’s title, “The Story We Tell?”
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