Ethnic Notions argues that African Americans were portrayed on television and in plays in the manner more practical for those in power. This can be seen at the time when slavery was booming and the majority of America was pro-slavery; African Americans were depicted as simple people, or in films the most common was the tall black maid. She was often very loving toward the family she served and seemed very content with her life. Then, when slavery began to become an issue, slaves were depicted in radically different ways. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Once people began to have a negative view of slavery, slaves were portrayed as a people reverting to a certain savagery and in need of a "white man" to help them. Thus, these African American slaves were represented in a way that kept them at the social level desired by those in power. It's a perfect cycle where they were portrayed in such a way that people, the American population, saw them, the slaves, that way and then believed they were acting that way. Race: The Power of an Illusion approaches these ideas in a different but similar way. At the beginning of the documentary Race: The Power of an Illusion, the question arises, what is race and separates the races? Normally, people might think of race as something biological, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Race is a social construct that has persisted since the days of slaves to advance white men of the time. It is an illusion and, in turn, a social construction. All this is a story, a social fugazi. The documentary discusses probably the most "known" thing about race: black athletes have an advantage over white athletes. The belief at the time was that black people had to have something different about their bodies to give them a physical advantage. Obviously these claims are false and based on fictional science, but they were used as a reason to explain why black athletes beat white athletes in the era of eugenics. Race may not be “real” in terms of biology because there are such small differences between people of different skin colors, but race is real in terms of how we perceive a person. Race is very real in how we perceive a person. This could even be seen during the era of slavery, when Thomas Jefferson wrote that black people were savages, while calling Indians brave warriors, because they were closer to being white. This idea that “race” can classify a person has endured and still lives on in modern stereotypes. When asked to watch a TV show, my immediate thought turned to South Park and the Zimmerman episode about the World War. In the episode, Eric Cartman tries to befriend Token, the token black character, because of George Zimmerman's verdict. Cartman believed that the Black Riots would destroy the world and tried to stop them with Token. Obviously, this kind of social commentary is satire, but the underlying idea that black people are savages still resonates as it did in Ethnicity and Race: The Power of Illusion. Even after hundreds of years, people still have this idea that as a society, we white people should still.