COLUMBUS, Ind. — “Race: The Power of An Illusion,” will be presented for free online at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday as part of Black History Month. The African American Fund has organized the event in conjunction with the Bartholomew County Public Library and the Council for Youth Development Bartholomew County.
Aida Ramirez, director of the Columbus Human Rights Commission, will moderate the virtual panel discussion with area youth will focus on three one-hour videos related to social justice and race relations. The videos will not be shown as part of the panel discussion.
The videos are:
“The Difference Between Us”: Examines the contemporary science—including genetics—that challenges the assumption that human beings can be bundled into three or fundamentally different groups according to their physical traits.
“The Story We Tell”: Uncovers the roots of the race concept in North America, the 19th-century science that legitimized it, and how it can be held so fiercely in the Western imagination.
“The House We Live In”: Asks if race is not biology, then what is it? The episode uncovers how race resides not in nature but politics, economics and culture.
People can register for the event at EventsLogbook.com/events/race-the-power-of-an-illusion.
The African American Fund in conjunction with the Heritage Fund, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbus and the Human Rights Commission launched virtual film viewings last year, featuring “Good Trouble” (on the life of the late congressman John Lewis) and “The Fight,” highlighting current American Civil Liberties Union social justice cases.
The Bartholomew County Public Library has a subscription to the Kanopy streaming service. People can view the films for free with three days time allowed to view each film. All viewers need is a library card.
For those without a library card: Go to my mybcpl.org and My Account. From there, one can obtain a digital-only card.
