The Invention of Race - Airs Feb 24th

The Invention of Race from the Center for Documentary Studies ~
Tonight, we trace the development of racial, and racist, ideas, from the ancient world -- when "there was no notion of race," as historian Nell Irvin Painter puts it -- up to the founding of the United States. Our country was fundamentally a nation of and for white people despite the "all men are created equal" language found in the Declaration of Independence. We'll also hear from National Book Award-winning historian Ibram Kendi and the Racial Equity Institute. Host and reporter John Biewen ultimately tells us a storied history of racism and names names: The Portuguese writer who was commissioned in the 1450s by the slave-trading leaders of his country to literally invent blackness and whiteness. The enlightenment scientist who first divided humanity into five "races." The runaway indentured servant in 17th century Virginia whose capture, and sentencing to lifelong servitude, marked the first official sanctioning of chattel slavery, and the first time a black person was treated differently from a white person in colonial American law. We'll also take a fresh look at the "Anglo-Saxonist" thinking of Thomas Jefferson and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

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