Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequity
Dr. Shakti Butler
This 7-minute clip is from the film, Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequity (2010), produced by Dr. Shakti Butler, who has a PhD from the California Institute of Integral Studies in the School of Transformative Learning and Change. In this clip, we hear a series of speakers reflect on the personal and social dynamics of “structural racism”: Barbie-Danielle DeCarlo, Rinku Sen, Suzanne LePeintre, Tilman Smith, Tim Wise, Robin Parker, and Yuko Kodama. As you watch this film clip, consider how the order of the speakers encourages us to contextualize the personal experiences we hear with theories about racism as “codes of power” in the context of history. The full film—and other short clips—is viewable at crackingthecodes.org.
Source:crackingthecodes.org
Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequity ©2012 World Trust world-trust.org
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Reading as a Writer: Analyzing Rhetorical Choices
After watching Cracking the Codes, consider the questions below. Then “submit” your response.
1. What key terms can you pull out of this film clip? (For example, consider “unconscious bias,” “entitlement,” “codes of power,” and other terms you find compelling.) Define them as best you can, using this clip, and develop your definitions with insights from readings in the “Sociology” chapter. How do the personal experiences described in this film connect to these key terms?
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2. Visit the Web site crackingthecodes.org and spend at least 15 minutes looking through the resources offered that relate to the film. The first image offered in the “Learning Modules” section, titled the “System of Racial Inequity Graphic,” might be especially interesting to discuss in relation to the film clip. Try to place the speakers’ insights on this graph, and discuss your rationale.
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Writing as a Reader: Entering the Conversation of Ideas
After watching Cracking the Codes, consider the question below. Then “submit” your response.
1. Authors Agustín Fuentes and Peggy McIntosh from this chapter are perhaps most explicit in conversation with this film. Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald’s ideas about “blind spots” from Chapter 15 also intersect with this film clip. Choose one or more authors and work with a partner or a group to develop specific connections between the theories and examples in the film clip and theories and examples in the reading(s). Share those connections with the larger class, or use them as the starting point for more developed writing about the ways racism works in U.S. culture, and how we might take steps to alter those dynamics.
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