What's Race Got to Do with It?

Facilitator Guide available for download now! See link above.

Visit the companion Web site (www.whatsrace.org) for discussion questions, action steps, suggested group activities and more.

Ten years after Skin Deep, campuses still struggle to attain diversity, create equity, close achievement gaps, and enhance student success for everyone. California Newsreel has produced this new tool to support your diversity goals.

Despite 15 years of diversity programs and initiatives, many of our discussions about race remain mired in confusion. Even a casual observer can't help but notice how structural racism is ignored, how multiculturalism is confused with equality, and how many campuses remain hamstrung in their efforts to become more inclusive and welcoming of everyone. Ironically, in responding to surveys, many students claim they already know all they need to know about diversity and they shy away from opportunities to engage in interracial dialogue and understanding.

What's Race Got to Do with It? is a new 49-minute documentary film that goes beyond identity politics, celebratory history and interpersonal relations to consider social disparities and their impact on student success in today's post-Civil Rights world.

In one sense, What's Race Got to Do with It? is a "sequel" to Skin Deep, California Newsreel's compelling 1995 release which has become a core audiovisual 'text' in student affairs and youth programs across the nation. Like Skin Deep, this new film chronicles the experiences of a diverse group of college students - in this case, over the course of a 16-week intergroup dialogue program - as they probe and confront each other about such issues as underrepresentation, the limitations of multiculturalism, social equity, affirmative action, and their own responsibilities for making a difference.

This film goes further than Skin Deep however, by showing the incremental learning and attitudinal change that can occur over the course of a sustained dialogue and by illuminating the stark differences that exist between students on the same campus.

Given the paucity of films whose subject is our own complex set of racial beliefs, What's Race Got to Do with It? has quickly become a key resource for educators, youth leaders and advocates concerned with strengthening young people's commitment to a more equitable democracy - one that works for everyone.

Major funding provided by Lumina Foundation for Education. Additional funding provided by the Akonadi Foundation, Nu Lambda Trust and the Eastman Fund.

RESOURCES

Visit the companion Web site (www.whatsrace.org) for discussion questions, action steps, suggested group activities and more.

Facing You, Facing Me, a book about the U.C. Berkeley/Stiles Hall Intergroup Dialogue Program featured in the film

The University of Michigan Program on Intergroup Relations - a national model for dialogue

Diversity Digest article on Intergroup Dialogue