"In the news, Terrell's killing...was just another story." Nickcole's comment seemed to reflect her sense that Terrell's shooting and death had been discounted in the major media as simply another example of "Black-on-Black" violence; just another example of the moral chaos and violence so characteristic of inner-city Black neighborhoods. Nickcole seemed to reflect her understanding of the insidious nature of the racial worldview that dismissed and disregarded the welfare and well being of African Americans.

The Racial Worldview

Race is and has been a pervasive component of American thought and experience. It has been so fundamental and intrinsic to how Americans see and explain the functioning of the world, its meaning or reality is rarely questioned. Race has been used as the ultimate classification of social identity, effecting how we interact with and are influenced by others. Indeed, race has been seen as such a part of the "natural order" of things that the mere physical variation in humans has been used as evidence of its existence and as justification of mistreatment of broad cross-sections of the human family.

Race, as used and furthered in the US, is essentially about worth and inequality of status; it reflects unassailable social distances; it represents ideas of profound and unbridgeable difference. It is an idea based on the fundamental inequality of humans due to phenotypic differences. Race, as a strategy for organizing the worth of humans, has had long term and significant impact on every institution, idea and system of beliefs existing in the world today.

These differences, and the resulting sense of difference, are structured into US society through division of housing; education, training and income disparity; pervasive social taboos against socializing and intermarriage; social restrictions against common memberships in organizations (notably the church); and virtually all means for transmitting culture-music, arts, literature, theater, television, film, recreational activities, businesses, politics and political forums, educational institutions and scientific research.

The Collins family exists under this powerful and racial worldview-a worldview that classifies humans as exclusive members of different groups; judges groups as better or worse based on their similarity to Northern European groups; assumes external physical qualities reflect inferior internal realities; and believes these qualities are passed down from one generation to the next.

Discussion Questions

• What impact does race have on the Collins family's social existence? In what ways have their lives been impacted by their treatment as a Black family?
• When Nickcole comments, " I am embarrassed because of welfare...[and Mom] not having a job," what impact does the racial worldview have on her? How much is she internalizing the devalued worth of her family by the larger white society?
• Wanda said that other people didn't have respect for her, when discussing her drug use. What impact did racism have on her sense of lack of respect from others?
• What might have been the impact on the Collins family of having the majority of help-providers, at least depicted in the film, be white?
• What impact does the racial worldview have on the development of large-scale underdeveloped urban housing developments? Does the presumption that "those people just live like that," impact the provision of basic services to urban communities where Black people live?
• How comfortable or uncomfortable is it to discuss seriously the impact of the racial worldview on the life conditions of African Americans? How does the difficulty discussing race affect the development of strategies to reduce its negative influence on families like the Collinses?
• What avenues are currently available to address the deleterious effects of the racial worldview and racism on African Americans? On other ethnic groups? On US society as a whole?
• What role can youth service organizations have in addressing the impact of the racial worldview and elevating African American cultural expressions and viability?
• What might you, your agency or constituents do to challenge the hold the racial worldview has on our understanding of human difference in the US? What support do you need from others?