Activity: Film and Discussion series
Host: Moray House Trust
Sponsor: Germans Restaurant
Date: Thursday 22nd January 2015
Moray House Trust hosted the second in a series entitled, ‘Race: A Guided Discussion’. The series is an apolitical, knowledge-sharing initiative facilitated by Dr. Paloma Mohamed, social psychologist on sabbatical from the University of Guyana and supported by Moray House Trust. This particular session, ‘Race: Burning the Illusion’, was sponsored by Germans Restaurant. All sessions are free and open to the public.
This second session was well attended with more diversity in the audience in terms of “race”, gender, age and socio-economic standing.
The film shown this week attempts to trace the origins and impact of the idea of race albeit in an American context. This second film answered some of the questions of the first session but raised others:
- What is the effect of specifically Guyanese history on race relations?
- What were the key determinants of racist ideologies?
- Why is it that people of the so called same “race” can oppress and victimize others ?
- The effect of culture on conceptions of race?
- How does one navigate racist spaces ?
- How does one guard against racism in Guyana?
- How does one raise “mixed race” children?
- Is it even possible or essential to have “race” go away?
After the screening, the discussion returned to some questions raised in the first week and then some others arising from this film. “Race is an idea”, explained Dr Mohamed, “ – a 
particular way of looking at humanity – which was not sent down by any deity but created by humans to explain physical differences observed.”
Clips from these sessions will be posted in due course..