The idea of race as biology is persistent on America's playing fields, but it is an idea that is not true.

Trailer: Just because race doesn't exist in biology doesn't mean it isn't very real, helping shape life chances and opportunities.

At the turn of the 20th century, American society was riding a wave of confidence as an emerging industrial power, and the face of its power and prosperity was white. To many, this reflected a preordained natural order.

john a. powell discusses why the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society supports reawakening the RACE: The Power of an Illusion series

"There's as much or more diversity and genetic difference within any racial group as there is between people of different racial groups." -Pilar Ossorio

The biology becomes an excuse for social differences.

Victoria Robinson shares how she uses her favorite clip on redlining in her teaching

When the white residents of Eight Mile Road in Detroit were told they were too close to a Black neighborhood to qualify for a positive FHA rating, they built this six foot wall... Once the wall went up, mortgages on the white properties were approved.

The melting pot never included people of color. Blacks, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, etcetera, could not melt into the pot. They could be used as wood to produce the fire for the pot, but they could not be used as material to be melted into the pot.

If we were to walk from the tropics to Norway, what we would see is a continuous change in skin tone. And at no point along that trip would we be able to say, "Oh, this is the place in which we go from the dark race to the light race."

Think about race in its universality. Where is your measurement device? There is no way to measure race. We sometimes do it by skin color, other people may do it by hair texture ­ other people may have the dividing lines different in terms of skin color.