RaceWorks Videos

Doing Race

People often think about race as something that people “are” rather than as actions that people “do.” People “do race” as they engage with the historical and cultural ideas, institutions, and interactions that structure the world they live in and shape their everyday experiences. As such, race functions as a system of social distinction that produces and reproduces hierarchies of difference, power, and inequality. This short film explores how people “do race” and why understanding how we “do race” is necessary to “undo racism.”

1 – Doing Race

Featured Stanford scholars: Jennifer DeVere Brody, Harry Elam, Tomás Jiménez, Hazel Rose Markus, Paula Moya, C. Matthew Snipp

Doing Race | Undoing Racism

How do people “do race” through immigration, emotion, performance, literature, and other important domains of life? What can we do to start to “undo racism” and challenge inequality in those domains? These short films take a deeper dive into how people “do race” across these different topic areas and how we can leverage research-based insights and recommendations to “undo racism.”

2 – Immigration & Assimilation

Featured Stanford scholar:  Tomás Jiménez

3 – Immigration & Migration

Featured Stanford scholar:  Ana Raquel Minian

4 – Emotion

Featured Stanford scholar:  Jeanne Tsai

5 – Literature

Featured Stanford scholar:  Paula Moya

6 – Performance

Featured Stanford scholar:  Harry Elam

7  – Systems Thinking

Featured Stanford scholar:  Hazel Rose Markus, Paula Moya, and Tomás Jiménez

Racial Perception

How does race shape how people perceive, understand, and relate to others? How does race shape how we see ourselves? People’s biases, frameworks, and stereotypes about race have significant consequences for who is seen as good, right, normal, and valuable and who is seen as bad, deviant, abnormal, and less valuable. This short film investigates how racial perception matters for how people “do race” in law enforcement, education, and literature.

8 – Racial Perception | Doing Race

Featured Stanford scholars: Jennifer DeVere Brody, Jennifer Eberhardt, Hazel Rose Markus, Paula Moya, Jonathan Rosa

How people perceive race is not fixed or static—it can be contested and changed. This short film explores research-driven insights, recommendations, and solutions for how people can undo racism in racial perception.

9 – Racial Perception | Undoing Racism

Featured Stanford scholars: Jennifer DeVere Brody, Jennifer Eberhardt,  Hazel Rose Markus, Paula Moya, Jonathan Rosa

Animated Concept Guides

People often think that race is a “thing” or an essential characteristic that people have or are. Race is better understood as a “doing,” or the actions that people engage in as they interact with one another and the institutions and practices of society. This animated video explains what it means to view race as a thing vs. race as a doing.

10 – Race as a Thing vs. Race as a Doing

How do people “do race” in society? Race operates across different levels of society: the individual level, the interactional level, the institutional level, and the ideological level. These levels can be represented in a useful tool called the “culture cycle.” This animated video explains how people “do race” through the culture cycle.

11 – Doing Race through the Culture Cycle