Family Guy

1) http://www.adultswim.com/video/?episodeID=00ded3c30cb08b1c0010013a8105168d
Family Guy – Episode 43 “Peter Griffin: Husband, Father… Brother?” Scene – “I Was There”.

2) I chose the Family Guy episode called “Peter Griffin: Husband, Father…. Brother?”. I chose this episode because Peter Griffin, a white man, discovers after many years that he has a black ancestor named Nate Griffin (Family Guy). During this episode, during the scene called “I Was There” Peter Griffin goes to a meeting of the town’s African Americans to relate to his “black brothers”. During this meeting Cleveland talks about how he was given reparations from the white family that used to own his ancestors. The he mentions how the reparations are rice krispy treats because the family was poor, and decides to share them. As he hands them to Peter another black man states “he doesn’t look very black to me”. I chose this article because it shows how race is more than skin deep and how certain races are lost in a person due to the color of their skin. This article relates to the first video we watched about how race skin does not define race.

3) This episode of Family Guy relates to the video Race I because the video mentions how race is more than skin deep. The video mentioned how certain races were lost due to skin color. An example of this was how Colin Powell was recognized as being African American, but it is never mentioned how he was Irish. This is caused by the fact that his skin is black and how he physically looks African, compared to being a pale, white skinned Irish (Race I). In the episode of Family Guy, Peter Griffin is shocked when he discovers that he has a black ancestor because he does not have any features that resemble being black. The scene that I chose specifically shows how he was not welcomed at first by the other African Americans at the meeting because he did not look black. Since Peter did not have any black features he was never considered to be black, and lost that part of race due to his skin color.

4) I believe that it is easy to judge what race a person would be based on their skin color because it is the first thing a person can see. It seems that it is easy for certain races to be lost in skin color especially if many years have passed. In the case of the Family Guy episode, many years have passed in the Griffin family, which could have easily led to the African features being covered up by the other family features. For example if the family only has a few African Americans in the family then very little traits will be passed down from generation to generation, and if more white people marry into the family than black, then the white characteristics will show more than the black traits. In the case of Powell people believe that he is African American because his black skin is more easily visible than any Irish features. He looks nothing like Irish which leads people to not think that he is part Irish. For example, if he has more Irish personality traits but his skin is black, people are not going to consider him African American because it is easier to see his black skin that his Irish personality.