Exhibition Review - RACE: Are We So Different?

Reviewed at Liberty Science Center, Jersey City, New Jersey March 2008
Erin Peters

Race- as applied to the separation or categorization of humans- is a powerful word. As a concept, race gains most of its potency from the related word, racism. Race also gains power from the familiarity of the word; most people in the U.S. have no idea that race should not be used as a qualifier to separate and segregate human beings. It is simply accepted in the American vernacular.

The exhibition, RACE: Are We So Different?, is designed to defuse and dispel some of that power. The American Anthropological Association, in collaboration with the Science Museum of Minnesota, took on the enormous task of presenting a dialogue to a diverse museum visitorship that summarizes the historical, scientific and cultural meanings of the concept of race.

RACE, as a traveling exhibition, has an impressive tour schedule; the exhibition debuted in January of 2007 at the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul, and has also appeared at the Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, and Exploration Place, Inc. in Wichita. I viewed RACE at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, the fourth venue on the blockbuster tour schedule, in the spring of 2008. The exhibition will continue on to sites in Connecticut, Ohio, Pennsylvania, California, Missouri, Michigan, Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. through 2010. The exhibition is nationally sponsored by the Best Buy Children’s Foundation, local exhibition partners are Alcatel-Lucent and Comcast, and the local presenting sponsor is the Sprint Foundation. The Ford Foundation and the National Science Foundation provided the funding for the exhibition.

RACE aims to challenge visitors to rethink their personally held notions about race. To communicate this, the exhibition is organized into three main sections or themes: the science of human variation, the history of race as a construct and the contemporary experience of race and racism in the United States.

Three main sections—science, history, and contemporary experience—organize the exhibition. Each section contains stations or kiosks and each one of these has a title, a text and a related activity.

Introduction to RACE
The first thing that the visitor sees, when entering RACE, is a large reproduction of a photograph of people on a bus. The photograph itself is quite compelling in its simplicity, but what is perhaps more effective is that as the visitor views the photograph, s/he hears a steady dialogue of people discussing race. This auditory component plays through speakers that are installed above the photograph. Each person begins his or her account with, “race is….”

The visitor can then watch an introductory video that plays in one of the three theaters in the exhibition. The video runs for five and a half minutes and presents a brief history of race in the United States. The narrator begins the video with the question, “what is race?” He also asks, “what do we really know about race?” He then states, “here is what we do know- race was created.” This video is a compelling introduction to the exhibition.

The video tells the visitor that that the foundations of what we know as race began in the European era of exploration. As Europeans settled in the Americas, the concept of race was constructed. The video further tells the visitor that the first laborers in America were European indentured servants. At the time when Africans were forced to come to Virginia in 1619 as slaves, class was determined by wealth, not by physical characteristics. This changed, and race as a concept was established in order for Europeans to secure their domination in the form of a hierarchical caste system.

After democracy was introduced in the United States and the Declaration of Independence was signed, the concept of race was made real by “race science”. Scientists and early anthropologists made their life’s work out of proving that there was a basis for the existence of race in biology. We know now, that this is not the case and that science tells us that all humans share common ancestry. The video tells the visitor that the exhibition aims to address these scientific misconceptions, the effects of race and racism and to create meaningful discussions about these ideas.

The Science of Human Variation
The stations that deal with the science of the human variation include: ‘does skin color equal race’, ‘not for blacks only’, ‘why do we come in different colors’, ‘how are people like avocados?’, ‘how would the U.S. Census have counted you?,’ and ‘what does a person’s appearance really tell you?’ These stations address a variety of scientific and cultural issues from the current understanding of sickle cell disease (‘not for blacks only’) to a discussion of the word race in U.S. government forms such as the Census.

In this section, part of the series Hapa Project by California-based photographer Kip Fulbeck bolsters the exhibition. The Hapa Project consists of portraits that depict people of partial Asian or Pacific Islander descent, and show an individual from the collarbone up, devoid of clothes, heavy makeup, jewelry or glasses. Each person’s handwritten response to the prompt- “I am…” is included in his or her portrait. The person’s ethnicity is listed on the very bottom of the piece. Seventeen portraits are displayed in RACE; Fulbeck’s original project consists of over 1,000 portraits.

The History of the Idea of Race
The exhibition presents the historical narrative of the idea of race in stations that are constructed in a large spoke-like display style. Four main stations project outwards from a center platform. These are: creating race, inventing whiteness, separate and unequal, and human (mis)measure. Each of these stations presents a historical narrative, a video of interviews with scholars and scientists, and some form of historical object.

It is here, in the section on the history of the idea of race, that many of the thoughts that were introduced to the visitor in the introduction are fleshed out. In the station entitled --creating race- the exhibit designers make a case for the idea that race was a fabricated concept created by colonizing Europeans. The traditional racial category of white is explored in the station entitled inventing whiteness. The effects of segregation in the U.S. are the primary issues presented in the separate and unequal station. The last station in this part of the exhibition investigates the convention of “race science” in early science and anthropology.

The Contemporary Experience of Race
Lastly, the visitor experiences some contemporary racial issues that are present in the U.S. today. These issues are discussed in a station that combats the sensationalized view that the American public sees of forensic work on television. Also in this section are stations that deal with the issues of race and the wealth gap, how the colonization of Native American peoples still affects their lives today, how many mascots in the U.S. are viewed as racist stereotypes by the Native American people, and race, public education and affirmative action.

The visitor is invited to sit at a recreated school desk to watch the last video in the exhibition, which is entitled, ‘Where do you sit in the cafeteria?’….. The video is approximately eight minutes long and presents a recreation of a dialogue between high school students in which they discuss how racial issues affect their lives and their experiences at school. The video is a particularly effective part of the exhibition, as the students discuss poignant issues of race, cultural identification and acceptance that are relevant to people of all ages.

I had some difficulty while I was in the reconstructed rowhouse area of this part of the exhibition. I did not know what this section of the exhibition was until I left and could do more research. When I was at the exhibition, I thought it might be a restaurant front and that the ‘reading cards’ were supposed to look like menus. These cards were placed in what looked like a planter at the base of stairs outside of the reconstructed rowhouse. After I left RACE, I found that the section was supposed to be a rowhouse and that the cards were intentionally installed out of reach of young children so that adults could contemplate these issues while their kids experienced other parts of the exhibition.

The ‘reading cards’ were displayed in such a way that I almost missed them. Though the rowhouse with reading cards may have been intended as a space set apart for somber reflection, the placement of these cards communicated to me that they were not of the utmost importance. To my surprise, when I picked them up, I found some of the most important issues and events that could be presented in this exhibition.

These issues and events include the treatment of Vietnamese refugees during the Vietnam War, the Japanese internment camps in California after Pearl Harbor, the land loss at White Earth Reservation, the Cherokee removal and the Trail of Tears and the theft of ranchers’ land in California during the gold strike.

Better signage or infusing the material from the reading cards across the exhibition would have been more effective. My interpretation of the treatment of these topics in RACE is that they were not given the attention that they deserve.

General Thoughts
An impressive gathering of scholars and scientists gives considerable validity to the historical and scientific information. These individuals’ quotes are either reproduced in the written text of a station, or they are recorded as part of one of the many videos playing during the exhibition. The contemporary and cultural information is supported by the opinions and views of many people. These first hand accounts not only make the information valid, but also assist the visitor in identifying with the exhibition.

Although there are many hands-on activities at the various stations in which the visitor can push a button or experiment on a computer, the main source of activity in the exhibition is videos. Some of the videos (of which there are many) are more effective than others. As stated, the introduction and conclusion videos were very interesting. Many of the videos are grouped together on one monitor and the visitor can push a button to hear scholars and scientists discuss multiple issues.

Educational activities and resources that are available to download from the exhibition’s website, created by the American Anthropological Association, also support the exhibition. The exhibition hopes to reach people of all ages, but the primary audience is middle and high school age children. As such, the educational resources range from educators’ guides for middle and high school teachers to a bibliography and scholarly papers available for researchers. There are also a variety of different supporting programs available through the Liberty Science Center, including the Talking Circle program, Teachers Workshops, a Youtube video contest, and a panel discussion designed to address issues of health.

My experience at the exhibition was disrupted by the way in which many of the children, particularly young children, used the space. While I was viewing the exhibition, I witnessed multiple groups of children running, jumping and bouncing off the very components of the exhibition. I feel that the issues in RACE deserve a space where visitors can contemplate them with gravity. In order to signal to audiences that the exhibition is one that requires respect for others, perhaps a transitional space could have been created. It was not until I did research after I left the exhibition that I found that RACE is intended for middle school aged children and above. Perhaps if this transitional space could state that the exhibition is not intended for young children, this kind of behavior could be reduced.

Conclusion
I do believe that RACE accomplished its goals. The topics explored in RACE are of incredible import, and I applaud the AAA, Science Museum of Minnesota and all of the participating venues, including the Liberty Science Center, for offering a place where people can learn and interact with the concept of race. After viewing RACE, how would I answer the question - are we so different? My answer is no, we are not that different, and the only race that is important -- is the human race.

Future Tour Schedule:

• 5/17/08-9/7/08 - Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center | Mashantucket, CT
• 9/27/08-1/4/09 - Cleveland Museum of Natural History | Cleveland, OH
• 1/17/09-4/26/09 - Cincinnati Museum Center | Cincinnati, OH
• 5/23/09-9/7/09 - Franklin Institute | Philadelphia, PA
• 9/26/09-1/1/10 - California Science Center | Los Angeles, CA
• 1/16/10-5/2/10 - Missouri Historical Society History Museum | St. Louis, MO
• 5/22/10-9/6/10 - To Be Determined
• 9/25/10-1/1/11 - Kalamazoo Valley Museum | Kalamazoo, MI
• 1/15/11-5/1/11 - Museum of Science | Boston, MA
• 5/21/11 - 12/25/2011 - National Museum of Natural History | Washington, DC