Race Exhibit
I recently went to the Race exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota. I was initially shocked upon entering because the exhibit immediately confronts the viewer with a history of white supremacy alongside a wide variety of personal descriptions of race. The definitions ranged from stating that race is one’s identity, to the simple characteristic of skin color, to a prescribed variation in society that humans would be better off without. Next to these verbal beliefs was a paragraph, which stated that race is a human invention that is only hundreds of years old, compared to humans thousands of years of history. I was, and still is, used to legitimatize differences among people.
In a small daily survey 41% of the participants voted that race should be eliminated from the US Census. Alongside that was a photo of people who wore shirts that showed how their race was altered in Census history. For example, one woman was a Negro in the 1790s, a black in the 1920, a mullato in the 1970s and a Hispanic in the 1990s. There was also an area that showed scientific evidence that race is not a biological epidemic, it is purely social.
While walking though this exhibit, my friend and I discussed if race could ever truly be eliminated. While, ideally, it would be best for humanity, an immediate end to race could severely hurt some people. The history of racial acts cannot be forgotten, and how those acts affected the human race is still seen today with the cultural, political, and economic, differences among people. Therefore, we concluded that an end to race would have to include assistance to some people in order to begin again with a clean slate and relative equality amongst all people.
Still, there may not be enough time for this to occur. I think that soon, relatively speaking, race will no longer exist because of the melting pot society throughout the world. There are people of all races and ethnicities being born in “foreign locations� everyday. For example, what is the race of a man with dark skin color whose father is Latin and Carribean and mother is black, but the man is born in China. Is he black because of skin tone or Asian because of where he was born? Or, if he moves to the Carribean, would his race change because of his fathers race? There is no clear explination for this complicated life. But this is not unique; in fact it is so common that I believe this mixed race society will soon overrun every country, especially the US.
Comments
I also went to the RACE exhibit. I felt as though it acted as a review for our final test. So much of what was covered were things that were spoken of in our class. I especially appreciated the videos about people's experience with housing and how race affected where they bought their homes (redlining, the affect of blacks moving into white neighborhoods, sound familiar?). Also, I appreciated the corner dedicated to sports mascots and how there were negative as well as positive comments about Native American mascots either offending or honoring Native Americans. I had no idea that some Natives support the mascot from Florida (? I am unfamiliar with mascots so bear with me...) Also, I found the discussion about how race and culture are often overlapped and how easy it is to confuse culture with race and physical characteristics, when really they have nothing to do with each other if you take away the social constructions that have been created to connect cultural things with race. Very fascinating and totally worth my trip.
Posted by: Molly Kay | May 2, 2007 10:01 PM
I went to the race exhibit a while back, and it was very interesting to me as well. I also found the mascot corner intersting, because while I was in high school we had to change out mascot from the "Indians" to the "Wildcats" and it was HUGELY controversial in my town.
My favorite part of the Race exhibit was the area were there were portriats on the wall and the people in the portraits were asked to identify their race, and it was intersting to see how different people choose to identify themselves. I am taking a Race Relations class, so in that class we have gone a lot more in depth with race, and it was interesting to see how the exhibit approached the subject.
Posted by: Steph F. | May 3, 2007 1:04 AM
One special experience that I would recommend for anyone viewing the RACE exhibit in the future is the "Voices" vocal performance done periodically on the weekends. It is a collection of monologues written by Twin-Cities area teens who face many of the inequalities we explored in class. The performance was particularly powerful for me in that it was done in total darkness, eliminating any judgments or stereotypes that might affect the experiences that are shared.
Sometimes I feel we spend too much time focusing on theory and research that we forget that there are people of color experiencing these issues every day. I reflect on "Voices" often now to remind myself the importance of being active every day.
Posted by: Amy D. | May 4, 2007 3:42 PM
I attended the Race exhibit last weekend followed by a Race workshop put on by the Penumbra Theater. The exhibit itself I thought was very impressive on provocative considering its typical audience and the for the context of this exhibit. A few part of the exhibit really resonated in me, but specifically for me the workshop I attended afterward was much more affectve.
One of the exercises we did was pull out our driver's licenses and looked at them and thought about if these were aht really identified ourselves as people. Then we thought and talked about all of the things that were not on our driver's licenses. We discussed which things are more important to us than others and which things we would want people to remember about us if we were found with only driver's licenses on us.
I think this was an extremely affective exercise and also workshop because it forced us to look at ourselves as humans with similaries and differences but also as people who have these small little cards that hold all of our basic information. I echo the last paragraph of the following comment, that I think it is important to be active everyday and that maybe the first step to tackling racism in a more active way is to start looking at eachother and our commonalities rather than our differences so often.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 5, 2007 2:45 PM