[nthroNotes Volume 32 No.l Spring 2011ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE RACE PROJECTby Yolanda T. Moses and Joseph Jones
Tbday seems an auspicious time to forge new waysto teach about Race: what it is, and what it isn't —from a biological, cultural, archaeological and lin-guistic perspective. With the election of an "African-Ameri-can" President in 2008, a person whose mother was anAmerican anthropologist and whose father came fromKenya, Barack Obama appears to be forging new ways tobe a bi-racial and multi-faceted American, helping manyapproach the issues surrounding race in new ways.To help teachers and students begin a fruitful dis-cussion about race, the American Anthropological Asso-
ciation (AAA) undertook a major initiative on race, spon-soring a large exhibition Rare: Are We So Different? thatopened at the Science Museum of Minnesota in January2007. With generous support from the National ScienceFoundation and the Ford Foundation, this exhibition isdesigned to change the way teachers in middle school andhigh school teach about race, a subject that Americans, ingeneral, are often reluctant to talk about. In addition, exhi-bition developers designed a family guide to help parentstalk to their children about race: http://www.understandingrace.org/resources/for_families.htrnl.The guide presents activities, stories, and exercises for par-ents and children to do together as well as offering sugges-tions for discussions about race.Through the lenses of science, history, and how
race is lived in "everyday life," project developers provided
a platform for discussing one of our society's most com-plex issues — using the disciplinary lens of anthropology.The goal of the Race:Are We So Different? Projectwas to produce a traveling exhibit, a website, and educa-tional materials to convey a comprehensive and integrativestory about race and human variation. The story, gearedfor middle-school students through adults, carries three
overall messages:
• Race is a recent human invention;
• Race is about culture, not biology;
• Race and Racism are embedded in our institutionsand everyday life.The exhibit and its website explore three themes:
• The history of the idea of race;
• The science ofhuman variation;
• The experience of living with race and racism.As described in an earlierAnthroNotes article (Spring2007) by Margaret Overbey, the website,www.understandingrace.org. includes a virtual tour of theRACE exhibit, videos, historical timelines, activities, andquizzes, as well as scholarly papers. Teachers and familiescan access further education materials in the website's re-sources section. Two teacher's guides — for middle school
Calipers and hair samples are among the tools scientistsused to measure human differences from early to mid-1900s.The calipers belonged to William Montague Cobb, the firstAfrican American physical anthropologist. Photo: Mary Mar-garet Overbey.
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and high school teachers — present race and human varia-tion through the integrated lenses of biology, culture, andhistory. The guides meet national and select state standardsfor science, biology, social studies, and social science andprovide more than 10 lesson plans that address biologicaland cultural variation, and the experience of living with
race and racism. The teacher's guides include some of thebackground material and lesson plans published in a re-lated resource for teachers, How Real is Race?A Sourcebook
on Race, Culture, and Biology by Carol Mukhopadhyay, Rose-marv Henze, and Yolanda Moses (2007).Today, the main exhibition continues its nationaltour to more than twelve cities across the country, includ-ing Washington, D.C., where it will open at the NationalMuseum ofNatural History onJune 1 8, 201 1 . Visit http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibit/race for events at the NaturalHistoryMuseum. The exhibition closes December 31, 201
1
and then continues its national tour through 201 4. In addi-tion to the main exhibition, there is a second 5,000 sq. ft.version of the exhibit and a third 1 500 sq. ft. version ofthe exhibit designed so that smaller exhibit spaces aroundthe nation can take advantage of this tremendous resource.
Currently, we are in the process of learning fromteachers who have used the project materials whether ornot these materials met their expectations, and whether theyhave changed the way they approach the subject of race inteaching the social sciences, the biological sciences, as well
as archaeology. We are seeking additional funding fromNSF for this new project.What has really surprised us in the years since theRACE exhibit began with its award-winning website is the
realization that there is such a strong need and desire for aconversation about race in America — well beyond teach-
ers and students. Anthropological materials from the RACEproject have, indeed, stirred conversations in museums andin both 9-12 and university and college classrooms. Butsuch discussions have also been generated in rural, subur-ban, and urban communities; in civil society and social jus-tice groups and organizations; in corporate boardrooms;
Piles of money show the wealth disparities that exist amongthose who identify as White, Asian, African American, andHispanic/Latino. Photo: Mary Margaret Overbey.
in arts organizations; in state agencies (for example, the childprotection agency of Texas); and in government circles,including local, state and federal governmental organiza-tions and agencies.Looking AheadAs the U.S. public confronts the notion that race and rac-ism are more complex, nuanced, and prevalent than manybelieve, now is the time to ask collectively— as anthropolo-gists and as educators — what are the next stepsfor a public
anthropology of raceproject? Consider the following:
• Does the integration of concepts such as "globalvision" and "social and emotional literacy" intoeducational standards and frameworks provide anopportunity to promote RACE and anthropologymore systematically in schools?
• Since any long-term public education programabout RACE must involve a K-12 educationalcomponent, how can theAAA partner with K-12teachers toward this end?
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• The Race project's key messages were developedseveral years ago for a broad public. How canwe combine additional ethnographic and otherforms of anthropological knowledge to elabo-
rate upon these messages and produce new pro-gramming illuminating the dynamics of race andracism? What new research topics and findingsshould inform this process? How can we bestdeal with genetics and race?
• What greater role can anthropology departmentsplay in developing and implementing RACE pro-gramming especially given that the smaller versionof the exhibit will likely be seen in university and
college venues? Is there a special role for graduatestudents who comprise the next generation of
anthropologists and often assume important teach-ing responsibilities in introductory-level under-graduate courses?
• How can the RACE project be used in efforts todevelop, maintain, and perhaps repair relationshipsbetween universities and their surrounding com-munities including local schools?
• Among anthropologists, what are the prospectsfor, and impediments to, the types of intra- andinterdisciplinary commitments necessary for ad-dressing today's and tomorrow's social problems?For example, is there a broad social justice visionof human difference that can guide RACE andposition it as a platform for future public engage-ment projects?There are many other important questions and is-sues to consider, and we must all work together to con-tinue this work. Please send your comments and sugges-tions to Yolanda Moses at yolanda.moses@ucr.edu and toJoseph Jones at josjones@anfhro.umass.edu.We hope that educators reading this article will lookfor the exhibit when it comes to their area. (See aaanet.org/race for a schedule.). If you are in the Washington, DC
area, the Smithsonian has arranged many public events at
A turn of the century ceremonial vest with American flagsstands in contrast to signs illustrating discrimination. Theexhibit explores "white" as a racial category. Photo: MaryMargaret Overbey.
several Smithsonian museums. Visit http://www.mnh.si.edu/race for an events listing.References Cited
Overbey, Mary Margaret. 2007. RACEAre We So Different?A NewPublic Education Program. AntbroNotes (Spring): 15-17.Gomez, F, M. M. Overbey, J. Jones, and A. Beckrich. 2007. RACE:Are We So Different?A Family Guide to Talking About Race, http://
www.understandingrace.org/resources/for_families.html.
Mukhopadhyay, Carol, Rosemary Henze and Yolanda Moses. 2007.How Real is Race?A Sourcebook on Race, Culture, and Biology. Rowman& Litdefield Education.
Yolanda T. Moses, National Co-Director of the Race Project,is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Califor-nia Riverside.
Joseph Jones, Project Director, RACE Project, Phase II, is aPhD candidate in Biological Anthropology at the University
of Massachusetts, Amherst.
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