(Name-mce) ListServ Teaching America About Race

[Anselmo Villanueva]

January 11, 2007

Teaching America About Race

Article below: http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/01/11/race

Race - Are We So Different:

http://www.understandingrace.org/home.html

For more information:

Mary Margaret (Peggy) Overbey, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator and Project Director
Understanding Race and Human Variation
American Anthropological Association
2200 Wilson Blvd., Suite 600
Arlington, VA 22201
Tel: 703.528.1902 x3006
Email: poverbey at aaanet.org

One thing is certain: Americans have strong perceptions — and
misperceptions — about the meaning and significance of race.
Attempting to poke holes in prejudices and provide the latest
scientific and scholarly understanding of the issue, the American
Anthropological Association has created an interactive educational
program called RACE: Are We So Different? Also featured is a traveling
museum exhibition, and project organizers are developing educational
materials for teachers and organizing future conferences.

"We have taken a comprehensive look at race in America and have spent
five and a half years pulling this together," said Peggy Overbey, the
program's project director.

The project's Web site presents quizzes, timelines and other
interactive activities designed to consider questions on the history
of race in America, human variation across the planet, and race as a
"lived experience."

The interactive timeline is especially helpful, as it allows students
to track race in America as it evolved in government, science and
society. For instance, clicking on "Government: 1830s-1850s," opens a
page that explains how the U.S. and Mexican governments handled race
differently after the Mexican American War.

In another section, titled "Lived Experience," users can test their
knowledge of facts and stereotypes concerning race and sports. While
the anthropologists generally emphasized race as a cultural construct,
they acknowledged that physical variations can be found in different
groups. One question and answer read: "Blacks dominate basketball
because they are taller and can jump higher." "Partly True." It went
on to explain that some studies have found that black athletes have
relatively leaner bodies with more muscle mass, broader shoulders and
larger quadriceps compared to whites. However, it is not known if this
pattern found in elite athletes can be applied to the white and black
populations in general.

The museum exhibit recently opened at the Science Museum of Minnesota,
and Overbey said that more than a dozen other museums have expressed
interest and have already signed letters to host the exhibit through
the middle of 2011.

Janis Hutchinson, professor of anthropology at the University of
Houston, said that the exhibit brought back personal memories of
segregation and hit on several issues of race that continue to
dominate American discourse. "This exhibit gets at the impact of how
we live our life every day," she said.

Both the exhibit and the Web site underscore three key themes:

- How we define race has changed over time, and its very concept is of
recent human invention and shaped by groups that hold power.
- Race is a cultural phenomenon that places people into groups
according to arbitrary biological and cultural characteristics.
- Race does not accurately describe human variation.
- Race and racism are embedded in our culture and shape our
understanding of ourselves and those around us.
- Racism is less overt than in the past, yet discrimination continues
and racism holds sway over many of our daily choices.

At a news conference Wednesday, several advisers to the program
weighed in on the issue. "We can conflate the idea of race as a lived
experience, with race as genetics," said Alan Goodman, president of
the anthropology group and professor of anthropology at Hampshire
College.

Jeff Long, a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan
Medical School, said that, because of recent advances in genetic
sequencing, scientists have learned a great deal about patterns that
can be found in the human genome. "These patterns are not captured
well by our classic definition of race," he said.

Those who avoided science in college need not fear getting lost in a
sea of unfamiliar terminology. The Web site carries a list of terms
from genetics and biology to carry you through the tough parts.

Arlene Torres, associate professor of anthropology at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said that she feels the project will
give students a better grasp of race, the history of racism, and how
people can discriminate without really knowing it. "My hope is that
this exhibit and Web site are a new beginning for a discussion about
race in America," she said.

— Paul D. Thacker