The Race Exhibit and Biomedicine

http://www.understandingrace.org/

“Understanding Race: Are We So Different” is a museum exhibit constructed by the American Anthropological Association based on the cultural conception of race and the biological relationship to human variation and differences in skin color. According to biologists, anthropologists, historians and many other academics involved in the project everybody shares a similar ancestry but the differences we see are formulated from “migration, marriage and adaption to different environments (Race: Are We So Different).” As the website for the exhibit presents race has been a part of our society for quite some time and only relatively recently has it being exposed as cultural rather than a biological difference adapted from different environments. Thus, racism had also been an infamous part of our society, for instance using race as a measure of social hierarchy. Unfortunately the concept of race had been embedded so deeply into our culture the exhibit put on by the American Anthropological Association still cannot eliminate the mainstream understanding that race makes us biologically and culturally different.

Points from “Tenacious Assumptions in Western Medicine” reminded me of some similar concepts with the fundamental idea of race, in terms of biology and society, in the exhibit “Understanding Race”. Biologically the variation in skin color comes from the variation in environment from the beginning of human evolution. Jablonski, contributing anthropologist on the race exhibit, states that “strong sun exposure damages the body…the solution was to evolve skin that was permanently dark so as to protect against the sun’s more damaging ways (Race: Are We So Different).” Furthermore, the difference in skin color also evolved to balance the body’s absorption of Vitamin D and promote folate based on proximity to the sun. Thus human variation in terms of skin color developed due to the idea of survival of the fittest: adapt or die (Race: Are We So Different). In turn, African Americans have the darkest skins because their ancestors were closest to the equator (i.e. Africa).

Socially though, according to geneticist Richard Lewontin “race was imported into biology…from social practice.” Society attempted to use race to understand biological differences. This was because we wanted to be able to explain skin color in terms of placing people in a hierarchy to use for white peoples advantage. As the exhibit explains, “Linking race to biology led to a “race science” that attempted to legitimize race as biological face and account for differences in peoples (The Race Exhibit Homepage).” Our society’s has attempted to apply various meanings to different skin colors in order to explain biological differences throughout history.

In Gordon’s article she argues that biomedicine measures and maps out the objective world; she categorizes it into naturalism and individualism. We can relate the basic interpretation she uses for biomedicine to race concepts. She states that, “Biomedicine speaks beyond its explicit reductionist reference through the implicit ways it teaches us to interpret ourselves, our world, and the relationships between humans, nature, self and society (Gordon 19).” We can compare this to how the American Anthropological Association interprets how race has been conceived culturally. Like biomedicine interprets how we see self, society and different relationships race has constructed how we view the people around us, different societies and relationships based on class, location, and of course the unavoidable color of our skin. In Gordon’s essay she presents that biomedicine “claim[s] neutrality and universality ,” however studies do reveal that it is ultimately a social contract (Gordon 20). Alike with human skin variation it is also upheld in a social contract that shape how we are perceived and even shapes how we choose to behave.

Gordon presents a fundamental concept of naturalism, a concept within biomedicine, which argues that “Nature is Separate from Culture (Gordon 27).” She argues that nature is “independent from culture but prior to it (Gordon 27).” This immediately sparked my attention in relation to the race exhibit because the human body should be independent from race and it was before it. Furthermore, she also argues in this same concept on page 27 that “Culture is a superficial, some-times thing” and also that “diversity is really only skin deep.” If we look at these two statements in relation to the race exhibit and the meaning of race versus human variation, I find that in naturalism culture is superficial however in terms of humans, culture is deeply rooted and how mainstream society looks at skin color is superficial.

The goal of the exhibit is to help us understand that race is a cultural construct that has been internalized through movements in the United States (i.e. slavery, the search for equality). Gordon argues that “From a healing model [biomedicine] is rapidly expanding into a moral and engineering one, increasingly ‘remaking’ humans not in natures image but in its own (Gordon 20).” To sum up this concept in comparison with my argument in relation to race; I find that the ultimate relationship between the exhibit and how Gordon explains biomedicine as continuously evolving through our culture. Although we say race is strictly culturally and human skin variation is biological it has shaped many movements in our history and continues to shape the language we use to describe or discriminate against various populations. Likewise, Gordon’s overarching argument is that biomedicine is actually argued as becoming cultural due to how it is used and who accepts it in Western medicine.