Edward Liebow

In 2007, AAA launched an award-winning website (www.UnderstandingRace.org) to accompany the traveling museum exhibition, RACE: Are We So Different? The exhibition and web site explore three main themes: (1) the science of human variation, (2) the history of the idea of race, and (3) the contemporary experience of racism in the United States. The story line challenges misconceptions, provides educational lessons about the evolution of skin color variation, recounts the traits that scientists have used in the past to demarcate races and the inadequacies of these outdated theories, upends assumptions about racial and ethnic differences, and traces the history of inequality and privilege in the United States. The website offers freely downloadable resources such as community conversation guides, grade-appropriate teaching guides, and extensive bibliographies linking visitors to anthropological scholarship. The website also includes the multimedia interactives that the exhibition visitor would encounter in a museum gallery. Foundation support will match Association resources to update the website, with the help of an expert advisory committee, improving site navigation so that anthropological scholarship is presented in accessible, legible fashion for a wide audience, re-setting the standards for conventional wisdom when it comes to matters of intervention to overcome race-based social injustices.