Racial Projects

As we grow up in our individual cultures, race is a classification tool that is embedded into our thoughts and understanding of the world. It is argued that race is a biological difference when there is no scientific proof that race is a way to classify people. This quote explains the way that race is projected through our “feelings, emotions and the body”. These are all things that we use every day as a way to express our opinions. This image shows the different skin colors that we use to decipher and classify individuals. All of these individuals make up a whole face; however, when we look at each part of the face, we are able to intuitively label their skin color and associate them with different stereotypes. This intuition is the “truth of race” that we are taught to believe and the way that racial projects operate through our opinions. The skin color reflected off of our bodies, as Gray says, is what is triggering the intuitive thoughts. Feelings and emotions are part of our opinions, not scientific fact that we have. This idea of racial differences is so embedded into our minds that we think of our classification as common sense. For example, when you see a person in the street, you automatically label their gender and race among other things. It is something that we don’t even have to process, it is intuitive to us. This intuition is due to what Gray discusses a way to “produce, organize, and distribute racial and ethnic groupings of population according to socially valued attributes arranged hierarchally.” The key word to this quote is “socially” valued attributes. This way to classify individuals is something that is constructed by humans and embedded into minds by media, education, family, peers etc.

I used photoshop to put this quote on top of the photo that I got from naturalsciences.org. I uploaded the photo from the computer desktop and used the typing tool to add words onto the picture. I experimented with different sizes and fonts for the letters to create the most aesthetically pleasing option but also one that was clear to read.