Final Blog:"Human Race Machine allows us to move beyond difference and arrive at sameness."

The Human Race Machine is the project where Nancy Burson takes a picture of a person and then changes the skin color to fit multiple different races including the person’s own race. The project allows the person to see themselves as a different race and be able to put themselves in someone else’s shoes, maybe even a race that they may have previously been judgemental about. Nancy means by “allows us to move beyond difference and arrives at sameness” is that by doing this project and letting people see themselves as other races it creates a link between them and that race. It breaks down walls that have been created by social norms, and stereotypes that everyone grows up with and is conditioned to. This can happen in many different ways, it can be from our families, the media, our friends, co-workers etc…

The question “Do you agree that race is social not genetic?” is difficult for me as a nursing student to answer. It is technically genetic, because people can’t control what color their skin is, unless you have a certain disease or have some sort of procedure done. But in the terms of how people treat one another, I would say it is social. Like I stated before there are stereotypes for races that we all grow conditioned to from our social surroundings. The Asian culture has a stereotype of being very intelligent, Blacks have the stereotype of being louder, and Mexicans of being “workers” along with many many others. Because these stereotypes are created it almost forces some people to act on them and others to view other races in that manner. If we allowed ourselves to look past the color of the skin color we would find that people are people no matter what race they are.