Race

I am white- more ivory than anything. If race is limited to color, is this the only race I am limited to? I am also American. Does nationality play into race? What really defines race? According to dictionary.com, race is defined: “an arbitrary classification of modern humans, sometimes, esp. formerly, based on any or a combination of various physical characteristics, as skin color, facial form, or eye shape, and now frequently based on such genetic markers as blood groups”; “a group of persons related by common descent or heredity”; “any people united by common history, language, cultural traits”; “the human race or family”; “humankind” (dictionary.com). Given the fact that very few people look exactly alike and no one is genetically identical, how many different races are there? Should the topic of race make people uncomfortable? Adrian Piper’s Cornered questions the viewer’s feelings about race. It points out that most Americans have black ancestry and are therefore black. This is suppose to make the viewer question their race, their views on racial discrimination, and what the individual would do with this new information of who they are (Cornered, Kocur and Leung).
The Whitney Museum has been called out on a few occasions because of the selection of works not shown in exhibits. The Guerrilla Girls wanted to see more women artists in the museum and mentioned in the reading selection by Charles A. Wright, Jr. that racial discrimination was taking place. Works should be shown based on their relevance, not based on how the artist looks, race, sex, or sexual orientation. Maybe the curators at the Whitney should be wearing the buttons that say “I can’t imagine ever wanting to be white” (The Mythology of Difference, Kocur and Leung). In Haunted TV, the racial discrimination that I picked up on was about the Rodney King incident (white LAPD beat a black man and the images made it on to TV). It was not entirely clear to me what race had to do with the entire reading (Haunted TV, Kocur and Leung). Inspiration for art can be anything (music, other cultures, your own culture, other art…). Art is not either black OR white. Diversity is inspiration. iona rozeal brown is a black woman who is inspired by hip-hop and Japanese art, among other things. How many people would have thought to mix the two to produce an image? It has resulted in unique works of art (Black on Both Sides).