IMU to display Human Race Machine this week

The opportunity to step into another's shoes rarely arises, but next week an "eye-opening" event will be taking place on IU's campus. The Human Race Machine is giving people a chance to see how they would look as another ethnicity. \nThe Human Race Machine will be open to the public from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Jan. 19 in the Indiana Memorial Union Gallery.\nThe machine is a booth that measures the outlines of the face, then morphs the unique facial features into five different races.\n"You will be able to see yourself different than you see yourself every day," said Shane Whittington, president of the Social Justice League. "I hope the one thing people take away from this is that skin color does not matter."\nThe machine was invented by Nancy Burson, best known for her ground-breaking work in morphing technology, which ages the human face, allowing law-enforcement officials to locate missing children and adults, according to Burson's Web site.\nAccording to the Wolfman Productions Web site, the central idea behind the machine is that "there is only one race, the human one. The concept of race is not genetic, but social. There is no gene for race." \nThe Office of Diversity Education brought the machine to IU in hopes of educating students on how race is a cultural difference but not a biological one, said Eric Love, director of diversity education. \n"I saw it on 'The Oprah Winfrey Show,' and I thought it was a magnificent idea," Love said. "The concept of race was developed by sociologists, but really, there is very little difference between people."\nThe goal of this event is to show people a different perspective that is supposed to help them put their biases aside.\n"We don't live in a color-blind society," Whittington said. "And even if it is just standing in line for the machine, hopefully this will stimulate conversation about the issues." \nThere are machines located at the New York Hall of Science, the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Md., and the William Benton Museum of Art at the University of Connecticut.\n"We bought the machine to launch our human-rights program. It has been a very effective tool, and a one-of-a-kind machine for people to experience," said Diane Lewis, a public-relations and marketing coordinator at the William Benton Museum of Art. Lewis called the machine eye-opening.\nThe event is part of the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration 2007 "The Power of One: Making the Committee, Meeting the Challenge."\n"Let's do something new at IU and really talk about things -- something that is solid and that you can really see," Whittington said.