Oprah Explores Different Races

Ever wonder what you'd look like as another race? Well, now, in a weird way you can. There's this new machine, "creatively" called the Human Race Machine, that can show you what you'd look like as another race.
Click here to see the different races of Oprah

I was watching Oprah today who had an interesting show about "trading races" and she herself experimented with the machine. So today, I saw an Asian-Oprah, White-Oprah, Indian-Oprah, and a Hispanic-Oprah. It was really weird because the machine does more than change your complexion, it changes the features as well. I've been looking for an explanation as to how it works but I haven't quite found one. I'm sure I still wouldn't understand the formulas that the creator, Nancy Burson, put together to come up with this machine. To me, it seems that the machine was created for social awareness. The guy who was demonstrating the machine on Oprah said that any two humans are 99.97% genetically identical. I am a little weary of scientific numbers so I'm not really sure how true this is, but I find this quite interesting. He then went on to explain that we all started in the same geographical area but as we migrated to various places our skin and hair adapted according; now this I could buy.

The show then continued with two families, a white family and a black family, who swapped races for six weeks. I can't even begin to explain the tension they faced during this process because they all had to live together in the same house for this time period. Race was basically the topic of conversation 24/7. Naturally, the naivete of both families came out. One thing that shocked me was an exercise they had to do with each other; it involved "talking" like the other race without their prosthetic makeup on. So the wife from the white family decides to say to the wife from the black family "hey bitch"; and she thought it was okay because she believed she heard that word was a term of endearment between black women...uh, hardly the case. Of course, the black family came across as more aggressive and angry, which some may argue was embarrassing to see on the Oprah show (remember majority white middle-class audience), but in all honesty, I felt their attitudes were accurate and genuine. I could see myself being aggressive if I was put in a situation like that.

If you read this post before 1 am tonight, you can probably catch the repeat of the show. If not, look out for the documentary series Black.White. which will air on the F/X channel starting March 8 @ 10pm.