ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Underneath it all, we are the same.
That's the underlying theme up for a discussion at a roundtable talk with the Racial and Ethnic Justice Team of Community Action Lehigh Valley (CALV)at the Da Vinci Science Center at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, March 31.
Using the BODY WORLDS RX exhibit as an introduction for the discussions, topics of the evening include white privilege (and what to do about it), macro/microaggressions, racial stereotypes and equity versus equality.
- Using BODY WORLDS RX as an introduction, Community Action Lehigh Valley has teamed up with the Da Vinci Science Center to host a discussion about race relations
- The event will take place on Friday, March 31
- Tickets cost $10 and space is limited
Take a look inside
Attendees of the event will begin with an hour-long walk through the BODY WORLDS RX exhibit, which features more than 30 human specimens —organs, muscles and the nervous system — that are preserved through plastination, a technique that removes fluid from the body and replaces them with a hard silicone plastic.
"You're walking through the exhibit and you're looking at these bodies and feeling a little bit in awe of the mechanics of the body, maybe you get a little squeamish," Caroline Scutt, director of communications and community relations at the science center, said.
After all, those are real human kidneys, eyeballs, and intestines peering back at the viewer through the glass displays.
But one thing is not on display: the ethnicity of the subjects.
“What doesn’t come immediately to mind is, 'I wonder what color the person was who had that heart that I'm seeing.'”Caroline Scutt, director of communications and community relations at the Da Vinci Science Center
“What doesn’t come immediately to mind is, 'I wonder what color the person was who had that heart that I'm seeing,'” Scutt said. “It's not what we think about. We’re just looking at another human person, beyond race.”
That idea stuck with Candace Moody, a member of the Racial and Ethnic Justice team at CACLV, when they first saw BODY WORLDS and began to organize the talk with colleagues.
“The first thing that lit lightbulbs for me is that you don't know the person's demographic that you are looking at — these are real humans, but you don't know their nationality,” Moody said. "The exhibit essentially takes away all the stereotypes and biases that we might have and allows us to truly see these people as humans and as individuals who at some point were living and walking on Earth.”
The partnership between CACLV and the science center is part of an initiative to host more community-led discussions across the Valley, Moody said.
“We felt that we want to continue these conversations that we typically only have with businesses and local agencies and plan on opening that up for the wider audience,” Moody said.
Tickets to the event cost $10. Space is limited. Registration required. A dinner and light refreshments will be served.
