Humane Project

INSTRUCTIONS

Part 1: Please look at the following chart from the Humanae Project and choose the the Pantone code number that might be closest to your own skin color. Go to Humanae — Angélica Dass (angelicadass.com) Links to an external site. for a closer look so you can read the codes. Notice that the codes in no way tell you what color you are looking at; lighter or darker skin colors are not in an ordered spectrum of numbers. I’m not using these codes nor judging in any way so you can really put any code you feel like using and I will still mark it as correct. The point is that I think sometimes we put too much emphasis on skin color. When I’m asked to indicate my race on a form I avoid the word “white” if that’s an option and just choose “other”. White is the color of the paper in my printer and my skin is definitely darker than that. I’m tempted to just write down my Pantone code next to “other” except I can never remember it when I’m filling out a form. What I especially like about the chart below is that there are no statistics about what percentage are this number or that number; every single color is equally represented.

Part 2:

After viewing the Humanae Project TED Talk by Angelica Dass, you might understand better why I’m such a Brazil nut. Although they certainly do still have problems with discrimination, the country is a true melting pot of races and colors, as exemplified by Ms. Dass when she describes her family. I’d like you to try to describe your family in the same way using food metaphors. There are no wrong answers to this and you will get full credit as long as you make a valid attempt at this exercise. If you’d rather not describe yourself and family, choose another group like people around your office, school, neighborhood, club, you name it. I’ve included coffee here as one of the examples but Ms. Dass also used examples like strawberries and lobster.