The New Face of America Nov. 18, 1993

[A] colorblind, nay post-racial society, it is now argued, is achievable by subjecting the idea of race to the blinding light of genetic reason, or perhaps more accurately to gel electrophoresis, the laboratory protocol used to process DNA fragments so that they may be sequenced and analyzed. –Alys Eve Weinbaum, 2007

Though Obama’s is often credited as being the defining moment of post racial America by bringing the conversation to the forefront, hints of post-racial’s impending arrival in popular culture can be found much earlier. The Time Magazine Cover from November 18th 1993 shows the beginning of a shift in how we imagine the future of race and human/computer hybrids.  A special issue featured a computer created woman on the cover, “a mix of several races”, that represented “The New Face of America”.  As much as she was raceless, there was a marked importance on the fact that they were able to create her with a computer.

The human subject of the enlightenment, one that is both white and male, is more often than not still the subject who is assumed in conversations on technology (though strides have been made in Gender).  As we continue to push our relationship with technology and human bodies further, either by sequencing the human genome, or creating the face of the future, it is important that we remember that the limits of the institutions, times and places these concepts originate from and problematize them.  For instance, “some disparities, such as K-12 academic achievement, can’t be overcome without a racial lens and diversity-based solutions” (Lum 2009).  Education is one of the biggest topics in terms of how we discuss technological advancement and outreach.  While the focus on the faces we create in technology is important, we also must not lose sight of how those faces come into being and who is receiving the tools to create them. Technology interventions of the 20th century have always been marked by a post-racial ideology.  The belief that technology should be devoid of politics because it is above it, as discussed by de la Pena (2010), illustrates the importance of questioning what these seemingly innocent, raceless representations are disguising by focusing on the racelessness of new human forms.

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