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Here’s a scrap of trivia to stuff in your brain’s sock drawer: Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin have the same birth date. No kidding. Same day, same year. The U.S. president who issued the Emancipation Proclamation and the British naturalist who wrote The Origin of Species might seem an odd pair, but both shaped the way we view race today, which is why both get shout-outs at Cincinnati Museum Center’s new offering, Race: Are We So Different?

The project, which was developed by the American Anthropological Association in collaboration with the Science Museum of Minnesota, looks at race through three lenses: the science of human variation; the history of the idea of race; and the cultural experience of race. That trio of approaches—scientific, historic, and cultural—made it a natural for the multi-faceted institution. “It hit a sweet spot for us,” says Tonya Matthews, the center’s vice president of museums. And the timing couldn’t be better: It opens January 17. “There’s [Barack Obama’s] inauguration, then there’s Black History month,” she points out, adding that the confluence of events is “pure coincidence.” Perhaps, but she’s clearly pleased that the opening in Cincinnati will coincide with a watershed moment in the nation’s history.

Matthews, whose academic background includes a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, came to town a year ago from the Maryland Science Center. Her predecessor, historian John Fleming, was one of a group of experts who played a role in creating the new exhibition. The idea behind Race is to get people talking about it—in particular about cultural attitudes, how those attitudes have been shaped, and how they play out in America. What makes this show different, though, is its underpinning in science. Which is where Darwin comes in. While his contemporaries saw the world’s races as distinct, non-overlapping “types” of beings that could be categorized by physical appearance, Darwin saw humans as a single species with the same origin—beings that, no matter how different we look outside, are cut from the same cloth. “Darwin figured it out before his colleagues understood genetics,” Matthews says.

The physical differences we use to classify people—skin color, hair texture, eye and nose shape—are a minor part of our DNA, yet they’ve been used to justify racism and even genocide. Today, as a culture, we downplay the significance of those variations. But there are differences, and visitors get to explore them. In the area of sports, for example, Race asks questions that test myth against data. Are Kenyan runners genetically more gifted than Europeans? It turns out that science hasn’t identified any clear genetic advantage, but East African runners, who train at high altitudes, do have bodies that burn oxygen very effectively. Are Asians better at gymnastics because they’re small and quick? Studies suggest that the East Asian body type tends to be compact—a boon for gymnastics—and that East Asians have the quickest reactions of all humans. But what about all those years when the Romanians and East Germans dominated gymnastics? And if living at altitude is such a huge advantage, why don’t Tibetan sherpas rule in track and field? Good questions—the very sort that lead to a deeper exploration of how culture, custom, nutrition, even economics and politics can shape athleticism as well as DNA.

Matthews admits that, as a scientist, an educator, and an African-American woman, she had some trepidation about how the genetics of race would be handled. “I thought, OK, this could be a very bad idea,” she says. She’s pleased that it hasn’t been oversimplified. “It is what it is,” she says. “Have a conversation and tell us what you think.” The exhibition title alone seems to suggest that it presents the family of man as more alike than not. But it doesn’t shy away from the fact that what makes us different is damn interesting, too.

How Race Looks at Race

Out of Eden
An animated global map demonstrates how human life originated in Africa and spread throughout the world.

The Way of All Flesh
Visitors can scan their skin as a color chip, comparing it to color samples of other visitors.

Classifying Lives
In a display about the shifting U.S. census, a large photo of a multi-racial group shows people wearing T-shirts printed with historic population categories, such as “slave” and “mulatto.”

Guided by Voices
What does “Texas Asian American” sound like? A matching game contrasts voices with faces.

Originally published in the January 2009 issue.