Skin Color, “Race” and Technology: Re-articulating a Murky Narrative

• In Event: Biomedicine and Difference

Abstract

This paper tracks a specific shift in theories and applications of technologies used for skin color measurement, beginning with the first chromatic skin color scale developed by German Anthropologist, Felix Von Luschan in the late 1800's. Used for anthrometric data collection, this technology relied on 'visual matching' between the skin color of a human subject to a numerical scale comprised of 36 glass tiles representing the spectrum of known human skin pigmentations. Eventually, with advancements in optical technologies and spectrometry, this method of skin color measurement was replaced by matching reflectance data to an international standard of CIE color space by the 1950s. The purposes and uses for more precise skin color measurement technologies also rapidly changed in this brief era of science - from the categorization of human groups to the medical identification of skin related ailments. However, the era of human-group classification based on phenotype (such as skin color) left a lasting legacy on the semantic categories used to identify ‘race’ and ethnicity.

What I add to this conversation is a review of early to mid 20th century scientific journal articles (JOSA, Nature, Science and Man) that focus on skin-color measurement techniques and technologies, and I track changing semantic categories used to describe human skin color. While the collection of skin reflectance data became more standardized in science, the verbal descriptions of human skin follow a different, more culturally bound set of categorizations that I argue reflects a long and murky history of biological myths about “race.”

Author

• Joel Scott Beatty, Michigan Technological University