Launched two years ago and already viewed by more than 2 million Americans, a 5,000-square-foot portable discourse on race relations rolls into Los Angeles this weekend.

“RACE: Are We So Different?” is a public education program of the American Anthropological Association and consists of a traveling museum exhibit, an interactive Web site and freely available educational materials.

The exhibit will begin Saturday at the California Science Center in Exposition Park and run until the end of the year. It opened in January 2007 at the Science Museum of Minnesota, which also helped to develop and produce the project, and was funded by nearly $4.5 million in grants from the National Science Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

Looking through two lenses, the sciences and humanities, RACE aims to help individuals understand the origins and manifestations or race and racism in everyday life and come to their own conclusions about how it might affect them.

A 21-member advisory board of nationally and internationally known experts in the fields of social science, biology, genetics and history oversaw its development and production.

The project, says its Web site, “encourages appreciation and respect for human commonality and difference, and seeks in the long-term to inform and shape a national dialogue on race.”

The exhibit has visited nine cities so far including, Detroit, Cleveland and Philadelphia.

Originally set to conclude at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in 2011, it has now been extended until 2014.

Due to its popularity, a replica and smaller version of the exhibit is being produced and will begin to tour universities before the end of the year.

According to Yolanda T. Moses, RACE project chair and a professor of anthropology at UC Riverside, may dispel a lot of racial myths and provide people with “ah-ha” moments.

“It took us three years to put it together,” Moses said. “One of the take-home messages is that human beings, regardless of what they look like, are 99.9 percent the same. That point one of a percent makes no difference at all, but that’s the piece that people tend to focus on.”

Reached by phone Tuesday afternoon, Moses gave The Wave a preview of what to look out for at the California Science Center.

“There’s a section called ‘The Mismeasure of Man,’ based on the title of a book by [Harvard paleontologist] Stephen Jay Gould, that basically said our science was driven by our racist notions,” Moses said.

“People talk about the objectivity of science, well science is based in culture in a social structure with a value system. What this talks about is that science serves society.”

She continued: “And at the time these racial theories were being promulgated, people actually believed that there were different races of people and not only were they different, but that there was a hierarchy and people of color were at the bottom and people who were White from Europe were at the top.”

Moses also cited another highlight of the experience where they show in very graphic terms what structural inequality looks like by displaying a mountain of dollar bills.

“Through this pile of money we show you how wealth is accumulated for Whites, then how it is created for African-Americans and other groups,” she said. “And it’s just so graphic; it isn’t about your education or job, the wealth that has been handed down to you and has been accumulated over time, determines your social status and position.

“This is why, structurally, African-Americans, Latinos and other people of color are still at a disadvantage even though they may be getting degrees and making the same money. The issue is: Are your parents passing on wealth to you?”

All of which gives Moses a perfect position to comment on the heated racial debates following the Gates affair and the “liar” attack on President Barack Obama.

“I think the fact that we do have an African-American president has put race and the notion of race as a legitimate issue to discuss in ways that has not happened before,” Moses said.

“I have friends who said he should have stepped in and others who said it’s not the role of the president to solve personal disputes. In terms of Joe Wilson, if Obama didn’t personally see it as racist then he should be allowed his opinion.”

Moses concluded an interview on a hopeful note.

“What I love about the exhibition is that it [gives] people the opportunity to have real discussions because if we don’t talk about this issue in a somewhat sophisticated way, we’ll never be the kind of pluralistic nation that we can be where we appreciate difference and [where] we are a country of inclusion.”