College Voices
Race: A Lethal Social Construct With Biological Consequences
Since the 18th century, “science” has been used to provide evidence behind racism. In the name of biology, anthropologists have classified people into racial groups based on biological traits such as skin color and hair, as well as geographic region. Scientists have claimed that racial groups are discrete, or divided into distinct groups based on their continents or their phenotypic features.
However, as times have changed, scientists have proven that this is not the case. Time has determined that the concept of race is, in fact, a social construct and a classification system created by European colonialists to promote oppression and discrimination.
While the era for using science to blatantly propagate scientific racism is long gone, science does still rely on race to make assumptions about things such as public health and medicine.
Skin color is the main phenotypic trait that is used to classify race. Skin color is determined by the amount of melanin one has in their skin. Melanin serves as protection from harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays.
People who originate from areas close to the equator, such as Africa and South Asia, contain more melanin in their skin, which protects them from the harsh UV rays of their environment that destroy folate. Inversely, people who originate from colder climates with fewer UV rays and little sunlight, such as Eastern Europe, tend to have lighter skin, which helps them absorb more vitamin D.
Since skin color is so visually apparent, it is the primary method of classifying individuals into racial groups. However, classifying people into racial groups based on skin color is an extremely unreliable method because skin color is a highly adaptive trait.
In the book, Skin: A Natural History, anthropologist Nina G. Jablonski states that skin is subject to convergent evolution, or the concept that “similar appearances evolve because natural selection works to produce functionally comparable adaptations in comparable environments.”
In other words, skin colors adapt similarly over time to similar environments. It is futile to say that the White race consists only of Europeans because many people in areas such as northern China have the same skin color but are classified into the racial category of “Asians.”
The idea of using race in medicine is also futile, due to the fact that our bodies have not yet adapted to the pace of which people are migrating.
People with lighter skin are generally more susceptible to skin cancer in environments with high UV rays because their bodies have not adapted to the high UV rays in areas that are different from their ancestral homes.
Similarly, people with darker skin are more susceptible to medical conditions such as vitamin D deficiency because their bodies are still hardwired to the high UV ray environment of their ancestral homes.
The impact of scientific racism has caused great inequality in public health. In the article “What Role Should Race Play in Medicine?” Jennifer Tsai stated that a study from 2016 showed that a vast majority of medical residents believed that African Americans had thicker skin and required less pain medication.
Assumptions like this could be why the infant mortality in African Americans was 2.4 times the rate of other groups according to data before 2016.
African Americans are not physically weaker than White people, but because of the assumption that the physicians made based on their race, they are still shown today to be dying in more significant numbers and are thus seen as more susceptible.
Tsai also described the treatment of kidney problems in Black people: “In nephrology, the measures of a kidney function are automatically multiplied by a factor of 1.212 if the patient is Black.”
However, a problem occurs when, because of this proxy, a Black eighty-year-old woman gets the same amount of medication as a muscular twenty-five-year-old White man. This statement proves the need for an individualized approach, as opposed to relying on race.
If this Black woman were assessed based on aspects such as her weight, condition, and individual symptoms, she would be able to receive treatment that is customized to her, rather than a treatment based on a generalization.
In order to avoid negatively affecting the lives of ethnic minorities, many believe that anthropologists should avoid making generalizations using race and focus on each person’s individual genetic makeup and medical history instead. The Hispanic community is an example of a diverse community made up of different genetic combinations that are all classified under the racial profile of “Hispanics.”
In his article “Ten Facts about Human Variation,” Jonathan Marks stated that under the Hispanic identity label, “one could, after all, fall within that category of mostly Native American, mostly Afro-Caribbean, mostly southern European, mostly Filipino, and most especially, a mixture of several of those.”
Due to the vastness and diversity of the Hispanic community, it is impossible to generalize that everyone who belongs to this community has the same genetic makeup and is, therefore, susceptible to the same kinds of diseases.
This point is further emphasized in “How race becomes biology: Embodiment of social inequality” by Clarence C. Gravlee. The article discusses a report from The American Journal of Surgery titled “Is breast cancer in young Latinas a different disease?”
The main takeaway of the report is that race might influence breast cancer; these surgeons hope to “clarify the relationship between race/ethnicity and disease severity.”
In the report, the surgeons relied on race instead of focusing on the biology of an individual. These surgeons then concluded that young Latinas might be susceptible to a more severe form of breast cancer. However, it is not apparent what kinds of individuals are referred to in the Latina/Hispanic group of women.
As Marks explained in the previous article, the Latinx/Hispanic community is incredibly diverse. Latinx individuals originating from different continents possess strikingly different phenotypic and genetic traits from each other. Therefore, it is impossible to generalize that Latinas have a more aggressive disease than other women.
The idea of race being a social construct rather than a biological fact is emphasized in current events. The reason why many BIPOC individuals are disproportionately affected by COVID-19 is not due to the biology of their race; it is due to various factors such as discrimination, healthcare access and utilization, occupation, education, income, wealth gaps, and housing.
The CDC also mentioned that there is a level of distrust in governmental health services due to cases such as the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the African American Male” and sterilization without people’s permission.
One could argue that focusing on the individual experience and genetic makeup of a person is impractical because there are so many different permutations and people of multiple combined races.
In circumstances such as when statistics are being compared between groups, it is seen as acceptable to make generalizations. However, it is also agreed upon that anthropologists must recognize their racial biases in order to produce accurate data.
Overall, the concept of race is not necessarily the problem; it is the assumption that race is biological rather than a sociocultural concept that is problematic.
