Race is a classification of humans beings into different categories on the basis of their biological characteristics. There have been a variety of schemes for race classification based on physical characteristics such as skin colour, head shape, eye colour and shape, nose size and shape etc. A common race classification system uses four major groups: Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid and Australoid. The term 'race' was once popular in anthropology, but the idea of racial classification has become associated with racism, the claim that there is hierarchy of races. The term “race” has many definitions, ranging from a family unit to a species, but in common and medical usage, defining “race” has meant separating Homo sapiens into three to six groups.
The idea of race categories appears to be unscientific, since humans are able to mate across all ‘races’ and have done so throughout history, creating an enormous variety of human genetic inheritance. Critical analysis of students' struggles with knowledge construction reveals how educators talk about race and racism in the context of their personal and professional lives. Researchers in American race relations have demonstrated the ambivalence white Americans feel toward black Americans.
Critical Race Theory is an emerging transdisciplinary, race-equity methodology that originated in legal studies and is grounded in social justice. Critical Race Theory's tools for conducting research and practice are intended to elucidate contemporary racial phenomena. We introduce Critical Race Theory to the public health community, highlight key Critical Race Theory characteristics (race consciousness, emphases on contemporary societal dynamics and socially marginalized groups, and praxis between research and practice) and describe Critical Race Theory's contribution to a study on racism and HIV testing among African Americans.
Critical Race Theory, Race Equity, and Public Health: Toward Antiracism Praxis, Chandra L. Ford, PhD and Collins O. Airhihenbuwa, PhD. Racial scholars argue that racism produces rates of morbidity, mortality, and overall well-being that vary depending on socially assigned race. Eliminating racism is therefore central to achieving health equity, but this requires new paradigms that are responsive to structural racism's contemporary influence on health, health inequities, and research.
Deconstructing the relationship between genetics and race
Michael Bamshad, Stephen Wooding, Benjamin A. Salisbury & J. Claiborne Stephens
Abstract: The success of many strategies for finding genetic variants that underlie
complex traits depends on how genetic variation is distributed among human populations.
This realization has intensified the investigation of genetic differences among groups,
which are often defined by commonly used racial labels. Some scientists argue that race is
an adequate proxy of ancestry, whereas others claim that race belies how genetic variation
is apportioned. Resolving this controversy depends on understanding the complicated
relationship between race, ancestry and the demographic history of humans. Recent
discoveries are helping us to deconstruct this relationship, and provide better guidance
to scientists and policy makers.
The Biologistical Construction of Race - 'Admixture'
Technology and the New Genetic Medicine.
Duana Fullwiley.
Abstract: This paper presents an ethnographic case study of the use of race in two
interconnected laboratories of medical genetics. Specifically, it examines how researchers
committed to reducing health disparities in Latinos with asthma advance hypotheses and
structure research to show that relative frequencies of genetic markers characterize
commonly understood groupings of race.
The Medicalization of Race: Scientific Legitimization of
a Flawed Social Construct. Ritchie Witzig, MD, MPH.
Abstract: This division of Homo sapiens into race taxons
started in the 18th century, when the sciences of genetics and evolutionary biology were
not yet invented. These disciplines have since shown that human race taxonomy has no
scientific basis. Despite modern proof that race
is arbitrary biological fiction, racial taxons are still used widely in medical teaching,
practice, and research. Race taxons have been “medicalized”;
that is, race groupings have been legitimized by their use in medical literature and
practice as acceptable descriptive labels that are integral to the proper diagnosis and
treatment of disease in humans. Assumptions about disease that are made because a race has
been assigned can result in important negative consequences for individual patients and
inaccurate genetic inferences for populations.