Why Your Race Matters to Your Health

Thanks for your response, Ms. Kotz. You're quite right that some researchers continue to use Race categories now believed by many--though not all!--in the anthropological community to be suspect. This is frustrating for the reasons I outlined above. However, in defense of some researchers who fall back on the old terminology, sometimes they feel they have to do this in order for new data to align with old data that have relied on the same categories. A minority, though, haven't been willing to move on from the obsolete taxonomy system, for a variety of reasons.

That's why I was so pleased to read last year about some recent U.S. epidemiological studies that specified East Asian, West African, etc. There is the world of difference between northeast Asian environments and ancestries and, say, southeast Asian or South Asian ones, and we need more studies that reflect this!

Now, if we can only get the public (those not generally interested in biological or social science) to catch on to this concept. Oftentimes, arguing that Race is constructed is like swimming upstream against the tide of human history. Every group I've ever interviewed is convinced that their culture has laid out the true Races, perhaps even that God handed down Red, Black, White and Yellow along with the sacred scriptures. (And for those who have no religion, they claim science "proves" Race. Quite the opposite.)

I look forward to reading your future columns,

Deborah Kotz responds

Thanks EK for your very insightful comments. I debated with myself about using the term "race" for this post because, yes, you're right the term "race" is scientifically unsound. The only trouble is that the researchers in the Asian study didn't distinguish between types of Asians, so for the purposes of their research they looked at the outdated category of "race".

Interesting, but we have a terminology problem

I'm an anthropologist who as a grad student did research on a topic--genetic disorders and racial classification--that straddles biological anthropology and sociocultural anthropology.

I read your report with interest, but point out that your uncritical use of the term "race" perpetuates laypeople's notions that race is a medically or biologically useful category; it is not. Race is society's attempt to group together on the basis of perceived phenotypic similarities multiple ethnic groups that in fact often have little relation to one another. Although race is a social category, the harm in insisting on this category is a harm to public health and more nuanced medicine.

Ethnic group correlated to geographic origin and/or ancestral subsistence method is, on the other hand, a very helpful category.And in this, your report deserves praise for pointing out how very helpful it can be (the distinctions between different West African ethnic groups).

Take the commentator Hata's point above. Setting aside the troubling colonialist roots of early (18th centruy) anthropological literature that classified as White only those Africans and Asians with long-standing agricultural/urban civilizations, describing indigenous (Amazigh) Algerians as "White" (or Black or Purple) is not helpful from a medical, public health or social science standpoint. For example, the southern Amazigh belong to the desert-pastoral nomadic environment of the Sahara; the northern to the Atlas mountain range. (Even these two subdivisions of the same ethnic group thus have different biological profiles and food tolerances!).

Now, take two other groups traditionally ( according to the now-debunked Holy Trinity of 19th century Race theory) classified as Caucasoid: Non-Sami Norwegians and Pakistanis. Lumping together these three vastly different ethnic groups--some with very high lactose-tolerance and others with minimal; some with tendencies toward Thalyssimia and others with no such tendency, etc.--serves no useful purpose. In fact, it only muddies the medical and genetic waters for those of us interested in public health initiatives that produce demonstrable improvements.

The same argument holds for every other Racial group constructed in this or in any country (and as I'm sure you know, official racial categories vary wildly from country to country, a reflection of Race as arbitrary and social in construction). E.g. West African ethnic groups originating in hunter-gatherer forest societies have a vastly different set of medical and biological needs than East African Masai patoral-nomadists of the savanna. Yet, laypeople insist on classifying as Black both of these groups, from a misguided focus on exterior phenotypic traits. (And, for the record folks, people from these groups really do not resemble one another phenotypically, either, but that's neither here nor there.)

As people invested in science, let's agree to abandon Race and stick with ethnic group, yes?

Deborah Kotz Responds

Yes, you're right. My mistake. Bight of Biafra is the body of water off the coast of Cameroon and Nigeria--a mistake I made in my conference notes. Thanks for catching me. Here's a little map of the region.

http://encarta.msn.com/map_701511148/biafra_bight_of.html

Nigeria

I think for the Biafra region they mean Nigeria, not Algeria. Algeria and Cameroon are in separate parts of Africa.

Comment...

Please, do your homework!

No black slaves ever came from Algeria, a Mediterranean country and whose inhabitants are white.

Hata