Debunking "Race" as a Biological Concept

For a while now the mainstream public has been under the assumption people of another culture maybe biologically different than themselves. Some of us remain unaware of the history of how biology and the discovery of different cultures became intertwined. This is helped along by published health studies conducted by the government and health insurance companies that focus specifically on race. Often times we hear on the news that the African American community is more likely to get hyper-tension or diabetes. While the cases of hyper tension have climbed in that community, the actual reasons behind it are being over shadowed by race.

First, let's look at the history of how this came to be. Early European scholars wanted to classify humans into subspecies/races based on morphology (appearance) and geographical locations (Haviland et al, 134). A man named Carolus Linnaeus classified Europeans as "White", Africans as "black", American Indians as "red", and Asians as "yellow"(134). Years later a German medical doctor named Johann Blumenbach placed those groups into a hierarchy. His reasoning was formed by observing a human skull from the Caucaus Mountains, which had the most perfect symmetry in all of the skulls in his collection. He judged that since that specimen was so perfect, and that it was from a place close to the lands of creation stated in the Bible, that it must have matched God's original design (134). He dropped the European label of "whites", renamed them as "Caucasian", and ranked them as superior. Blumenbach then stated that other races were a result of "degeneration" as they had moved away from their place of origin and they were deemed physically and morally inferior (134).

In the early 20th century these views of racial superiority started to come under much criticism by scientists and anthropologists. These scientists were claiming that different cultures didn't have exclusive possession of specific variants or genes (136). In fact it is a lot more likely that a person has a significant difference in genes with a person in their own culture and geographic location than they would with a different one. A lot of people have learned that chimpanzees share 98% of our genes, as humans, we share 99.6-99.8% with each other (Tishkoff, Kidd 21). So, just because two people have a different skin color that doesn't mean they are a different species of human.

Now getting back to the mis-leading health statistics. Right now in the Native American community there is a diabetes epidemic, but it's not because of a genetic pre-disposition it's because of diet. Many Native Americans are abandoning their cultural diets and adopting a western style diet, which contain high amounts of sugars, preservatives, and other complex carbohydrates. This can be said for any culture that has no history of a disease like this with a traditional diet only to go to a western one. Also, whites have been dealing with heart issues and diabetes for so long that it is not as culturally significant and therefore it does not get as much attention as it would in other cultures. There was a debate about how sickle cell anemia proved that places were biologically different as it only showed up in Africans and African Americans. Upon further investigation however it was found that sickle cell anemia is a mutation of malaria and malaria is mostly found in equatorial regions like much of Africa (Cooper, Kaufman, Ward 1167). So it his not hard to see how it could be passed down through heredity.

There have also been incidents of health studies that use race specific therapies to create medicine or medical devices. In one case ACE (inhibitors) used for preventing heart attacks was were interpreted as being more beneficial to African Americans, but the actual results were inconclusive. It turned out that the drugs used in the trial benefited both blacks and whites equally (Cooper, Kaufman, and Ward). This can show doctors and the public that medicine should be treated on the individual level rather than in a group setting. Another study I found on Kaiser Permanente's website was that Korean women were 13% more likely to get gestational diabetes when they were pregnant than women of another ethnicity. The study was not very clear on why this happened; it didn't discuss diet or cultural stress, or environment, just that they were 13% more likely to get it.

I'm not saying that we aren't different from each other, because culturally we are, but next time you hear about a study where once race is more likely to get a certain condition over the other I want you to think critically and maybe follow up on the research methods that were used. There are also theories and studies on how labeling races through biology has created disparities for some ethnicities than others, but I'm not going to get into that frying pan, however you may want to consider it. I think tackling an issue like this can break down a lot of boundaries that we face socially as well as medically, we all have a responsibility to learn what the real truth is, ignorance is not always bliss.

Cooper, M.D., Richard S., Jay S. Kaufman, Ph.D., and Ryk Ward, Ph.D. "Race and             Genomics." New England Journal of Medicine 348.25 (2003): 2581-582. 1166-1167. Print.

Haviland, William A, et al. “Modern Human Diversity: Race and Racism.” The Essence of             Anthropology. Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth, 2007. 134-136. Print.

Tishkoff, Sarah A., and Kenneth K. Kidd. "Implications of Biogeography of Human         Populations for 'race' and Medicine." Nature Genetics 36.11s (2004): S21. Print.