Hello everyone! First I'd like to thank @kstsosie for organizing @DecolonizeDNA & inviting me to participate.

Today I'll be discussing the relationships between race/ism, biology, & human health. Below is a quick outline of my twitter talk. #DecolonizeDNA

So, what is race anyway? Based on the contemporary sociological scholarship race is generally defined as physical differences.

Definitions like these:

1: Discuss bodies but not biology
2: Reduce bodies to an index of phenotypes
3: Assume types inherently exist
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Definitions of race that reduce it to physical differences ignore the historical development of race and its foundational ties to racism and Euro-Western colonialism.

A more useful approach is one that looks at what race does, what is race in action?

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The set of physical differences that we come to know of as race is a colonial invention.

See my recent publication here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13110/humanbiology.91.2.02?seq=1

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It's important to note, as anthropologist and historian Patrick Wolfe did in his book "Traces of History", that racism existed before the fields of biology & genetics existed.

The term "gene" was coined in 1909 by Wilhelm Johannsen.

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It's important to know:

1: Biology & science, in general, were developed in the political, economic, and social conditions of Euro-Western colonialism.

2: Discussions about the biological basis of all life are in fact a colonial knowledge project

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Race/ism is a colonial breeding program that governs and mediates lives through the active making and management of relational indexes of hegemonic difference.

Colonial gender serves as the medium through which Europeans imposed race on colonized subjects.
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A great example of how racism has biological consequences can be found in a paper by @lancegravlee that found that blood pressure was associated with how other people racialized participants through interaction with socioeconomic status.
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Another great example of the material consequences of racism is looking at the stability of income inequality.

Check out this thread on the work of sociologist Patrick Sharkey

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Also, consider the gendered and racial income inequalities in pay for Black women.

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Check out this thread on the relationships between income inequality and access to resources: https://twitter.com/Hood_Biologist/status/676493833383903233?s=20

A key example of the material consequences of racial residential segregation?

white neighborhoods have 4xs the number of grocery stores as Black neighborhoods

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In my dissertation research, I propose understanding racism as an ecological system, which requires that we study racism as a series of relations between humans and the environment.

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In closing, what we call racial health disparities are better understood as racist health disparities. RACISM, the political practice of racializing humans, is the risk factor, not "race". Race does not stand alone, it is the child of racism.

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For those who would like more resources on race and racism, check out the readings I reference in this twitter moment

“A Primer on Race/ism”
https://twitter.com/i/events/807281262511751168

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