LogFAQs > #964615258

Krazy_Kirby posted...

race isn't a social construct, their are biological differences (and I'm not talking about skin color).

admitting there are differences doesn't mean they are bad.

David R. Williams,
Race and health: Basic questions, emerging directions.
Annals of Epidemiology.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S1047-2797(97)00051-3.

First, this paper reviews the evidence suggesting that race is more of a social category than a biological one. Variation in genotypic characteristics exists, but race does not capture it. Second, since racial categories have historically represented and continue to reflect the creation of social, economic, and political disadvantage that is consequential for well-being, it is important to continue to study racial differences in health. Finally, the paper outlines directions for a more deliberate and thoughtful examination of the role of race in health.

Race is typically used in a mechanical and uncritical manner as a proxy for unmeasured biological, socioeconomic, and/or sociocultural factors. Future research should explore how clearly delineated environmental demands combine with genetic susceptibilities as well as with specified behavioral and physiological responses to increase the risk of illness for groups differentially exposed to psychosocial adversity.

Marks, J.
Science and Race.
American Behavioral Scientist
133. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764296040002003

The scientific study of human biological variation has consistently produced knowledge that contradicts widespread popular, or folk, wisdom. Although people and the populations they belong to certainly differ from one another, they do not appear to do so in such a manner that permits the identification of a small number of human subspecies or races. Classification of people into races involves cultural, not biological, knowledge; and race is inherited according to cultural rules that stand in opposition to biology. Thus race is not a useful biological concept. To understand whether differences exist between populations in cognitive ability (or any other inherent gifts) requires confronting the limits of scientific knowledge.

Richard Cooper, Richard David
The Biological Concept of Race and Its Application to Public Health and Epidemiology.
Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law 1 https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-11-1-97

The category of race is widely used in public health. Although its significance may be clear-cut in some practical situations, an adequate theoretical construct for the concept of race does not exist. Public health appears to lag far behind the other biological sciences in the effort to grapple with the idea of race and its implications for the nature-nurture question. This paper outlines the current anthropological and social perspective on race, and applies this view to problems of disease epidemiology. It is proposed that uncritical use of the traditional biological concept of race has distorted etiological thinking in public health and has proven an obstacle in the development of effective intervention strategies. The pragmatism of medicine and its isolation from social science may account for much of this backwardness.

There are dozens more peer reviewed and scientific articles about this out there.