“Race is the child of racism, not the father.“
-TA-NEHISI COATES
Recently, I wrote a diary about Ron Johnson (Asshole, Wis), in which he gave air time to rabid anti-vaxxer doctors and had the temerity to act like it was an official hearing. I won’t rehash the whole thing, but essentially what I did was reference an article that fact checked the whole Rojo-Shitshow. From the article, a claim of one of his misfit doctors at the meeting was:
“Black people may need lower doses of the COVID vaccine because of a sensitivity to mRNA vaccines.”
Ridiculous. So I made the point that:
“Genetically, there is no basis for race. We’ve known this for a fact since the human genome project and the administration of medicines on the basis of race assumes a biological difference between us that doesn’t exist.”- Kappy
A very few number of people in the comments disputed this fact so I thought it might be good to explore it in another diary. FYI, I’m White, and also not an expert but because there is some confusion here I think it is important to foster this discussion and I want to share what I know, mostly for other white people who may have questions about these topics.
First, Race doesn’t exist.
Confusing if you’ve never explored these topics, I know, but it’s true. What I meant when I said it doesn’t exits is that genetically, race doesn’t exist. Take for example the people of East Africa
East Africans are more related to Eurasians than to other African populations.1, 2, 3 Investigations of Y chromosome markers have shown that the East African populations were not significantly affected by the east bound Bantu expansion that took place approximately 3500 years ago, while a significant contact to Arab and Middle East populations can be deduced from the present distribution of the Y chromosomes in these areas.4, 5 The Y chromosome haplogroup E3a is found at high frequencies in the sub-Saharan, Bantu-speaking populations but at low frequencies in East Africa, while Eurasian haplogroups like J and K are found at various frequencies in East Africa
In America, and much of the rest of the world we would say someone from Zimbabwe (Southern Africa) and from Somolia (East Africa), are of the “Black” race based solely on their skin color. But what does it say of the concept of race that genetically, a Somalian is more closely related to a white-skinned, blond haired German than to a Zimbabwean? It says the concept of race is utter, fucking, bullshit (also, eat it Hitler). Race doesn’t actually exist. When the Human Genome Project was finally finished, after congratulating the scientists for successfully mapping the human genome, President Clinton cited the science uncovered in the project and rightfully declared:
All of us are created equal, entitled to equal treatment under the law.
After all, I believe one of the great truths to emerge from this triumphant expedition inside the human genome is that in genetic terms all human beings, regardless of race, are more than 99.9 percent the same. What that means is that modern science has confirmed what we first learned from ancient faiths. The most important fact of life on this earth is our common humanity.
My greatest wish on this day for the ages is that this incandescent truth will always guide our actions as we continue to march forth in this, the greatest age of discovery ever known.
To be more explicit, the HGP scientists and others found that traits that are associated with skin color and other traits that we think of as racial features, are simple genetic variations due to migration and adaptations that occurred over a relatively short period of time. There simply aren’t major differences between us other than the ones that are “skin-deep”.
But race is real.
How could race not exist and be real at the same time? Race is real because our society is organized around it even though it is a fiction. So, it is real to us who see race and put people into these categories. However, there was a time when humans didn’t think in terms of race, our ancestors of course saw differences in the ways people looked, but they cared more about nationality and geography. That’s because they didn’t have a reason to create races, yet.
Over centuries of the development of chattel slavery and racial subjugation, the concept of both Black and White races were created for the benefit of those calling themselves White and to the pain, suffering, and detriment of those defined as Black. Africans of many nations and regions in mostly West Africa were taken by force, kidnapped, murdered, and forced into slavery a daily form of terrorism that none of us can rightly imagine. There are signposts along the way in history demarcating the dates when the definition of races took shape, but suffice it to say, as people who became defined as White saw the opportunity to build power through exploitation, the definition of both Black and White solidified.
Through the civil war, reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, lynchings and the KKK, the civil rights struggles of the last century, and to the present day, black Americans have persevered against all odds and tried to pull this nation kicking and screaming toward a reckoning on the dangerous fiction we call race and the racism that flows from this lie.
Much of these ideas, stories, and facts can be found in projects like :
To name a few.
Defining White from a genetic point of view is just as absurd and problematic as defining Black because White is also just a made up concept. I’m ethnically Jewish, which is a religion but can also be an ethnicity. In this country, I am considered white and/but there was certainly a time when Jewish people in this country were at least considered less white. There were times when Irish, German, and Polish immigrants were similarly seen as less than white. So what makes us all White now? Good question, there’s no answer. It’s completely fucking arbitrary.
What I hope I’ve established so far is that race isn’t based on anything (especially any inherent difference) other than a racist idea that one group that we arbitrarily define as White is better than a group that we define as Black. I know I’m leaving out other so called races, but FYI, it’s the same deal, the only true race is the human race. So, this is the point at which I want to return to some of the comments I got when I said in the last diary “Genetically, there is no basis for race…..and the administration of medicines on the basis of race assumes a biological difference between us that doesn’t exist.”
In the not too distant past, there were actual medicines like BIDil for heart issues that were marketed as being for African Americans. From Lancet:
The idea behind BiDil has not been disputed—namely, that for some people with congestive heart failure who do not produce enough nitric oxide, vasodilators can be an effective adjunct therapy in reducing heart attacks. But who can benefit? Neither socially constructed nor self-identified concepts of “race” can serve as a proxy for an unknown or ill-defined biological marker that provides a causal connection to or strong association with a drug's effectiveness.………...Racial blood lines are a thing of the past. Thus far, the short life of BiDil shows us that racial pharmacokinetics has nothing to offer in its place.
Drugs and therapies can’t be targeted to a group that doesn’t exist in a biological sense, the idea is wrongheaded, racist, and really just about profit. But what about the fact that there are racial differences in disease prevalence and morbidity and mortality, like with heart disease, diabetes, infant mortality, not to mention covid? Don’t forget the difference between causation and correlation. Specific diseases can be correlated with being Black, that doesn’t mean they are caused by being Black (see fun ice cream chart (!) below for reminder about correlation vs causation).
Here is the deal, as my president might say: If you really want to talk about causation, the cause of more adverse health outcomes among Black Americans is racism. According to the CDC:
Racism, both structural and interpersonalexternal icon, are fundamental causes of health inequities, health disparities and disease. The impact of these inequities on the health of Americans is severe, far-reaching, and unacceptable.
Across the country, racial and ethnic minority populations experience higher rates of poor health and disease in a range of health conditions, including diabetes, hypertension, obesity, asthma, and heart disease, when compared to their White counterparts. The life expectancy among Black/African Americans is four years lower than that of White Americans.
The COVID-19 pandemic, and its disproportionate impact among communities of color, is another stark example of these enduring health disparities. Recent COVID-19 data show show that Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian and Alaska Native populations in the U.S. are experiencing higher rates of hospitalization and death compared to White populations.
These health disparities underscore the urgent need to address systemic racism as a root cause of racial and ethnic health inequities and a core element of our public health efforts.
Black people and POC face discrimination in housing, food, healthcare, education, security and all other facets of American life. That shit is stressful, and not having what you need, and feeling threatened all the time has real life health consequences.
Ok, last thing then I swear I’m done. Some will point to sickle cell disease or perhaps some other diseases that seem to only present themselves in Black Americans as a way to say there are def. races/ race based differences since only Black folks get this disease. Wrong. (This next set of links were referenced on the www.sceneonradio.org/… podcast and It has really stuck with me) This is from Dorothy E. Roberts in 2012 who wrote a book on these concepts called Fatal Invention. She was speaking at Vanderbilt and methodically demonstrating that race is a wholly invented concept. At the end (the 50.00 min mark) a presumably white man child rose to ask her a question:
Transcript of the interaction from the Seeing White Podcast
Vanderbilt audio, young man: I think that science has proven over and over that there is a biological difference between races. And one great example is just that sickle cell anemia is much more prevalent in African Americans, or Africans….
Dorthy Roberts: I respectfully disagree with everything you just said. [Laughs.]
Dorothy Roberts: The sickle cell example is the resort of people who know that there’s a mountain of evidence showing that race is an invented category, and so they grasp at sickle cell all the time.
John Biewen: Yes, she says, sickle cell disease developed in only some human populations.
Dorothy Roberts: Peoples who live in areas where there’s malaria have developed this mutation, or have a higher prevalence of this mutation, because it protects against malaria. But it’s not confined to Africa, it’s not present in all of Africa, and so it simply is not a “Black” disease. It just says nothing about race whatsoever. It’s linked to groups that developed in areas where there’s a lot of malaria, that’s all.
I know from reading content here for years that these ideas are well trodden ground here but since I was surprised by some responses to the last diary, I thought this might be helpful. Anyway, I would love to discuss this more. Thanks!