How race becomes biology embodiment of social inequality

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 139:47–57 (2009) How Race Becomes Biology: Embodiment of Social Inequality Clarence C. Gravlee* Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-7305 KEY WORDS race; genetics; human biological variation; health; racism ABSTRACT The current debate over racial inequalities in health is arguably the most important venue for advancing both scientific and public understanding of race, racism, and human biological variation. In the United States and elsewhere, there are well-defined inequalities between racially defined groups for a range of biological outcomes—cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, certain cancers, low birth weight, preterm delivery, and others. Among biomedical researchers, these patterns are often taken as evidence of fundamental genetic differences between alleged races. However, a growing body of evidence establishes the primacy of social inequalities in the origin and persistence of racial health disparities. Here, I summarize this evidence and argue that the debate over racial inequalities in health A recent cover story in Scientific American posed a question that has gained new life: ‘‘Does race exist?’’ (Bamshad and Olson, 2003). For decades, there seemed to be broad agreement among anthropologists and geneticists that the answer was ‘‘no,’’ but some observers suggest that the consensus is unraveling (e.g., Leroi, 2005). Indeed, in both the scientific literature and the popular press, there is renewed debate over the magnitude and significance of genetic differences between racially defined groups (Jorde and Wooding, 2004; Keita et al., 2004; Ossorio and Duster, 2005; Bakalar, 2007; Drexler, 2007). Yet much of the debate falters on the question—does race exist?—because it can be interpreted in different ways. The implicit question is usually whether race exists as a natural biological division of humankind. This question is important but incomplete. We should also ask in what ways race exists as a sociocultural phenomenon that has force in people’s lives—one with biological consequences. In this article, I take up these questions in the context of the current interdisciplinary debate over racial inequalities in health (Dressler et al., 2005a). This debate is important for three reasons. First, the magnitude of racial inequalities in health demands attention. In the United States, where debate over race is most intense, the risk of morbidity and mortality from every leading cause is patterned along racial lines (Keppel et al., 2002). The burden of poor health is especially high for African Americans: Between 1945 and 1999, more than 4.3 million African Americans died prematurely, compared to their white counterparts (Levine et al., 2001). This inequality needs to be explained and addressed. Second, debate over race and health provides an important opportunity to advance scientific and public understanding of race, racism, and human variation. In recent years, several high-profile journals have devoted C 2009 V WILEY-LISS, INC. presents an opportunity to refine the critique of race in three ways: 1) to reiterate why the race concept is inconsistent with patterns of global human genetic diversity; 2) to refocus attention on the complex, environmental influences on human biology at multiple levels of analysis and across the lifecourse; and 3) to revise the claim that race is a cultural construct and expand research on the sociocultural reality of race and racism. Drawing on recent developments in neighboring disciplines, I present a model for explaining how racial inequality becomes embodied—literally—in the biological well-being of racialized groups and individuals. This model requires a shift in the way we articulate the critique of race as bad biology. Am J Phys Anthropol 139:47–57, 2009. V 2009 C Wiley-Liss, Inc. special issues to race; in each case, racial inequalities in health were a major focus of debate (Nature Genetics, 2004; American Journal of Public Health, 2005; American Psychologist, 2005). Moreover, when research on race and human variation makes the news, it often has to do with race, medicine, and disease (e.g., Wade, 2002, 2004; Bakalar, 2007; Drexler,