On August 15, I attended the first part of an all-day event commemorating the work of Troy Duster, a sociologist who documents the relationship between biomedical science, racism and other forms of social stratification, and public policy. The University of California-Berkeley’s Center for Genetics and Society, which aims to “encourage responsible uses and effective societal governance of human genetic and reproductive technologies and other emerging technologies,” hosted the event. Dorothy Roberts gave the opening address and framed her remarks around the pervasive myths that exist regarding the relationship between science and race and how these myths help naturalize racial health disparities.

Roberts is a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania in law and sociology whose work focuses on race, gender, reproduction, and law. Her book, “Killing the Black Body” (which I routinely characterize as the most influential book I’ve ever read), makes the case that racist science has been used for centuries to justify social policies that hurt women of color, especially Black women, often by relying on the pretext that their childbearing causes poverty or other poor outcomes and thus needs to be controlled. Her work traces back to the founding of the United States, when slavery’s continuation required violent control of Black women’s bodies and reproduction. She then pointed to a contemporary example of racialized reproductive coercion. The Center for Investigative Reporting found that 150 female inmates were sterilized in California from 2006 to 2010 without required state approvals. In many cases, women were lied to about the medical procedures about to be performed, pressured to undergo tubal ligations, or otherwise denied the opportunity to consent.

Against the backdrop of ongoing state-sanctioned control of women’s bodies, Roberts demonstrated inherent dangers in the belief that problems related to racial inequality can be fixed with primarily biological solutions. She also explored the myth that genetic race is a scientific truth, while anti-racism is merely an ideology. In her view, this is both false and damaging. She argued that ideology, whether obscured or openly acknowledged, is a part of all academic fields including science and the study of genes. Roberts connected this view to colorblindness, which is insidious when used to analyze health disparities because it ignores the possibility that people have different outcomes based on structural inequity. Therefore, colorblindness can pave the way for biological explanations for racial inequity: simply put, if one believes that everyone has the same opportunities, but inequality persists, one can conclude that the problem is biological. Roberts also urged the audience to “follow the money” when confronted with solutions rooted in biology, noting that racist ideology is often masked or given legitimacy through science or pushed through with commercial means.

This discussion was related to remarks by Ruha Benjamin, a professor of sociology and African American Studies at Princeton University, who focused on the strategic avoidance of historical context amidst the rise of genetic ancestry testing. According to Benjamin, individuals seeking information about their personal genetic makeup and companies developing and promoting testing products subscribe to and promote an “ahistorical and asocial” version of science. She used examples from India, Mexico, and South Africa to show how governments and private actors use genetic testing to build people’s sense of shared national identity and ancestry. Violence and inequality shaped these societies as well as the significance of racial categories, but this context is selectively ignored for the purpose of profit and nationalism.

The researchers demonstrated the profound global confusion around biology and race. Roberts provided a quote of Duster’s to help clarify the relationship: “The task is to determine how the social meaning of race can affect biological outcomes.” His words place the focus squarely on racism, a system of social control and exclusion based on skin color, rather than on race itself, a constructed identifier that varies across time, place, and context. Racism affects the human body, but this does not mean that there is a natural (i.e. immutable and biological) foundation for the health differences that emerge along racial lines. Research documents unequal health outcomes based on experiences with institutional and interpersonal racism: stress, nutrition, access to preventative care, etc. Therefore, addressing racially divergent health outcomes by tackling structural problems makes more sense than solutions that mask the underlying issue in perpetuity.

Along this line, both Roberts and Benjamin urged close scrutiny of private market actors in genetics. Pharmaceutical companies, Benjamin argued, “strategically conflate the commercial good with the public good.” A prime example is seen in the creation and growth of “ethnic drug markets,” or the development of drugs targeting specific groups of people. These markets are lucrative if the companies can convince large groups of medical professionals and patients that there is value and legitimacy in a biological foundation for racial differences.

The final panelist, Amani Nuru-Jeter of UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, raised another important point. She shared the reasoning behind her linguistic technique to “de-naturalize” racial differences in health outcomes. The terms inequity and disparity are often used interchangeably in public health research. However, as Nuru-Jeter explained, she prefers inequity because it goes beyond an observed difference to highlight the structural origins of that difference and the ways that policy reinforces the problem. Public health researchers, she noted, have long been attracted to race as a variable because it is a “resilient” factor – a researcher can control for other factors and racial differences persist. However, this can lead to a biological conclusion if social, economic, and political factors are not carefully considered or understood.

Overall, this conceptual gap makes a compelling case for increasing the prevalence and prominence of researchers who are intimately familiar with different forms of social and economic inequality. Efforts to bring more women, people of color, people with disabilities, people from lower income backgrounds, and other individuals that have experience with marginalization into the scientific research community will help address racial health inequities. For researchers coming from privileged backgrounds, I agree with the approach described by Chandra Ford and Collins Airhihenbuwa in their 2010 paper: “Critical Race Theory, Race Equity, and Public Health: Toward Antiracism Praxis,” where they argue that researchers and clinicians alike need to understand “the historical and sociopolitical roots of contemporary disparities.” The study of human genes can benefit people experiencing diverse health conditions, including those from marginalized groups. However, the field must be strengthened through an awareness of how people experience racism.