At Least Know This by Guy P. Harrison

Author:Guy P. Harrison
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633884069
Publisher: Prometheus Books

RACE AND DISEASE

The idea of “race diseases” seems to come up in every discussion that challenges the reality of races. This common claim says that there are race-specific diseases and they help prove the existence of biological races. This is wrong, however, because diseases do not conform to the particulars of a society's current belief in biological races. And it leads to serious problems. Cystic fibrosis, for example, is underdiagnosed in dark-skinned people, because many doctors think of it as a “white” disease.28 Sickle-cell disease is often cited and described as a “black disease” in the United States. But it's not. Sickle-cell disease doesn't believe in biological races, nor does it follow anyone's race rules.

Sickle-cell disease is a problem of abnormal hemoglobin in red blood cells. Normal red blood cells are donut-shaped, but red blood cells affected by sickle-cell disease are shaped like sickles, rod-like, and inflexible. This causes difficulties because they can get stuck in vessels, which slows or blocks the flow of blood. This disrupts the transport of oxygen in the body and can cause pain or even death. The disease is not race-specific. It is an evolutionary adaptation to Plasmodium, the malaria parasite. Sickle-cell disease is a problem that impacts many people around the world who have ancestry that is connected to regions with high rates of malaria in the past. Race is not the issue. For example, the trait is relatively common in central India, Nepal, and the Middle East. A small town in Greece, Orchomenos, has one of the highest rates of sickle-cell anemia in the entire world, twice that of the African American population.29 And the disease is virtually nonexistent among black South Africans.30 Even in the United States, where it is commonly thought of as a “black disease,” eleven of every twelve black people have no biological connection to it.31

THE STRANGE CASE OF BARACK OBAMA

Former US president Barack Obama is one of the most famous African Americans of all time, and popular perceptions of him present a good example of not only the absurdity of race belief but also how it is dangerous in healthcare. Obama's father was a Kenyan, and his mother was an American of European descent. Obama is brown-skinned and has a black parent, so he was designated a member of the black or African American race early in life, as is the custom in America. Culturally, he may belong to the black or African American race, what about his biology? With his immediate ancestry being white European and East African, Obama is relatively far removed from an overwhelming majority of US blacks or African Americans. Most African Americans have recent ancestry from West Africa.32 This means that Obama is likely to be very distantly related to most African Americans. (Africans have the greatest genetic diversity because Homo sapiens have lived in Africa the longest.) Ironically, his white mother's genes likely would give Obama his closest biological link to other African Americans because of the intermating that has occurred in US history with gene flow traveling mostly from the white population to the black (one-drop rule).

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