Reader Responses to Race Rx

I add in capital letters a word missing in this sentence (Race Rx, April/May): “It’s harmful to perpetuate the idea that race is biological, but it’s still everywhere in AMERICAN medical education.” Medical education and research in Sweden do not use the American concept of “race”—yet even the best educated American finds it difficult to write about visible human difference without using the term.

I add in capital letters a word missing in this sentence (Race Rx, April/May): “It’s harmful to perpetuate the idea that race is biological, but it’s still everywhere in AMERICAN medical education.” Medical education and research in Sweden do not use the American concept of “race”—yet even the best educated American finds it difficult to write about visible human difference without using the term. Former U.S. Census Bureau Director Kenneth Prewitt wrote his book What Is Your Race?: The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans in the belief that a first step could be taken in the 2020 census to end classifying Americans this way. If we want to refer in some way to human difference not based on the genome, then why not use “ethnicity”? In a New York Times article devoted to whether the word should be black or Black, Professor Vilna Bashi Treitler at UC Santa Barbara says “racial categories were fabricated” and that the term black “is a placeholder…for people who are perpetually reinserted into the bottom of the racial hierarchy.” Why is it so difficult for Brown professors to stop using terminology created by racists?

In the piece by Tim Murphy (“Race Rx,” April/May), the point is made that while the belief in inherent racial differences has been largely debunked, “the idea that race is biological” permeates medical education, often with disastrous consequences for minorities. The gravamen of the piece was intended to emphasize the conclusion that racism, segregation, and poverty, and not inherent racial differences, were responsible for “a variety of poorer outcomes in people of color.” In a seemingly throw away sentence, the article acknowledges that, indeed, “there are racial disparities in health even when income levels are the same.” In short, self-selected cultural attitudes and lifestyles which result in self-defeating black behaviors (drugs, crime, educational failure, fractured families) are part of the equation necessary for understanding racial disparities in, especially, health outcomes. Tiptoeing around this inconvenient truth so as not to upset the racial grievance industry dishonors intellectual honesty in favor of political correctness. Put another way, people in extremis are not helped by lying to them about their predicament, or urging them to blame others for their problems.

While I commend Dr. Jenny Tsai ’14 for more subtly examining racial bias in order to achieve better patient care and outcomes, I also applaud Dr. Gus White ’57 in reminding us that there are always other diversities at play, such as sexual orientation. Brown has long been a leader in diversities such as race and ethnicity, but less so in those that are not as apparent. While surely it can cite statistics on the numbers of faculty and athletes of color, can it tell us the number of gay ones? I think not. Maybe Dr. Tsai’s and Dr. White’s work will inspire Brown, and all of us, to consider all aspects of individual humanity.

I want first to say how proud I am of every person involved in the effort to make medicine stop misunderstanding and misusing the social construct of race. But I want to question one statement in the excellent article (“Race Rx,” April/May): “Whenever race is used now in lecture slides or small-group discussions, we look to make sure … that it’s used appropriately, as a proxy for other sociological factors that affect health, such as access to healthy housing, food, places to exercise, and transportation.”

I think using race as a proxy for what sounds to me like urban poverty perpetuates stereotypes. Students shouldn’t be taught to associate socioeconomic class and residential location with skin color. That objection aside, however, great work by everyone in the article and by its author and photographer.