Critics have debated for the past decade or more whether race is dead or alive in the new genetics: Is genomics opening up novel terrains for social identities or is it reauthorizing race? I explore the relationship between race and the new genetics by considering whether this race is the same scientific object as that produced by race science and whether these race-making practices are animated by similar social and political logics. I consider the styles of reasoning characteristic of the (...) scientific work together with the economic and political rationalities of neo-liberalism, including identity politics as it meets biological citizenship. I seek to understand why and how group-based diversity emerges as an object of value - something to be studied and specified, something to be fought for and embraced, and something that is profitable - in the networks that sustain the world of (post)genomics today. (shrink)

Like more than two hundred thousand other Americans, George Floyd howled horribly for air before his death. But his breathlessness was not born from a virus. He was murdered with the burden of anti...

Health care in the United States, being a microcosm of the broader society in which it developed, possesses a sordid legacy concerning racial prejudices, biases, and the perpetuation of health and...

Appeals to scrutinize the use of race and ethnicity as variables in genetics research notwithstanding, these variables continue to be inadequately explained and inconsistently used in research publications. In previous research, we found that published genetic research fails to follow suggestions offered for addressing this problem, such as explaining the basis on which these labels are assigned to populations. This study, an analysis of genetic research articles using race or ethnicity terms, explores possible features of journals that are associated with (...) improved reporting of race and ethnicity in genetic research. A journal’s expressed commitment to improving how race and ethnicity are used in genetic research, demonstrated by an editorial or in its instructions to authors, was the strongest predictor of following recommendations about reporting race and ethnicity. Journal impact factor had only a limited positive effect on attention to these issues, suggesting that editorial resources associated with higher impact factor journals are not sufficient to improve practices. Our findings reiterate that race and ethnicity variables are used inconsistently in genetic research, but also shed light on how journals might improve practices by highlighting the need for scientists to carefully scrutinize the use of these variables in their work. (shrink)

Through the use of culturally appropriate videos on precision medicine research (PMR) that were developed and tailored to five racial and ethnic groups of patients, and subsequent focus-group discu...

Programs, policies, and technologies — particularly those concerned with health equity — are often designed with justice envisioned as the end goal. These policies or interventions, however, frequently fail to recognize how the beneficiaries have historically embodied the cumulative effects of marginalization, which undermines the effectiveness of the intended justice. These well-meaning attempts at justice are bounded by greater socio-historical constraints. Bounded justice suggests that it is impossible to attend to fairness, entitlement, and equity when the basic social and physical (...) infrastructures underlying them have been eroded by racism and other historically entrenched isms. Using the case of Brazil’s National Health Policy for the Black Population, this paper proposes that bounded justice can contribute to justice discourses by serving as a concept, a proffering to a multi-disciplinary conceptual framework, and a potential analytic for those interested in the design of policy, technology, and programmatic interventions towards health equity. (shrink)

There are some long-standing social issues that imperil Black Americans’ relationship with health and healthcare. These issues include racial disparities in health outcomes, provider bi...

Events in 2020 have sparked a reimagination of how both individuals and institutions should consider race, power, health, and marginalization in society. In a response to these developments, we exa...