Freund Prompt

Freund calls race a “biological fiction”, which to me is defining race as nonexistent in reality. Such that biology of humans, no matter the ethnicity, color, nationality, etc. is all irrelevant to the past, present, and future times. I agree when Freund states “however, does not make the concept of race irrelevant.” The fact that to him race is a biological fiction, but is still relevant, is almost contradicting himself. However, it is not because fiction is something that is made up, but still taken into perspective, just like race. Whereas irrelevant means that race does not matter even though it exists, and it is obvious that race is still relevant in present day. Almost as if in the eyes of science, race is not real; therefore, “race” is pigmentation of skin. Skin color is the pigment of melanin and has a wide range of pigments depending on the production of melanin. Overall, race is only part of the imagination for science.

I believe that Haney-Lopez would not agree with Freund. However, the two share ideas about race, but not completely. The reasoning behind this is because Haney-Lopez believes that “races are peoples created by history” whereas Freund believes that “some so-called racial groups are inherently superior to others.” Lopez is more about how races came to be and are existing today. Freund is more of that race isn’t really relevant, but does agree that race is a historically constructed idea. Nonetheless, the idea was not races constructed by people, but people classified into races.

Lopez’s claim that “ideas about race… carry tremendous political, economic, and cultural power” does stand true for issues of health and medicine. I believe this because in the Unequal Treatment article, the abstract’s first sentence “racial and ethnic minorities tend to receive a lower quality of healthcare than non-minorities…” defines the whole topic along with evidence and data in the summary. Such that “African Americans… are less likely to receive appropriate medication or to undergo coronary bypass surgery” which is nonsense because it maybe based on the person's insurance, income, age, and more. In the United States, people in the  minority tend to have lower incomes because racism is real.