Race: A Biological Fiction (02/06/2018 Essay)

        In Colored Property, Freund calls race “a biological fiction.” Freund means that race, at least biologically, is non-existent. Race is but an illusory concept created to subjugate and impose restrictions on those belonging to an alleged inferior racial group. Haney-Lopez would undeniably agree with Freund’s claims. In “Social Construction of Race: Some Observations on Illusion, Fabrication, and Choice,” Haney-Lopez contends that biological race implies that “there exist natural, physical divisions among humans that are hereditary, reflected in morphology, and roughly but correctly captured by terms like Black, White, and Asian…Under this view, one’s ancestors and epidermis ineluctably determine membership in a genetically defined racial group” (Haney-Lopez 6). Race cannot be defined by biological properties, there is no distinctive classification that can be made to categorize an individual to any particular group. Race, in terms of biological concepts, is an erroneous conception that is continuously fueled for personal gain. Freund’s claim that “ideas about race…carry tremendous political, economic, and cultural power” in the realm of health and medicine is increasingly apparent (12). As Haney-Lopez explains,

Race is neither an essence nor an illusion, but rather an ongoing, contradictory, self-reinforcing process subject to the macro forces of social and political struggle and the micro effects of daily decisions. (7)

Race is continually bolstering itself in society which allows for the political, economic, and cultural power that it dictates to translate to and impact the care and treatment that minorities receive in health care. For example,

doctors rated black patients as less intelligent, less educated, more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, more likely to fail to comply with medical advice, more likely to lack social support, and less likely to participate in cardiac rehabilitation than white patients, even after patients’ income, education, and personality characteristics were taken into account. (Institute of Medicine 11)

Consequently, doctors’ perception of their patients undeniably impacts their level of commitment to care. Race is capable of infecting the political, economic, and cultural aspects of life to create an increasingly deprived level of medical treatment.

        Race, as in the past, continues to “function as a signifier of social identity, power, and meaning (HoSang 212). These readings raise many questions—most notably being how to eradicate the malicious implications of race, how to improve the health care system, and what implications continued racialization has on society.

Works Cited

Daniel Martinez HoSang and Oneka Labennet, “Racialization,” Keywords for American Cultural Studies, pp. 212-214.

Freund, David M. P. Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America. University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Ian F. Haney-Lopez, “The Social Construction of Race,” Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 29:1 (1994), 1-2 and 39-53.

Institute of Medicine, “Summary,” Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care, pp. 1-22.