I guess we are speaking different languages. I appreciate you referring me to Neil Irvin Painter, but she is a historian. The table I presented was from a book by an Osteologist and Paleoanthropologist. I asked my wife (a physician) about how race applies to her assessing risk for disease, and she referred me here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15257843
I really am not talking about “whiteness” or "blackness’ in the same cultural terms that you seem to be. And I accept that many people are not easily classified by race. But if your doctor speaks to you about race and heart disease, he or she is not trying to oppress you. It may simply be that they are trying to use best practices to assess your risk for disease. Here is a statement from the American Heart Association:
“Many racial/ethnic minority populations have higher rates of CVD and related risk factors. The statistics are stark testimony to that fact.•CVD age-adjusted death rates are 33% higher for blacks than for the overall population in the U.S. •Blacks are nearly twice as likely to have a first stroke and much more likely to die from one than whites.1•American Indians/Alaska Natives die from heart disease much earlier than expected – 36% are under 65 compared with only 17% for the U.S. population overall.”
So people who take the political position that race does not exist, especially those who exhibit rage towards those who believe differently, put scientists and physicians in a difficult position. A physician who ignores race as a factor in determining risk of disease is putting their patients in danger. A forensic examiner who does not take into account racial characteristics of the remains that they are tasked with identifying is performing their job negligently. A Hematologist who decides to focus a large percentage of their research budget on studying Sickle cell disease among Nordic peoples, because they believe race is a construct, is wasting money and effort that could be saving lives. It is very strange to me that we are coming into an age where political expediency has begun to compromise data driven science. It is similar to a geologist or physicist who has to interact with or work for Fundamentalist Christians. Geology as a predictive science, such as oil exploration, requires the understanding that the earth is more than 6,000 years old, so does the study of light and radiation. When those hard scientists have to interact with people who are convinced of biblical literalism, they have to tread very lightly to avoid conflict. I find it very depressing.
