I was waiting for the first person to say this, which is why I explicitly wrote "black" when describing the disproportionate rates of sickle cell in black children vs. white children. This isn't some rhetorical game. We know what "race" is, intuitively, and we know that it correlates strongly with real-world biological outcomes.
These guidelines are gaslighting people into ignoring broadly useful categories because we don't have a reductive way of defining them. We don't have a biological test that defines race (yet), ergo, it doesn't exist. Except that's wrong. It's absurd.
> In studies of conditions like sickle cell anaemia or lactose intolerance or skin cancer it would probably be more useful to relate those to particular genotypes and/or phenotypes rather than relying on which "race" field each experimental subject selected on the intake form.
If we could do that -- relate the (known) gene for sickle cell to some other "genotype" that captures the racial bias we know exists -- we'd have a strict biological definition for race, wouldn't we?
Aside from that, we know the "phenotype" that correlates with the illness. Black people have it, at high rates.
Actually, sickle cell anemia is disproportionately high only in specific populations of black people. The black race is more genetically diverse than all other races combined. Race has a very poor basis in science vs specific genetic lines correlated with specific geographical regions of genetic drift.
> Actually, sickle cell anemia is disproportionately high only in specific populations of black people.
I wouldn't be surprised if we had, by this point, some more specific way of breaking down the susceptible population (other than the gene itself, which we know). It doesn't change the broader point that, breaking things down by "race" alone, we see huge, impactful differences.
Even in drug development, there's a huge push to break down clinical trials by gender and race, because not all drugs work the same in different ethnic populations. By these guidelines, I guess we're not allowed to do that? Race doesn't exist!
When breaking phenomenon down by race it’s important to differentiate phenomenon caused by sociological perceptions of race and actual biological effects of genetic drift, which are distinctly different. I never said race doesn’t exist I merely said it has a poor genetic basis when we can study the actual sub populations of genetic geographic locale. It’s important to test drug trials across different races in the sense that it’s important to try to capture effects across multiple ethnic populations, but in reality race is merely a poor but easy metric to do. Like I said, black people have more genetic diversity than any other race combined. Sub Saharan African has more drift from Aboriginal Australian than White Norwegian, even though the first two groups are both considered black.
To be clear: the sickle cell trait appears elevated in sub-Saharan Africa and descendants from that area. This also means for example black people from Somali aren’t really affected even though Somali is part of the African continent. Does this help clarify my point?
Are you taking about scientific research (as per the original article) or healthcare delivery? Medical researchers should take the take the time to be precise about characterizing their subjects, and rely on subject-reported demographic data as little as possible. Practitioners and public health have to take a more pragmatic approach, and rely on generalizations for the sake of convenience. Those are different use cases with different best practices.
Black isn't a "race", it's a social category. You can't actually be serious? In America, black includes people of Caribbean descent, people from South America, African-Americans, someone that stepped off a plane from Ethiopia. It's a completely meaningless term in regards to science. You can't actually be serious?
"Blind isn't an actual biological condition, it's a social category"
The same thing can be different categories. Black is social category, and is also a very well defined biological state of the most visible organ in your body, and is associated with certain genes. Instead of repeatedly stating the name of those different genes every time you say something about them, you can simply say the name of the most visible marker of them and still be correct the vast majority of time.
The notion was that a "race" is something of such significant scientific relevance, that not being able to use "Black" to refer to a "race" would be a disservice. But you aren't here saying Black is a race, it is a "defined biological state of the most visible organ in your body". Okay, what does that have to do with race? Did you not understand my previous post explaining that "people who are socially considered Black" is basically a useless scientific criteria outside of its social circumstances?
You seem a little bit more focused on repeating some rhetorical dunk you read somewhere online than actually understanding what is being discussed. Take a moment and actually consider what I'm writing. To repeat the example that I gave before, research on Ashkenazi Jewish diseases is not hindered by calling it research on the specific haplotype group that it is. The poster that brought up Ashkenazi Jews is misunderstanding if not disingenuous. I think you also don't get the difference between what a haplotype group is in this context, and your concept of "race".
> "Blind isn't an actual biological condition, it's a social category"
Uh, this is actually true. Blindness is a legal definition not a medical condition. There are numerous medical conditions that can lead to a person being legally blind.
If the biological state is "very well defined" then please point us to the definition. Is it based solely on skin hue and reflectance, or are there other factors? Do some people in South Asia with very dark skin meet that definition or are they excluded?
I'm not just trying to be argumentative here. If scientists want to produce high quality, reproducible research then they must precisely define their terms. They can't just assume that everyone has the same understanding and knows what they mean.
Those people have a shared biological lineage, with only a relatively short period of differentiation — while they have radically different cultures.
What you’re describing is “black” being useless as a social construct (ie, I know nothing about their culture) but useful medically/scientifically (ie, there’s groupings of medical conditions correlated with that lineage).
I would go so far as to say only racists use “black” as a social construct — and project that the medical groupings are the same.
These guidelines are gaslighting people into ignoring broadly useful categories because we don't have a reductive way of defining them. We don't have a biological test that defines race (yet), ergo, it doesn't exist. Except that's wrong. It's absurd.
> In studies of conditions like sickle cell anaemia or lactose intolerance or skin cancer it would probably be more useful to relate those to particular genotypes and/or phenotypes rather than relying on which "race" field each experimental subject selected on the intake form.
If we could do that -- relate the (known) gene for sickle cell to some other "genotype" that captures the racial bias we know exists -- we'd have a strict biological definition for race, wouldn't we?
Aside from that, we know the "phenotype" that correlates with the illness. Black people have it, at high rates.