Dorothy E. Roberts

Punishing drug addicts who have babies: women of color, equality, and the right of privacy.

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Taking race out of human genetics

Engaging a century-long debate about the role of race in science In the wake of the sequencing of the human genome in the early 2000s, genome pioneers and social scientists alike called for an end to the use of race as a variable in genetic research (1, 2). Unfortunately, by some measures, the use of race as a biological category has increased in the postgenomic age (3). Although inconsistent definition and use has been a chief problem with the race concept, it has historically been used as a taxonomic categorization based on common hereditary traits (such as skin color) to elucidate the relationship between our ancestry and our genes. We believe the use of biological concepts of race in human genetic research—so disputed and so mired in confusion—is problematic at best and harmful at worst. It is time for biologists to find a better way.

Foreword: Race, Vagueness, and the Social Meaning of Order-Maintenance Policing

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Race, Gender, and Genetic Technologies: A New Reproductive Dystopia?

In the 1980s, Margaret Atwood, Gena Corea, and other feminists envisioned dystopias in which wealthy white women’s reproduction was valued and privileged and women of color’s reproduction was devalued and exploited. In subsequent decades, feminist scholars continued to criticize the stratification of reproduction by contrasting policies that penalize poor nonwhite women’s childbearing, on the one hand, with the high‐tech fertility industry that promotes childbearing by more affluent white women, on the other. In recent years, however, companies that market race‐based biotechnologies have promised to extend the benefits of genetic research to people of color, and media promoting genetic technologies have prominently featured their images. At the same time, the important role of genetic screening that makes individual citizens responsible for ensuring good health by reducing genetic risk may support the wider incorporation of genetic technologies into the neoliberal health care system. I argue, therefore, that we need a new reproductive dystopia that accounts for the changing political context of reproduction. This article critically explores the role of race and racism in the emergence of reproductive technologies that incorporate advances in genetic science and considers the implications of including women of color in the market for reprogenetic technologies, particularly when this is done with the expectation that women will use these technologies to manage genetic risk. In investigating these issues, I hope to shed light on the critical relationship between racism, neoliberalism, and reproduction.

Sleep disparity, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic position

Sleep represents a set of biological functions necessary for the maintenance of life. Performing these functions, though, requires that an individual engage in behaviors, which are affected by social and environmental factors. Race/ethnicity and socioeconomic position represent categories of factors that likely play a role in the experience of sleep in the community. Previous studies have suggested that racial/ethnic minorities and the socioeconomically disadvantaged may be more likely to experience sleep patterns that are associated with adverse health outcomes. It is possible that disparities in sleep represent a pathway by which larger disparities in health emerge. This review (1) contextualizes the concept of race/ethnicity in biomedical research, (2) summarizes previous studies that describe patterns of sleep attainment across race/ethnicity groups, (3) discusses several pathways by which race/ethnicity may be associated with sleep, (4) introduces the potential role of socioeconomic position in the patterning of sleep, and (5) proposes future research directions to address this issue.

Debating the Cause of Health Disparities: Implications for Bioethics and Racial Equality

In 2002, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine (IOM), scientifically documented widespread racial disparities in healthcare and suggested that they stemmed, at least in part, from physician bias. Its 562-page report, Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Healthcare, noted that, although these disparities are associated with socioeconomic status, the majority of studies it surveyed ‘‘find that racial and ethnic disparities remain even after adjustment for socioeconomic differences and other healthcare access-related factors.’’ As directed by Congress, the IOM committee defined ‘‘disparities’’ in healthcare as ‘‘racial or ethnic differences in the quality of health care that are not due to access-related factors or clinical needs, preferences, and appropriateness of intervention’’ (pp. 3–4). Unequal Treatment concludes that, after factoring out these access-related differences, remaining disparities can be attributed in part to discrimination by the medical profession—physician prejudices, biases, or stereotyping of their minority patients. Some commentators took offense at the report’s charge of racial bias. It was unfair, they argued, to suggest that blatant racial prejudice, as was demonstrated in the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, for example, still lingered in contemporary medical care. ‘‘I would stress that the attitudes of physicians today have shown a true revolution from those that permeated the generation or two ago,’’ wrote University of Chicago law and economics professor Richard Epstein. ‘‘It is a shame to attack so many people of good will on evidence that admits a much more benign interpretation.’’ The ‘‘benign’’ interpretations offered by critics were that racial disparities stem from patient behavior, cultural difference, biological difference, and economic inequality. Each of these explanations sounds familiar to historians of race and health in America. Although racial disparities in health are firmly established, pinpointing their cause has been controversial. In this article, I challenge recent claims that racial health disparities are caused by race-based genetic difference or race-neutral economic difference on grounds that both explanations ignore the roots of health disparities in social inequality. I develop my argument by examining the controversy surrounding the Institute of Medicine report on racial bias in healthcare,

MOVEMENT INTERSECTIONALITY: The Case of Race, Gender, Disability, and Genetic Technologies

Intersectional analysis need not focus solely on differences within or between identity-based groups. Using intersectionality for cross movement mobilization reveals that, contrary to criticism for being divisive, attention to intersecting identities has the potential to create solidarity and cohesion. In this article, we elaborate this argument with a case study of the intersection of race, gender, and disability in genetic technologies as well as in organizing to promote a social justice approach to the use of these technologies. We show how organizing based on an intersectional analysis can help forge alliances between reproductive justice, racial justice, womens rights, and disability rights activists to develop strategies to address reproductive genetic technologies. We use the work of Generations Ahead to illuminate how intersectionality applied at the movement-building level can identify genuine common ground, create authentic alliances, and more effectively advocate for shared policy priorities.

Is Race-Based Medicine Good for Us?: African American Approaches to Race, Biomedicine, and Equality:

This article presents a preliminary framework for exploring the intersection of science and racial politics in the public debate about race-based pharmaceuticals, especially among African Americans. It examines the influence of three political approaches to race consciousness on evaluations of racial medicine and offers an alternative critique.

Complicating the triangle of race, class and state: the insights of black feminists

This article complicates Wacquants three-sided schema of race, class and state by adding a focus on gender, the experiences of black women, and a black feminist intersectional analysis. Welfare retrenchment in the USA relied on stereotypes of black women, especially the ‘Welfare Queen’, that were at once sexist and racist and implemented policies targeted specifically at them as the vilified beneficiaries of state largess. Attributing social inequality to black womens childbearing furthers race, gender and class oppression in the context of neo-liberalism by legitimizing intensified deprivation and surveillance. A focus on the regulation of black mothers brings to the fore the child welfare system as a critical institution of social supervision, on a par with workfare and prisonfare. A black feminist analysis of the intersection of welfare, prison and foster care in the systemic punishment of black mothers and of strategies for resistance illuminates how racism and neo-liberalism operate together in the USA.

Child protection as surveillance of African American families

The over-representation of black children in US out of home care results from racial bias in placement decisions and a political choice to address startling rates of child poverty by investigating parents instead of tackling povertys societal roots. The impact of state disruption and supervision of African American families is intensified when it is concentrated in inner-city neighbourhoods – the systems ‘racial geography.’ A small case study of a black neighbourhood in Chicago with high rates of out of home placement found profound effects on both family and community social relationships, as well as reliance on child protective services for financial assistance, linking surveillance of black families to the neoliberal shrinking of public programmes. The surveillance of African American women by the child welfare system is also intensified by these womens disproportionate involvement in the prison system. Acknowledging racial bias in child welfare reveals the need to radically transform the system from one that relies too much on punitive disruption of families to one that generously supports them.