Mixed Race Studies

Race is a Social Construct

Center for Health Progress
2017-10-24

Sarah McAfee
Golden, Colorado

On a recent road trip with my sister, a doctor, we were talking about how race is a social construct. (We’re not the best conversationalists.) She asked, “If there’s no biological basis for race, then why do some medications work better for people of some races than others?” Which is a good question. Since we had a long drive ahead of us, I stalled by pointing out the window at a pretend elk and changed the subject, then did some furious Googling when we stopped for gas.

For hundreds of years, we’ve been told that each race is a discrete group of people defined by specific genetic and biological differences. As a result, we’ve used race as a way of explaining observed differences in health: Sickle Cell Anemia is considered a black person disease; Cystic Fibrosis is considered a white person disease; we’ve said people of color are genetically pre-disposed to diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, and other chronic conditions; the FDA has approved drugs for different races; and through “race-based medicine” we’ve established care standards (such as responding to patients’ pain) that vary by race. But it’s all wrong…

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An Education for All: Teacher Educated Her Hampton Students `for Eternity’

The Daily Press
Norfolk, Virginia
1995-02-07

Felice Belman

Mary S. Peake

HAMPTON — Mary S. Peake was so devoted to her students that she taught them even when it was illegal to do so.

She was so dedicated to education that, even after the city of Hampton was burned by Confederate rebels, she started a school for ex-slaves at Fort Monroe.

And she was so concerned about her work that in February 1862 – so weak from tuberculosis that she couldn’t stand – Peake gathered her students round her bedside and taught lessons between violent spasms of coughing. She died the next day.

”It’s important to remember Mary S. Peake because she taught the prominent people of her time,” said Debbie Lee Bryant, a genealogist and historian in Hampton. ”It’s important to remember her because she was the first black missionary teacher, and because her school was the forerunner to what’s now known as Hampton University.”

Peake’s contemporaries were equally admiring.

”Mrs. Peake was a remarkable person as to disposition, talents and piety,” said an unsigned article in an 1862 edition of the ”American Missionary” magazine, the journal of the American Missionary Association.

”She devoted unreservedly to the elevation of her own race,” the article said.

Mary S. Peake was a free black woman when most Southern blacks were slaves. She taught black children in Hampton and, in 1861, opened a school, marking the beginning of general education for blacks in the South. The founders of Hampton Institute, now called Hampton University, were inspired by Peake’s example.

Peake was the first teacher of blacks in any territory liberated by the Federal Army and the founder of the first school for blacks after the war began.

Born Mary Smith Kelsey, Peake was the daughter of a free black woman and a white Englishman. She was sent away to school in Alexandria but returned home to Norfolk at the age of 16, after Congress shut down schools for blacks in the Washington area. A studious girl, she turned most frequently to the Bible, according to a biography written by her contemporary, the Rev. Lewis C. Lockwood…

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