{"id":13475,"date":"2011-04-26T21:39:54","date_gmt":"2011-04-26T21:39:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=13475"},"modified":"2013-10-14T15:32:59","modified_gmt":"2013-10-14T15:32:59","slug":"how-race-becomes-biology-embodiment-of-social-inequality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=13475","title":{"rendered":"How race becomes biology: Embodiment of social inequality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1002\/ajpa.20983\" target=\"_blank\">How race becomes biology: Embodiment of social inequality<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/journal\/10.1002\/(ISSN)1096-8644\" target=\"_blank\">American Journal of Physical Anthropology<\/a><br \/>\nSpecial Issue: Race Reconciled: How Biological Anthropologists View Human Variation<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/ajpa.v139:1\/issuetoc\" target=\"_blank\">Volume 139, Issue 1<\/a> (May 2009)<br \/>\npages 47\u201357<br \/>\nDOI: <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1002\/ajpa.20983\" target=\"_blank\">10.1002\/ajpa.20983<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gravlee.org\/lab\/people\/\" target=\"_blank\">Clarence C. Gravlee<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of Anthropology<br \/>\n<em>University of Florida, Gainesville<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The current debate over racial inequalities in health is arguably the most important venue for advancing both scientific and public understanding of race, racism, and human biological variation. In the United States and elsewhere, there are well-defined inequalities between racially defined groups for a range of biological outcomes\u2014cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, certain cancers, low birth weight, preterm delivery, and others. Among biomedical researchers, these patterns are often taken as evidence of fundamental genetic differences between alleged races. However, a growing body of evidence establishes the primacy of social inequalities in the origin and persistence of racial health disparities. Here, I summarize this evidence and argue that the debate over racial inequalities in health presents an opportunity to refine the critique of race in three ways: 1) to reiterate why the race concept is inconsistent with patterns of global human genetic diversity; 2) to refocus attention on the complex, environmental influences on human biology at multiple levels of analysis and across the lifecourse; and 3) to revise the claim that race is a cultural construct and expand research on the sociocultural reality of race and racism. Drawing on recent developments in neighboring disciplines, I present a model for explaining how racial inequality becomes embodied\u2014literally\u2014in the biological well-being of racialized groups and individuals. This model requires a shift in the way we articulate the critique of race as bad biology.<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gravlee.org\/files\/pdfs\/Gravlee%202009%20Am%20J%20Phys%20Anthropol.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How race becomes biology: Embodiment of social inequality American Journal of Physical Anthropology Special Issue: Race Reconciled: How Biological Anthropologists View Human Variation Volume 139, Issue 1 (May 2009) pages 47\u201357 DOI: 10.1002\/ajpa.20983 Clarence C. Gravlee, Associate Professor of Anthropology University of Florida, Gainesville The current debate over racial inequalities in health is arguably the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,2039,8,26,394],"tags":[1651,6143,6144],"class_list":["post-13475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-health-medicine","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-socialscience","tag-american-journal-of-physical-anthropology","tag-clarence-c-gravlee","tag-clarence-gravlee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}