5 ms·
There are genuinely different risk factors and biological predispositions that are impacted by one’s racial background. The idea that we should pretend race is
by trentnix 5y ago
There are genuinely different risk factors and biological predispositions that are impacted by one’s racial background. The idea that we should pretend race is only a social construct is completely unscientific and absurd.
To argue asking about one’s race is racism will absolutely, positively have negative outcomes in providing quality healthcare. A good physician should never be ignorant of such things. And there’s no such thing as a good physician who is willfully ignorant of such things.
- secondaryacct 5y ago
- trentnix 5y agoYou don’t seem to understand what race, as it’s used in this context, actually means.
- secondaryacct 5y agoNothing... it means nothing and your inability to define it precisely beyond vague concepts proves it. Races have a precise meaning in domestic animal breeding, there is a rule book, you cull the offspring that mutates too far away and aim at purity of attributes as defined in the standard. You get certification for your animals by various standard association who measure shape, color and size. It makes no sense for humans. You can say gene X produce problem Y if you want, but there s no discrete segmentation in humans.
- thriftwy 5y agoTheoretically, yes. However, in practice either one of White, Black, Asian and, notoriously, Latino races carry zero of medically useful information since all of those are polyphylectic. There's more than one distinct things in each.
- trentnix 5y agoI agree. But that’s a problem with how one’s race is being asked, not whether it is out-of-bounds to ask.
- tpush 5y ago> The idea that we should pretend race is only a social construct is completely unscientific and absurd. Nonsense, "race" is the unscientific and absurd concept when applied to humans. They are human populations which are more predisposed toward certain diseases (e.g. sickle cell anaemia) but these populations aren't different "races"!
- trentnix 5y agoYou’re being pedantic.
- tootallgavin 5y agoThat's the point of science.
- thrown_22 5y agoYes, so lets start by distinguishing between the 5 major and 28 minor races of Africa. Saying that 'African American' corresponds to anything medically meaningful is the equivalent of saying 'All Asians look the same'.
- zelphirkalt 5y agoI think the idea is more, that there is no distinct level at which you can draw a line and can reasonably claim, that everyone beyond that line is or does x. That means, that you probably should not draw any conclusions from that line, even if there are differences in many cases on each side of the line. From each side if the line a person can surprise you by not being or doing what you would expect based on the line you drew, so you need to keep an open mind about the arbitrary line you drew.
- trentnix 5y agoI can agree with that. It might be uselessly imprecise. But the parent suggested asking one’s race was fundamentally racist. That’s absurd.
- tootallgavin 5y agoIn the idea of race, isn't one of the races "ahead" of the other races? The point of race is to be racist.
- klyrs 5y agoOne reason behind the question is to quantify the impact of racism in society. Can you propose a methodology for quantifying racism that avoids this?
- aklemm 5y agoYou are very wrong. Your best option, should you be open to knowing how far off you are, is to listen to the podcast series “Seeing White.”