Beyond the race-genetics critique

The sociologist Rogers Brubaker has noted that although a consensus exists (among acacademic social scientists) on the biological incoherence of the "race" concept, analysts often unknowingly persist in treating unitary racial groups as a given, even if they do not do so in the language of biology. Brubaker labels this "groupism." This paper takes stock of the critique of racial biology, a cross-disciplinary body of literature that has exploded in the past 20 years and focuses in particular on the persistence of the biological race concept in medical/public health research and practice. It argues for the importance of this critique but also notes severe limitations in the focus on biology alone. Problematic use of "race" in a groupist manner continues, even in the absence of explicit biological invocation. Groupism, in turn, can result in hamstrung uni-variate analysis that designates "race" as the key analytic for interpreting health inequalities, at the expense of other contexts that mediate the influence (or lack thereof) of race. The paper concludes by suggesting alternative ways of studying racial health disparities without committing racial groupism.