Race Is a Social Category, Not a Biological One

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During Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s confirmation hearing with the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee, Senator Angela Alsobrooks questioned him about earlier statements he has made suggesting that Black people should not adhere to the same vaccine schedule as White people because “their immune system is better than ours.” In response, Kennedy cited research, such as this study, suggesting racial differences in immunity response to certain vaccines. While this study reaches a conclusion of “racial/ethnic differences” in immunity response, it uses classifications based on genetic ancestry, a separate concept from race. Race is a social category with no basis in biology, and many in the medical community have been seeking to eradicate the idea of biological differences by race due to the harmful consequences that can derive from this belief.

The Western concept of race arose as a system of hierarchical human categorization to support European colonialization, oppression, and discrimination of non-European groups. Within U.S. medical curricula, the concept of race led to theories of biological inferiority of people of color and White supremacy, which fueled an array of atrocities in medicine including forced sterilization efforts targeting Black and Native American women, the use of Henrietta Lacks’ cells for scientific research without consent or acknowledgement, and the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis study, among others.

Race is a poor proxy for genetic ancestry and large genetic studies have demonstrated more variation within defined racial groups (intra-racially) than there are between different racial groups (inter-racially). Within the medical and scientific community, there have been longstanding critiques of using racial classifications in diagnosis and treatment of disease. However, some recent scientific studies continued to suggest that genetic differences between racial groups may explain differences in health outcomes. For example, an article published in 2020 originally suggested that unknown or unmeasured genetic or biological factors may have contributed to increased severity of COVID-19 illness among Black people, although the article was later revised to clarify that the difference is most likely explained by societal factors.

There have been calls for research studies and guidance in the medical community to name and examine the role of racism versus race as a key driver of health inequities to avoid perpetuating disproven understandings of biological differences by race. The suggestion that biological differences exist moves in the opposite direction from the current stance of scientists and the medical community.