5.5: Scientific Racism in the Modern Era

While overt biological racism has declined, subtler forms persist in scientific and medical research. Racial essentialism—the assumption that racial groups have inherent differences—shapes disparities in medical treatment, such as the under-prescription of pain medication to Black patients. Hoffman et al. (2016) provide a critical empirical investigation into how racial bias, rooted in historically constructed ideologies, manifests within a contemporary medical context to produce stark health disparities. This research documents how false beliefs about biological differences between Black and White people (e.g., Black people have thicker skin or less sensitive nerve endings) are not merely historical artifacts but are held by a substantial portion of laypeople and a sample of White medical students and residents. These false beliefs, the study finds, are directly correlated with racial bias in pain perception; individuals who endorsed more of these inaccurate biological concepts were also more likely to rate a Black patient’s pain as lower than that of a White patient exhibiting identical injuries.

This research makes a significant sociological contribution by linking implicit bias and cultural mythologies to tangible outcomes in a core social institution. The study demonstrates that racial inequality is not only perpetuated through overt discrimination but also through the subconscious internalization of false, yet persistent, beliefs that shape professional judgment. By quantifying this process in the high-stakes realm of pain assessment and treatment recommendations, Hoffman and colleagues reveal a fundamental mechanism through which racialized social systems are sustained, even in the absence of malicious intent, ultimately leading to the unequal distribution of a critical resource: adequate medical care.

Similarly, forensic anthropology’s use of racial classifications in identifying skeletal remains perpetuates the myth of biological race. Norman Sauer (1992) addressed the apparent paradox between the social scientific consensus that race is not a valid biological category and the practical ability of forensic anthropologists to assign skeletal remains to socially recognized racial groups. He argues that this proficiency does not validate biological race concepts but instead demonstrates a correlation between human skeletal morphology and socially constructed racial classifications. Forensic anthropologists are effective precisely because they are matching skeletal traits to population-level patterns that have been shaped by ancestry, geography, and historical gene flow, and which have been socially labeled as “racial” groups. Sauer concludes that the “races” forensic anthropologists identify are socially designated geographic populations, not discrete biological taxa—the hierarchical groupings that define life on earth—thereby reconciling the field’s methodological practice with the prevailing understanding of race as a social construct.

Advancements in genetics have also reintroduced debates about race and science. While some researchers argue for using racial categories in genetic studies to address health disparities (Burchard et al. 2003), others warn that this risks reifying race—or making race a real a biological reality (Braun 2006). That is, to utilize racial categories can actually add to the legitimacy of difference, wherein anyone naïve to the complexities of race may, by its prevalence, assume it is a real biological fact. The commercialization of DNA ancestry testing further complicates this issue by marketing race as a discoverable genetic trait (Bolnick et al. 2007). Although this testing appears to be about tracing one’s family lineage and history, it has the latent consequence of giving people some sort of validation in establishing their difference, and by extension making suggestions about superiority or inferiority tied to race.