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Comment by trentnix | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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"!

You’re being pedantic.

That's the point of science.

Yes, 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'.

Theoretically, 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.

I agree. But that’s a problem with how one’s race is being asked, not whether it is out-of-bounds to ask.

I 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.

I can agree with that. It might be uselessly imprecise. But the parent suggested asking one’s race was fundamentally racist. That’s absurd.

In the idea of race, isn't one of the races "ahead" of the other races? The point of race is to be racist.

One reason behind the question is to quantify the impact of racism in society. Can you propose a methodology for quantifying racism that avoids this?

You 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.”

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