Reforming the Use of Race in Medical Pedagogy

Perez-Rodriguez and de la Fuente, a physician and a historian of Afro-Caribbean slavery, make a compelling interdisciplinary contribution to the expanding humanities and social science literature contesting continued use of racial categories in both biomedical research and in the clinic (Perez-Rodriguez and de la Fuente 2017). This contribution is especially important at a moment when racial essentialism is growing in biomedicine, despite a weak evidence base. The authors channel frustration and impatience about racist science that are widely (if unevenly) spread throughout academia—frustration and impatience upon which we remarked upon in our own recent paper criticizing racial essentialism in medical science teaching.