Pathologizing Race and the Utility of Racial Experience for Addressing Women’s Health Disparities

Despite the increasing recognition that race is not biology within biomedical sciences, race is steadfastly called upon as an explanatory risk factor for many diseases, especially diseases that disproportionally impact minoritized populations. One condition, uterine fibroids, disproportionately burdens Black women to the point that “Black race” is considered a risk factor for the development of this condition. This pathologization of race in general impedes an understanding of the complex interplay between genetics, social, and cultural factors that shape health outcomes. Furthermore, relegating social and experiential identities as disease-inducing has limited utility and hinders efforts to achieve health equity. Interdisciplinary perspectives incorporating the concept of racial experience, that is, a critical approach to how socially ascribed meanings are imposed upon, internalized, and rearticulated within particular types of bodily variation, can offer a way toward developing more holistic understandings of how race functions to impact health disparities.