That's Racist!

Race-based Vitamins Hit Market

Race-based Heart Treatment

Race-based Doctor Bias

Recently there have been some waves made over the controversial idea of treating humans as genetically diverse individuals.

In this case, the diversity is skin deep.

Let's start with a simple biology lesson: Living in the northern hemisphere, many humans adapted to weaker sunlight conditions after leaving Africa. This is hardly limited to the whites who inhabited prehistoric ice-age Europe, but indeed Asiatic peoples as well. Likewise, peoples who have adapted to strong sunlight are certainly not limited to Africans, but the Dravidians of India and the indigenous population of Australia also.

Quoth the wikipedia:
Skin color has been under strong selective pressure, similar skin colors can result from convergent adaptation rather than from genetic relatedness. Sub-Saharan Africans, tribal populations from southern India, and Indigenous Australians have similar skin pigmentation, but genetically they are no more similar than are other widely separated groups.

The issue, then, is that these adaptations mean Americans don't all produce the same amount of Vitamin D, as Vitamin D is largely acquired through sun exposure (or eating animals who enjoy sunning themselves).

This isn't Tuskegee, folks. It's a primary school science fact.

And yet the apologetic doctors who use hushed tones when advocating this point are incurring a lot of backlash as racists. There was even a House, MD epsiode recently that addressed the idea that certain heart conditions can afflict blacks differently.

In this, the twenty-first century, are we still incapable of separating racial difference from racism? Did my racist progenitors screw things up so badly that the pendulum is stuck on the fanatically-liberal idea that no distinctions between race can posssibly exist? Is our concept of racial harmony so fragile that admitting such miniscule genetic differences will plunge us back into the dark days of slavery?

Diversity doesn't stop at what kind of tapestries one prefers to hang up on their wall. If you make less Vitamin D, take a multi-vitamin. I do.