Adolph Reed

Making Sense of Race: What It Is and Isn't, What It Means and Doesn't, and It's Implications for Medical and Public Health Practice

Race is a powerful folk notion in our society. Folk knowledge is what we know to be true because we know it to be true. Race's power as such a notion consistently undercuts the implications of the reality that it is not a natural category at all. As a result, we remain vulnerable to periodic recrudescences of potentially dangerous racialist thinking in medicine, public health, and elsewhere, as most recently, for example, in facile discussions of "racial" disparities in the impact of COVID-19. It is important for us to demystify these racialist discourses and their conceptual underpinnings.

Bio:

Adolph Reed is a Professor Emeritus at Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics, University of Pennsylvania. Professor Reed's research interests include American and Afro-American politics and political thought; urban politics, and American political development.