Reproductive and Medical Technologies in Defining Racial Distinction
Throughout American history, technologies have been developed with a single race in mind: white. Reproductive technology is no exception. New reproductive technologies have continually been available only to wealthy white women while lower-income black women generally only have access to basic care, some places not even sterile enough to do C-sections: lack of access leads to disparity in races and borderline eugenics. Society discourages less-fortunate, generally black women from having more than one baby, meanwhile society applauds scientific advances and instances where wealthy white women through new technology are able to have, say, septuplets. Identifying procreation as the cause of deplorable social conditions, reproductive punishments divert attention away from state responsibility and the need for social change. The government and white society blamed the nature and living habits of black women for “overpopulation” and poverty, when the lack of resources and medical technologies was the root of the problem.
Finally in the 21st century, products and technologies, generally medical, are being developed for, directed toward, and being made available to the greater black population, but for, unfortunately, all the wrong reasons. BiDil is a drug created for and marketed to exclusively the black population. The corporation that created this drug received a patent because the drug is “exclusively” for black patients, despite the drug’s composition being simply a compound of two generic drugs. The corporation is making money because of false truths about genetic differences between black and white, and the drug’s effect. “The strategic use of race as a genetic category to obtain patent protection and drug approval” is becoming increasingly prevalent in the modern pharmaceuticals market. Marketing race‐based biotechnologies to consumers of color can reinforces the concept and social perception of race.
From the example of reproductive technologies in the early to mid-1900’s to modern technologies, we see medical industry corporations capitalizing by developing for and marketing toward a specific race. By playing to a specifically raced audience, these corporations are re-establishing and bolstering the socially conceived idea of difference, both societal and biological between black and white.
- Roberts, Dorothy E.. “Race, Gender, and Genetic Technologies: A New Reproductive Dystopia?”. Signs 34.4 (2009): 783–804. Web.