BI510: Institutional Racism in Health and Science

Historically, scientific theories and methodologies have been inappropriately, and sometimes fraudulently, employed to provide justification for establishing and maintaining social, economic, and racial hierarchies, resulting in centuries of dehumanizing and unethical practices toward certain groups, especially against Black and Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC). Unfortunately, many of these pernicious ideas persist, such that they hinder opportunities of BIPOC in Science and exacerbate their health outcomes.

This course traces the historical roots of racism in science through to its modern manifestations, examines the harmful consequences on victims’ health outcomes, and presents ideas, approaches, and practices to ameliorate and eradicate the presence of racism in our institutions.

Course Objectives

The pedagogical goal of this course is to develop student competencies in discriminating between fact-based conclusions and unsupported pseudoscience and constructing empirical knowledge for themselves. We will focus on the empirical process behind interrogating and dismantling disinformation and pseudoscience in the specific context of racism. Students will learn the skills needed at each step of inquiry and walk through a stepwise process:

1. learning about the biological background on scientific topics
2. learning to critically analyze data and critique conclusions in primary sources
3. learning to engage with one another and talk to others about their critical analyses
4. learning to apply this critical reasoning to other topics outside of race.

Beyond racism, scientific reasoning has been and still is used to form the basis for discrimination against many different groups. Beyond the context of this course, students will gain the skills needed to apply this same process to look at issues of ableism, sexism, and gender discrimination. BF/BI510 will prepare students to look at the scientific and popular literature and dismantle systemic inequity from its foundations.