Analyzing the use of race and ethnicity in biomedical research from a local community perspective

Lost in the debate over the use of racial and ethnic categories in biomedical research is community-level analysis of how these categories function and influence health. Such analysis offers a powerful critique of national and transnational categories usually used in biomedical research such as African-American and Native American. Ethnographic research on local African-American and Native American communities in Oklahoma shows the importance of community-level analysis. Local (intra-community) health practices tend to be shared by members of an everyday interactional community without regard to racial or ethnic identity. Externally created (extra-community) practices tend to be based on the existence of externally-imposed racial or ethnic identities, but African-American and Native American community members show similar patterns in their use of extra-community practices. Thus, membership in an interactional community seems more important than externally-imposed racial or ethnic identity in determining local health practices, while class may be as or more important in accounting for extra-community practices.