34 RüdigerKunow
understanding of race can usefully address biointersectional problems
such as "medical research issues" (access to health care and the
differentialin life-expectancyarecomingto mindhere).In thiscontext,
it is importantto note that he also points to what mightbe called a new
color line in molecular biology, as "stem cell research has focused
predominantly on white DNA samples" (614; cf. S. Woolf 2078;
Holloway2-5).
Inthishighlyspecialist,ifnotreconditecontext,"thereinscriptionof
racial categories... has become both a product and a process of the
genomicsciences....modern sciencesareread into old scriptsthatare
extraordinarilydifficulttodisplace.Infact,thenarrativeofraceinforms
somecontemporarygenomicscience"(Holloway79).Theusestowhich
unsupported genetic conclusions are routinely put to the public are now
already extending from Public Health surveys of the health risks of
populations all the way to investigations into heritable traits such as
height(Cooperetal.1166-70).Onthisprestigiousbuttenuousbasis,the
biological substructure in concepts of "race" is once again invoked to
perform social and cultural work, in some cases even to good purpose,
asagroundor"materialinstrumentforsocialchange"(Saldívar616)by
amelioratingbiointersectionaldeprivationssuchashazardousconditions
attheworkplaceorinethnicghettos.
Recent theoretical developments in the African American academy,
andheremostprominentlyincriticalracetheory(CRT),havesoughtto
move away from monolithic and strategically essentializing
understandings (in the Spivakian sense) of what is named by "race,"
evenifsuchunderstandingsarereached,sometimesparadoxicallyso,in
the service of anti-essentialist self-empowerment. Instead, they have
sought to theorize race in ways that are simultaneously race-conscious
andanti-essentialist(Epperson105).Givingdueweighttothehistorical
experienceofracism,theCRTmovementhasbeenhighlycriticalofthe
prevalent constructivist paradigms of race theory. Richard Delgado and
Jean Stefancic, whose Critical Race Theory (2001) is one of the
founding documents of CRT, warn specifically against the
overestimation of the powers of textual critique: "The idea that one can
use words to undo the meanings that others attach to these very same
words is commit the empathetic fallacy—the belief thatone can change
a narrative by merely offering another, better one... is attractive but
falsifiedbyhistory"(28).