Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2018
Abstract
Advancements in genetic technology have resurrected long discarded conceptualizations of “race” as a biological reality. The rise of modern biological race thinking – as evidenced in health disparity research, personal genomics, DNA criminal forensics, and bio-databanking - not only is scientifically unsound but portends the future normalization of racial inequality. This Article articulates a constitutional theory of shared humanity, rooted in the substantive due process doctrine and Ninth Amendment, to counter the socio-legal acceptance of modern genetic racial differentiation. It argues that state actions that rely on biological racial distinctions undermine the essential personhood of individuals subjected to such taxonomies, thus violating a protected privacy interest in avoiding race-based biological classifications by the government.
The ascendance of modern de jure genetic racial classifications has received only minimal attention thus far in the literature, with prominent scholars such as Dorothy Roberts addressing the socio-political roots of the phenomenon. This Article contributes to the discussion by further developing a constitutional framework by which to challenge state-sanctioned biological racial taxonomies.
Recommended Citation
Christian Sundquist,
The Technologies of Race: Big Data, Privacy and the New Racial Bioethics,
27
Annals of Health Law
205
(2018).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.pitt.edu/fac_articles/495
Included in
Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Constitutional Law Commons, Criminal Law Commons, Evidence Commons, Genetics Commons, Health Policy Commons, Law and Philosophy Commons, Law and Race Commons, Law and Society Commons, Medicine and Health Commons, Political Economy Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Science and Technology Law Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, Social Justice Commons