Race, Science, and the Mismeasure of Breath

Instructor: harrington | Wednesday January 11 | 7:00-8:30 PM ET | ONLINE

Often we think of science, and especially scientific technologies, as being "objective," or "value-neutral." But in reality, the measurement practices of numerous medical technologies are built using the ideas of race science, which is also racist science. Join us as we ask: When is bad science used to discriminate against black/non-white/non-human, gendered, and working-class bodies? Why is race embedded in the tools and technology of medical instruments to assess the risk of a patient or other healthcare decisions? Why do physicians and/or medical professionals insert diagnostic algorithms to adjust or “correct” their outputs based on a patient’s race or ethnicity? In this teach-in, we will look at the history of the spirometer and learn how it gained an epistemic authority by merging medical statistics, anthropometry, and life insurance to generate a racialization of spirometric measurement. The life insurance industry socialized risk with comprehensive measures and statistical assessments of the body politic determining differential monetary values for human life. We will take a close look at the history of John Hutchinson, Benjamin Anthrop Gould, Freddrick Hoffman, and LAPD police chief Daryl Gates to illustrate how the social implications of the science of work, the invention of the spirometer, and the institutionalization of statistics, contributed to the creation of categories of difference and determined values of “vitality” with the use of measurements of capacity. We'll spend an hour and a half learning how race science has imagined the value of our vitality, and discussing how we might imagine otherwise.

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