Second, although these reports focus on genetic influences on disease, it is unlikely that consumers of these media reports will limit their conclusions and interpretations to disease outcomes. As Duster (2003a:5) argues, when exposed to such messages, people will naturally ask themselves: “If genetic disorders are differentially distributed by race and ethnicity, why aren’t other human traits and characteristics?” In this way, research and public discussion endorsing genetically based racial differences of any sort—including health—may end up accentuating the idea that very general biological differences exist among racial groups. Also, from an essentialist perspective, when racial differences are attributed to genetics, messages emphasizing differentness should have an especially powerful influence on us–them categories, because they point not merely to a difference but to a fundamental and essential difference. In this way, a focus on genetically based racial differences in health may reinscribe earlier essentialist notions of race in terms of DNA (Abu El-haj 2007; Morning 2008)—notions that have, according to Duster (2003b), been “buried alive” in today’s sciences.
