Royal Charmaine D M
Departments of African and African American Studies, Biology, Global Health and Family Medicine and Community Health and Duke Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA.
Health Equity. 2023 Jan 20;7(1):38-44. doi: 10.1089/heq.2022.29023.cro. eCollection 2023.
As a foundational pillar of the Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation framework, Narrative Change involves reckoning with our historical and current realities regarding "race" and racism, uprooting dominant narratives that normalize injustice and sustain oppression, and advancing narratives that promote equity and collective liberation. Narrative Change is vital to creating communal recognition and appreciation of the interconnectedness and equality of all humans and dismantling the ideology and structures of racial hierarchy. Telling new or more truthful and complete stories must include improving our understanding and messaging about what race is and what it is not as well as the relationship between race and racism. Ideas about the existence of biological human races have long been discredited by scientists and scholars in various fields. Yet, false beliefs about natural and fixed biological differences within the human species persist in some scientific studies, in aspects of health care, and in the political and legal architectures of the United States and other countries, thereby reproducing and maintaining social hierarchies. Efforts to eradicate racism and its pernicious effects are limited in their potential for sustained positive transformation unless simultaneous endeavors are undertaken to reframe people's thinking about the very concept of race. This brief provides an overview of the origins of racial hierarchy, distinguishes between biological concepts of race and socially defined race, reviews perspectives on the meanings and uses of race, and describes ongoing and potential efforts to address prevailing misunderstandings about race and racism.
作为“真相、种族治愈与转变”框架的一个基础支柱，叙事变革涉及正视我们在“种族”和种族主义方面的历史与现实状况，根除使不公正正常化并维持压迫的主流叙事，推动促进公平和集体解放的叙事。叙事变革对于实现社会对所有人的相互联系和平等的认可与重视，以及瓦解种族等级制度的意识形态和结构至关重要。讲述新的或更真实、完整的故事必须包括增进我们对种族是什么、不是什么以及种族与种族主义之间关系的理解和传达。关于人类生物种族存在的观点长期以来已被各个领域的科学家和学者所否定。然而，关于人类物种内部自然且固定的生物差异的错误观念在一些科学研究、医疗保健领域以及美国和其他国家的政治与法律架构中依然存在，从而再现并维持着社会等级制度。除非同时努力重塑人们对种族这一概念的思维方式，否则消除种族主义及其有害影响的努力在实现持续积极转变方面的潜力将受到限制。本简报概述了种族等级制度的起源，区分了种族的生物学概念和社会定义的种族，审视了关于种族含义和用途的观点，并描述了为解决有关种族和种族主义的普遍误解而正在进行的及可能的努力。
