When World War II ended, eugenics was declared a crime against humanity. During the Nuremberg trials, Nazi doctors and experimenters cited the influence they received from American eugenicists, but the Americans were not prosecuted. Instead, some of the exact same American scientists renamed their cause “human genetics.” They continued to collaborate with former Nazi eugenicists who had similarly avoided prosecution. For example, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, who founded a eugenics facility in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1935, reestablished his connections with California eugenicists from before the war and became a corresponding member of their newly founded American Society of Human Genetics in 1949.67 This legacy underlies the practice of genetics and race-based medicine today. In calling out this legacy, we do not claim that genetics and eugenics are equivalent. Instead, we call on clinical practitioners, researchers, and instructors to recognize the history that seeks to reappropriate agendas of racism and eugenics in more “neutral” terms that still have historical and contemporary ramifications. Uncritical use of race in genetics and other aspects of medicine stands to perpetuate causes of racism and inequality. The flawed assumption that race has a biological basis is rooted in a racist history dating back to colonialization and slavery. With this history, we emphasize: race is not a biological concept, but rather a sociohistorical construct and concept. Under this definition, racial categories have no scientific basis but have rather functioned as a central axis to social relations and real material life outcomes in the United States.
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