A bold new indictment of the racialization of science

Decades of data cannot be ignored: African American adults are far more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than white adults. But has science gone so far in racializing diabetes as to undermine the search for solutions? In a rousing indictment of the idea that notions of biological race should drive scientific inquiry, Sweetness in the Blood provides an ethnographic picture of biotechnology’s framings of Type 2 diabetes risk and race and, importantly, offers a critical examination of the assumptions behind the recruitment of African American and African-descent populations for Type 2 diabetes research.

James Doucet-Battle begins with a historical overview of how diabetes has been researched and framed racially over the past century, chronicling one company’s efforts to recruit African Americans to test their new diabetes risk-score algorithm with the aim of increasing the clinical and market value of the firm’s technology. He considers African American reticence about participation in biomedical research and examines race and health disparities in light of advances in genomic sequencing technology. Doucet-Battle concludes by emphasizing that genomic research into sub-Saharan ancestry in fact underlines the importance of analyzing gender before attempting to understand the notion of race. No disease reveals this more than Type 2 diabetes.

Sweetness in the Blood challenges the notion that the best approach to understanding, managing, and curing Type 2 diabetes is through the lens of race. It also transforms how we think about sugar, filling a neglected gap between the sugar- and molasses-sweetened past of the enslaved African laborer and the high-fructose corn syrup- and corporate-fed body of the contemporary consumer-laborer.

James Doucet-Battle is assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"James Doucet-Battle has given us a brilliant book that uncovers the networks that support the pharmacapitalism of Type 2 diabetes. In this important study, we see the impact of economizing risk through biomarketing. Sweetness in the Blood is a must-read because it underscores the sacrificial labor of Black people as they become the targets of risk assessments for Type 2 diabetes and role that the technology plays in constructing ‘racial risk.’"—Dána-Ain Davis, author of Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth

"Sweetness in the Blood is an indictment, not only of the global sugar industry, but of medical and biotech industries that insist on using biological race as a lens to explain and predict health disparities. Traversing breathtaking terrain, from sugar plantations to pharmaceutical board rooms, this is a must-read for everyone who wants to understand how social inequity gets under the skin and for all those committed to health justice."—Ruha Benjamin, author of Race After Technology

"Sweetness in the Blood adds nuance to our understanding of race and chronic disease prevention management."—Ethnic and Racial Studies

"In Sweetness in the Blood: Race, Risk, and Type 2 Diabetes, James Doucet-Battle offers a sweeping indictment of ways in which racial essentialism infiltrates the science and industry surrounding modern diabetes."—Social Forces

"In this important contribution to deconstructing the intersections of race, capital, and disease, Doucet-Battle employs an ethnographic approach to explore the racialization of a disease, showing how the combined enterprises of pharma and medicine have constructed being African American as a risk. "—CHOICE

"Doucet-Battle successfully presses his readers to question a handful of taken-for-granted concepts (i.e., race, risk, and diabetes). In that respect, Sweetness in the Blood is a wonderful example of the sociological craft. "—American Journal of Sociology