Why I’m Saying No to NIH’s Racial Preferences I am of West African origin, but that shouldn’t matter in my application for a medical-research grant. By Kevin Jon Williams
Dr. Williams is a physician, a professor of cardiovascular sciences at Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine, and a visiting fellow at Do No Harm.
Do I deserve to jump the line? If I say yes, I may play a leading role in ending the scourge of atherosclerosis—also known as hardening of the arteries. If I play fair, I may lose the opportunity to save people around the world from heart attacks and strokes. I’m angry at the National Institutes of Health for putting me in this position. I’m even angrier it has done so in the name of racial equity.
My quandary comes down to whether I should “check the box” on an upcoming NIH grant application attesting to my recent African heritage. Since at least 2015, the NIH has asserted its belief in the intrinsic superiority of racially diverse research teams, all but stating that such diversity influences funding decisions. My family’s origins qualify me under the federal definition of African-American. Yet I feel it’s immoral and narcissistic to use race to gain an advantage over other applicants. All that should matter is the merit of my application and the body of my work, which is generally accepted as foundational in atherosclerosis research.
I discovered my African heritage as an adult, though I had wondered about it since elementary school. My father, Ferd Elton Williams, a professor of physics at the University of Delaware, was a Renaissance man who talked with his children about everything—except his background. His skin was dark and his black hair tightly curled, but he fooled everyone by saying that he was a small part American Indian. He hid his birth family even from our mother, revealing only after a decade of marriage and four children together that he had two siblings.
My siblings and I slowly gleaned additional information—that two of his four grandparents were members of an African Methodist Episcopal church, for instance—but the full truth long eluded us. I stumbled on it after taking a genetic test in 2011: Through my father, I am part Bantu, a major ethnolinguistic grouping in West, Central and Southern Africa.
I’m proud of my heritage. I’m even prouder of my father, who overcame poverty and the racism of the early to mid-20th century to become an internationally renowned scientist. He hid his identity, and so have I—until now. In the era of affirmative action, I didn’t want my research called into question, as if my papers were published preferentially because of my ancestry. Nor did I want anyone to doubt my appointments and funding, as if they were racial spoils rather than a reward for good work. Moreover, I have always wanted to be able to look my Asian-American colleagues in the eye—they are at the bottom of the current racial caste system—with the knowledge that I didn’t use race to steal an opportunity from them.
In mid-February, the NIH announced it would soon solicit applications for a grant to perform research that I and others have publicly advocated for years—treating atherosclerosis in younger people instead of the current focus on the elderly. Such research would likely prevent the disease’s advance, saving countless dollars in healthcare and lost productivity, and, more important, lives. The application process will open in October. I am already assembling a study team.
I want this money, but what’s the best way to get it? The NIH’s recent announcement commands applicants “to recruit individuals from diverse backgrounds, including individuals from underrepresented groups for participation in the study team.” The meaning is clear: Teams that overtly include African-American researchers are more likely to get funding. I don’t want to elbow a colleague out of the way, especially one who might have a better application. I’d rather win because my team’s application shows the most promise, reflecting decades of work that has helped make this specific NIH initiative possible.
If I refuse to identify myself as African-American, our application is more likely to lose on “diversity” grounds. It’s a double wrong. Not only is the system rigged based on nonscientific—and possibly illegal—criteria; it encourages me to join in the rigging.
Truth be told, I made my decision years ago. When my study team files our application, it won’t note my West African origins. If we don’t get the grant, so be it. I refuse to engage in a moral wrong in pursuit of a moral good—even one as important as saving lives from the leading killer on earth. My father, who struggled against racism to achieve so much on the merits of his own work, would never forgive me for “checking the box” to grab a race-based advantage.
And no matter what happens, I can never forgive the National Institutes of Health for reinjecting racism into medical research.
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