Fiat Lux Redux: A Conversation with Dr. Stephen Richmond

The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction…
Toni Morrison (Portland State University lecture, 1975)

For centuries, doctors have medically treated people differently according to their race because they believed that race is biological. Racial essentialism persists in health professions’ education and practice, especially in kidney disease etiology and intervention. But in the last few years, medical professionals and activists have argued that this is both wrongheaded and can be dangerous to people’s health. The movement to abolish race from medicine and the conversation around how race and biology do and do not intersect illuminates a glaring need to abolish race-based clinical care of any kind.

On Fiat Lux Redux, Tuesday, January 7, 2025, Dr. Stephen Richmond (he/him) family physician, educator, and health justice advocate with a specific interest in racial equity in medicine speaks with California Magazine and UC Berkeley Alumni Association’s podcast hosts of The Edge, Laura Smith and Leah Worthington, about the research behind his co-written paper, “How Abolition of Race-Based Medicine Is Necessary to American Health Justice.”  Richmond currently serves as a clinical assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Primary Care & Population Health (PCPH) in the Stanford Department of Medicine.

Fiat Lux Redux presents previously aired lectures, conversations, and podcasts originating on the campus of UC Berkeley every other Tuesday from 9am to 9:30am. These often-lengthy original programs have been edited to a 30-minute format by experienced KALX producers. The show’s name, Latin for “Let there be light”, is a reference to the University of California’s motto, which is also Fiat Lux. The show’s goal is to provide listeners with a window into the intellectual and cultural life of UC Berkeley and to showcase the wide range of subjects and diversity of thought and ideas that are present at UC Berkeley.