The incidence of kidney failure is nearly 3 times higher in Black relative to White Americans.1 A significant body of biomedical literature links this racial inequity to polymorphic variation in the gene encoding apolipoprotein L1 (APOL1). In fact, in a PubMed search of “APOL1” and “kidney disease,” 86% of results feature abstracts mentioning African ancestry or African American, Black, or non-White race. Multiple recent articles state that APOL1 genetic variants are found “exclusively” in people, or chromosomes, of “African” origin.