Mixed Race Studies

Law, Race, and Biotechnology: Toward a Biopolitical and Transdisciplinary Paradigm

Annual Review of Law and Social Science
Volume 9, Issue 1 (November 2013)
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-102612-134009

Dorothy E. Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights
University of Pennsylvania

Law influences and is shaped by the emergence of race-based biotechnologies in the genomic age. This review examines how law and social science scholars have approached the role of legal regulation, theories, and norms in governing the definition and utility of race in gene-based technological innovation. I structure my discussion around four main themes: the institutional regulation of biotechnology research, commercial incentives for race-specific products, the paradoxes of inclusion and difference, and racial equality jurisprudence. My attention then turns to future directions for research in this field needed to attend to the serious political implications of increasing race consciousness in genomic research and technology at a time when color blindness and postracialism are gaining popularity. I argue for a biopolitical and transdisciplinary paradigm that is committed to our common humanity and to the need for social change.

Read or purchase the article here.

Latina/o Healing Practices: Mestizo and Indigenous Perspectives

Routledge
2008-05-19
360 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-95420-4

Edited by:

Brian McNeill, Professor and director of training for the Counseling Psychology Program
Washington State University

Joseph M. Cervantes, Professor in the Department of Counseling
California State University, Fullerton

This edited volume focuses on the role of traditional or indigenous healers, as well as the application of traditional healing practices in contemporary counseling and therapeutic modalities with Latina/o people. The book offers a broad coverage of important topics, such as traditional healer’s views of mental/psychological health and well-being, the use of traditional healing techniques in contemporary psychotherapy, and herbal remedies in psychiatric practice. It also discusses common factors across traditional healing methods and contemporary psychotherapies, the importance of spirituality in counseling and everyday life, the application of indigenous healing practices with Latina/o undergraduates, indigenous techniques in working with perpetrators of domestic violence, and religious healing systems and biomedical models. The book is an important reference for anyone working within the general field of mental health practice and those seeking to understand culturally relevant practice with Latina/o populations.

Contents

• An Appreciation of Dr. Michael W. Smith (1960-2006) Lorraine Garcia-Teague
• Contributors
• Introduction: Counselors and Curanderas/os—Parallels in the Healing Process Brian W. McNeill and Joseph M. Cervantes
• Part One: Mestiza/o and Indigenous Perspectives
  • Chapter 1: What Is Indigenous About Being Indigenous? The Mestiza/o Experience Joseph M. Cervantes
  • Chapter 2: Latina/o Folk Saints and Marian Devotions: Popular Religiosity and Healing Fernando A. Ortiz and Kenneth G. Davis
  • Chapter 3: Santeria and the Healing Process in Cuba and the United States Brian W. McNeill, Eileen Esquivel, Arlene Carkasco, and Rosalilia Mendoza
• Part Two: Indigenous and Mestiza/o Healing Practices
  • Chapter 4: The Use of Psychotropic Herbal and Natural Medicines in Latina/o and Mestiza/o Populations German Ascani and Michael W. Smith
  • Chapter 5: Brazil’s Ultimate Healing Resource: The Power of Spirit Sandra Nuñez
  • Chapter 6: La Limpia de San Lazaro as Individual and Collective Cleansing Rite Karen V. Holliday
  • Chapter 7: Resé un Ave María y Encendí una Velita: The Use of Spirituality and Religion as a Means of Coping with Educational Experiences for Latina/o College Students Jeanett Castellanos and Alberta M. Gloria
• Part Three: Contemporary Aspects of Mestiza/o and Indigenous Healing Practices: Reclamation and Integration
  • Chapter 8: Los Espiritus Siguen Hablando: Chicana Spiritualities Lara Medina
  • Chapter 9: Religious Healing and Biomedicine in Comparative Context Karen V. Holliday
  • Chapter 10: Curanderismo: Religious and Spiritual Worldviews and Indigenous Healing Traditions Fernando A. Ortiz, Kenneth G. Davis, and Brian W. McNeill
• Part Four: Epilogue
  • Epilogue: Summary and Future Research and Practice Agendas Joseph M. Cervantes and Brian W. McNeill
• Index

Colour Coded Health Care: The Impact of Race and Racism on Canadians’ Health

Wellesly Institute: advancing urban health
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
January 2012
30 pages

Sheryl Nestel, Ph.D.

Scope and Purpose of the Review

Canada is home to a much-admired system of universal health care, understood as a central pillar of this nation’s overall commitment to principles of social equity and social justice. Such an understanding makes it difficult to raise the issue of racial inequities within the context of the Canadian health-care system. Indeed, as a number of Canadian health scholars have argued, with the exception of the substantial data on First Nations health, very little research has been conducted in Canada on racial inequality in health and health care (Health Canada, 2001; Johnson, Bottorff, Hilton, & Grewell, 2002; O’Neill & O’Neill, 2007; Rodney & Copeland, 2009). This literature review attempts to bring together data published between 1990 and 2011 on racial inequities in the health of non-Aboriginal racialized people in Canada. The decision not to include data on Aboriginal people in this review is by no means intended to obscure or minimize the appalling health conditions among Aboriginal people and the central role of colonialism and racism in their creation and perpetuation. It is clear, as Kelm (2005) has argued, that “social and economic deprivation, physical, sexual, cultural and spiritual abuse” (p. 397) underlie inexcusable inequities in Aboriginal health. Aboriginal health inequities were not included in this review because we chose not to subsume under an umbrella of racial inequities in health the unique history and continuing injustice of Aboriginal health conditions.

We begin our review with a discussion of the concept of race and its relationship to health outcomes and then move to a discussion of the significance of racial inequities in health and the relationship of these inequities to other forms of social inequality. We also examine mortality and morbidity data for various racialized groups in Canada and explore evidence of the role of bias, discrimination, and stereotyping in health-care delivery. Unequal access to medical screening, lack of adequate resources such as translation services, and new and important research on the physiological impact of a racist environment are also explored. This review concludes with a discussion of the limitations of available data on racial inequities in health and health care in Canada. It also surveys the challenges faced by other jurisdictions, such as the United States and Great Britain, in collecting racial data to monitor the extent of such inequities, understand their causes, and address the consequences of unequal access to health care. Finally, it offers recommendations related to the collection of racial data…

Read the entire report here.

Addressing Racial/Ethnic Health Disparities Best Practices for Clinical Care and Medical Education in the 21st Century

University of Texas, Austin
2013-09-23 through 2013-09-24

One of the primary goals of the US Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, and many public health programs is the reduction of health disparities in the United States. However, significant racial/ethnic disparities persist in the prevalence of disease, access to medical care, quality of care, and health outcomes for the most common causes of death (including cardiovascular and lung disease, infectious disease, cancer, diabetes, and accidents). At this conference, nationally-recognized speakers will discuss the causes of such disparities and describe new approaches in clinical care and medical education that improve care, achieve better health outcomes, and reduce racial/ethnic health disparities. We will also discuss how these best practices can be incorporated into medical training at the new Dell Medical School at The University of Texas and at other medical schools around the country. One key goal of this conference is to help design a cutting-edge curriculum that will better prepare medical students to meet the challenges and opportunities of 21st century medicine.

Conference registration is open to anyone interested in attending this event. See the Continuing Medical Education (CME) tab for information regarding continuing education for the September 23rd portion of the conference.

The second day of the conference (September 24) is open to invited participants only. Discussions and working groups on the second day will focus on developing new pedagogical approaches and innovative learning modules for the pre-clinical curriculum at the Dell Medical School, with the goal of more effectively integrating training on human genomic variation, race/ethnicity, health disparities, and social/environmental determinants of health into the medical curriculum.

Speakers

• Deborah Bolnick, PhD
• Vence Bonham, JD [Coauthor of article “Mixed Race: ”]
• Understanding Difference in the Genome Era
• Richard Garcia, MD
• Paul Godley, MD, PhD, MPP
• Ernesto Gonzalez, MD
• Clarence Gravlee, PhD [Author or article “How race becomes biology: Embodiment of social inequality”]
• Helena Hansen, MD, PhD
• John Hoberman, PhD [Author of Black and Blue: The Origins and Consequences of Medical Racism]
• Seth Holmes, MD, PhD
• Jonathan Kahn, JD, PhD [Author of Race in a Bottle: The Story of BiDil and Racialized Medicine in a Post-Genomic Age]
• Jay Kaufman, PhD [Contributor to What’s the Use of Race? Modern Governance and the Biology of Difference]
• Diane Magrane, MD
• Kyriakos Markides, PhD
• Jamie McGuire, MD
• Jonathan Metzl, MD, PhD
• Michael Montoya, PhD
• Rayna Rapp, PhD
• Dorothy Roberts, JD [Author of Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century]
• Charles Rotimi, PhD [Author of article “Are medical and nonmedical uses of large-scale genomic markers conflating genetics and ‘race’?”]
• Karen-Sue Taussig, PhD

For more information, click here.

Beyond race: towards a whole-genome perspective on human populations and genetic variation

Nature Reviews Genetics
Volume 5, Issue 10 (October 2004)
pages 790-796
DOI: 10.1038/nrg1452

Morris W. Foster, Professor of Anthropology
University of Oklahoma

Richard R. Sharp, Director of Bioethics Research
Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio

The renewed emphasis on population-specific genetic variation, exemplified most prominently by the International HapMap Project, is complicated by a longstanding, uncritical reliance on existing population categories in genetic research. Race and other pre-existing population definitions (ethnicity, religion, language, nationality, culture and so on) tend to be contentious concepts that have polarized discussions about the ethics and science of research into population-specific human genetic variation. By contrast, a broader consideration of the multiple historical sources of genetic variation provides a whole-genome perspective on the ways in which existing population definitions do, and do not, account for how genetic variation is distributed among individuals. Although genetics will continue to rely on analytical tools that make use of particular population histories, it is important to interpret findings in a broader genomic context.

Read the entire article here.

Skin pigmentation, biogeographical ancestry and admixture mapping

Human Genetics
Volume 112, Issue 4 (April 2003)
pages 387-399

Mark D. Shriver, Professor of Anthropology
Pennsylvania State University

Esteban J. Parra
Department of Anthropology
University of Toronto at Mississauga

Sonia Dios
Department of Anthropology
Pennsylvania State University

Carolina Bonilla
Department of Anthropology
Pennsylvania State University

Heather Norton
Department of Anthropology
Pennsylvania State University

Celina Jovel
Department of Anthropology
Pennsylvania State University

Carrie Pfaff
Department of Anthropology
Pennsylvania State University

Cecily Jones
National Human Genome Center
Howard University, Washington, D.C.

Aisha Massac
National Human Genome Center
Howard University, Washington, D.C.

Neil Cameron
Takeway Media, London

Archie Baron
Takeway Media, London

Tabitha Jackson
Takeway Media, London

George Argyropoulos
Pennington Center for Biomedical Research, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Li Jin
Department of Environmental Health
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio

Clive J. Hoggart
Department of Epidemiology and Population Health
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Paul M. McKeigue
Department of Epidemiology and Population Health
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Rick A. Kittles
National Human Genome Center
Howard University, Washington, D.C.

Ancestry informative markers (AIMs) are genetic loci showing alleles with large frequency differences between populations. AIMs can be used to estimate biogeographical ancestry at the level of the population, subgroup (e.g. cases and controls) and individual. Ancestry estimates at both the subgroup and individual level can be directly instructive regarding the genetics of the phenotypes that differ qualitatively or in frequency between populations. These estimates can provide a compelling foundation for the use of admixture mapping (AM) methods to identify the genes underlying these traits. We present details of a panel of 34 AIMs and demonstrate how such studies can proceed, by using skin pigmentation as a model phenotype. We have genotyped these markers in two population samples with primarily African ancestry, viz. African Americans from Washington D.C. and an African Caribbean sample from Britain, and in a sample of European Americans from Pennsylvania. In the two African population samples, we observed significant correlations between estimates of individual ancestry and skin pigmentation as measured by reflectometry (R²=0.21, P<0.0001 for the African-American sample and R²=0.16, P<0.0001 for the British African-Caribbean sample). These correlations confirm the validity of the ancestry estimates and also indicate the high level of population structure related to admixture, a level that characterizes these populations and that is detectable by using other tests to identify genetic structure. We have also applied two methods of admixture mapping to test for the effects of three candidate genes (TYR, OCA2, MC1R) on pigmentation. We show that TYR and OCA2 have measurable effects on skin pigmentation differences between the west African and west European parental populations. This work indicates that it is possible to estimate the individual ancestry of a person based on DNA analysis with a reasonable number of well-defined genetic markers. The implications and applications of ancestry estimates in biomedical research are discussed.

Read the entire article here.

Comorbid substance use disorders with other Axis I and II mental disorders among treatment-seeking Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders, and mixed-race people

Journal of Psychiatric Research
Available online 2013-09-09
DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2013.08.022

Li-Tzy Wu, ScD, RN, MA, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, School of Medicine
Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina

Dan G. Blazer, MD, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences; Professor of Community and Family Medicine
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, School of Medicine
Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina

Kenneth R. Gersing, MD, Clinical Associate
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, School of Medicine
Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina

Bruce Burchett, PhD, Assistant Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, School of Medicine
Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina

Marvin S. Swartz, MD, Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, School of Medicine
Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina

Paolo Mannelli, MD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, School of Medicine
Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina

Little is known about behavioral healthcare needs of Asian Americans (AAs), Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders (NHs/PIs), and mixed-race people (MRs)—the fastest growing segments of the U.S. population. We examined substance use disorder (SUD) prevalences and comorbidities among AAs, NHs/PIs, and MRs (N=4572) in a behavioral health electronic health record database. DSM-IV diagnoses among patients aged 1–90 years who accessed behavioral healthcare from 11 sites were systematically captured: SUD, anxiety, mood, personality, adjustment, childhood-onset, cognitive/dementia, dissociative, eating, factitious, impulse-control, psychotic/schizophrenic, sleep, and somatoform diagnoses. Of all patients, 15.0% had a SUD. Mood (60%), anxiety (31.2%), adjustment (30.9%), and disruptive (attention deficit-hyperactivity, conduct, oppositional defiant, disruptive behavior diagnosis, 22.7%) diagnoses were more common than others (psychotic 14.2%, personality 13.3%, other childhood-onset 11.4%, impulse-control 6.6%, cognitive 2.8%, eating 2.2%, somatoform 2.1%). Less than 1% of children aged <12 years had SUD. Cannabis diagnosis was the primary SUD affecting adolescents aged 12–17. MRs aged 35–49 years had the highest prevalence of cocaine diagnosis. Controlling for age at first visit, sex, treatment setting, length of treatment, and number of comorbid diagnoses, NHs/PIs and MRs were about two times more likely than AAs to have ≥2 SUDs. Regardless of race/ethnicity, personality diagnosis was comorbid with SUD. NHs/PIs with a mood diagnosis had elevated odds of having SUD. Findings present the most comprehensive patterns of mental diagnoses available for treatment-seeking AAs, NHs/PIs, and MRs in the real-world medical setting. In-depth research is needed to elucidate intraracial and interracial differences in treatment needs.

Read or purchase the article here.

Are There Human Races? The Evolutionary Biology—Or Not—Of Race

The Subversive Archaeologist
2013-05-19

Robert H. Gargett, Research Scholar of Archaeology / Human Origins
Ronin Institute

Foreword: I ran a series on “race” and racism that began on October 7, 2011, which was the SA’s third day in cyberspace. I’ll be putting it up again in its several parts, beginning today [revised and expanded, as the publishers say]. If you’ve seen it before, please forgive my publishing “re-runs.” Fighting bigotry should be our full-time job, and bigotry is nowhere as insidious as it is in the concept of “race.” So, it won’t hurt to air these thoughts again, in the hope of reaching a different audience this time around.

From the Age of Exploration—beginning at the end of the Middle Ages—Europeans and their descendants legitimated their imperialist expansion ideologically by seeing non-European people through the lens of a racial worldview. Wherever Europeans colonized, and for differing lengths of time, you saw the usurpation of power and territory at the expense of indigenous people who were inevitably deemed to be a different race. In many cases the oppressed were seen as not just non-European, but non-human. Today, wherever Europeans are still in power, indigenous people suffer existence at the margins of society, bereft of any real power, and often bereft of any connection with their past other than through the memories of degradation they experienced during and after the European invasion.

Where indigenous people have retaken control of former colonies, they live with the heritage of divisive and authoritarian colonialism: inefficient and inadequate infrastructure, and the legacy of old hatreds generated by colonial governments that pitted one group against another. In some cases those same Europeans enslaved the indigenous people, and the descendants of those slaves exist as a permanent underclass in the United States, Brazil, and elsewhere. And let’s not forget that this might never have taken place without the complicity, and greed, of powerful, indigenous African groups.

Race matters, today, because we all live with its twin—racism (itself the bastard offspring of a more broad-ranging bigotry). Anthropology (and through it, archaeology) has much to contribute to the race debate in the present, even if it has a somewhat uneven record, historically, on the matter of race. As much as anthropologists have made substantial additions to knowledge of the human species, they have also—implicitly and explicitly—added much fuel to the social conflagration that is racism.

It’s long since time to make amends…

Read the entire article here.

Race and Justice in Transnational Perspective: “The Return of Pseudoscientific Racism? DNA Ancestry Testing, Race, and the New Eugenics Movement”

Seminar Series: Race and Justice in Transnational Perspective
University of California, Merced
California Room
5200 North Lake Rd.
Merced, California 95343
2013-10-17, 10:30 PDT (Local Time)

Paul Spickard, Professor of History
University of California, Santa Barbara

Ancestry.com wants you to swab your cheek and send them a DNA sample and a check.  In return, they promise to tell you who your remote ancestors were.  Eminent literary scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., performs the same miracle on national TV.  Modern genetic technology, they promise, can tell you intimate details about your family’s past.  Professor Spickard’s lecture examines the claims of the DNA ancestry testing industry, compares them to the assumptions and claims of the racialist pseudoscience of the late 19th and early 20th century, evaluates their validity, and suggests what may really be going on with this ancestry testing business.

Paul Spickard is Professor of History and Affiliate Professor of Black Studies, Asian American Studies, East Asian Studies, Religious Studies, and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  He is author or editor of eighteen books and seventy-odd articles on race, migration, and related topics in the United States, the Pacific, Northeast Asia, and Europe, including:

• Global Mixed Race (in press, due 2014)
• Multiple Identities: Migrants, Ethnicity, and Membership (2013)
• Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race and Colonialism in American History and Identity (2007)
• Is Lighter Better? Skin-Tone Discrimination among Asian Americans (with Joanne Rondilla, 2007)
• Race and Nation: Ethnic Systems in the Modern World (2005)
• Racial Thinking in the United States: Uncompleted Independence (with G. Reginald Daniel, 2004)
• Mixed Blood: Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity in 20th-Century America (1989)

The seminar series “Race and Justice in Transnational Perspective” is organized by Tanya Golash-Boza, Nigel Hatton, and David Torres-Rouff. The event is co-sponsored by the UC Center for New Racial Studies, Sociology, and SSHA.

For more information, click here.

Mapping “Race”: Critical Approaches to Health Disparities Research

Rutgers University Press
2013-08-12
256 pages
6 figures, 8 tables, 6 x 9
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-6136-3
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-6137-0
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-8135-6138-7

Edited by:

Laura E. Gómez, Professor of Law, Sociology, and Chicano Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

Nancy López, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of New Mexico

Forward by:

R. Burciaga Valdez

Researchers commonly ask subjects to self-identify their race from a menu of preestablished options. Yet if race is a multidimensional, multilevel social construction, this has profound methodological implications for the sciences and social sciences. Race must inform how we design large-scale data collection and how scientists utilize race in the context of specific research questions. This landmark collection argues for the recognition of those implications for research and suggests ways in which they may be integrated into future scientific endeavors. It concludes on a prescriptive note, providing an arsenal of multidisciplinary, conceptual, and methodological tools for studying race specifically within the context of health inequalities.

Table of Contents

• List of Figures and Tables
• Foreword by R. Burciaga Valdez
• Preface
• 1. Introduction: Taking the Social Construction of Race Seriously in Health Disparities Research / Laura E. Gómez
• Part I: Charting the Problem
  • 2. The Politics of Framing Health Disparities: Markets and Justice / Jonathan Kahn
  • 3. Looking at the World through “Race”-Colored Glasses: The Fallacy of Ascertainment Bias in Biomedical Research and Practice / Joseph L. Graves Jr.
  • 4. Ethical Dilemmas in Statistical Practice: The Probelm of Race in Biomedicine / Jay S. Kaufman
  • 5. A Holistic Alternative to Current Survey Research Approaches to Race / John A . Garcia
• Part II: Navigating Diverse Empirical Settings
  • 6. Organizational Practice and Social Constraints: Problems of Racial Identity Data Collection in Cancer Care and Research / Simon J. Craddock Lee
  • 7. Lessons from Political Science: Health Status and Improving How We Study Race / Gabriel R. Sanchez and Vickie D. Ybarra
  • 8. Advancing Asian American Mental Health Research by Enhancing Racial Identity Measures / Derek Kenji Iwamoto, Mai M. Kindaichi, and Matthew Miller
• Part III. Surveying Solutions
  • 9. Representing the Multidimensionality of Race in Survey Research / Allya Saperstein
  • 10. How Racial-Group Comparisons Create Misinformation in Depression Research: Using Racial Identity Theory to Conceptualize Health Disparities / Janet E. Helms and Ethan H. Mereish
  • 11. Jedi Public Health: Leveraging Contingencies of Social Identity to Grasp and Eliminiate Racial Health Inequality / Arline T. Geronimus
  • 12. Contextualizing Lived Race-Gender and the Racialized-Gendered Social Determinants of Health / Nancy López
• Notes on Contributors
• Index