Mixed Race Studies

The Material Gene: Gender, Race, and Heredity after the Human Genome Project

New York University Press
May 2013
303 pages
Cloth ISBN: 9780814790687

Kelly E. Happe, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies and Women’s Studies
University of Georgia

In 2000, the National Human Genome Research Institute announced the completion of a “draft” of the human genome, the sequence information of nearly all 3 billion base pairs of DNA. Since then, interest in the hereditary basis of disease has increased considerably. In The Material Gene, Kelly E. Happe considers the broad implications of this development by treating “heredity” as both a scientific and political concept. Beginning with the argument that eugenics was an ideological project that recast the problems of industrialization as pathologies of gender, race, and class, the book traces the legacy of this ideology in contemporary practices of genomics. Delving into the discrete and often obscure epistemologies and discursive practices of genomic scientists, Happe maps the ways in which the hereditarian body, one that is also normatively gendered and racialized, is the new site whereby economic injustice, environmental pollution, racism, and sexism are implicitly reinterpreted as pathologies of genes and by extension, the bodies they inhabit. Comparing genomic approaches to medicine and public health with discourses of epidemiology, social movements, and humanistic theories of the body and society, The Material Gene reworks our common assumption of what might count as effective, just, and socially transformative notions of health and disease.

Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• 1. Ideology and the New Rhetoric of Genomics
• 2. Heredity as Ideology: Situating Genomics Historically
• 3. Genomics and the Reproductive Body
• 4. Genomics and the Racial Body
• 5. Genomics and the Polluted Body
• 6. Toward a Biosociality without Genes
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author

Race, Policy, and Culture: An Identity Crisis for Sickle Cell Disease in Brazil

Melissa S. Creary, MPH, Doctoral Candidate
Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts
Emory University

Professor Howard Kushner, Chair
Professor Jeffrey Lesser, Co-Chair

Abstract of Dissertation Prospectus

In 2001, Cândida and Altair, a married couple, started a national organization to increase the rights of sickle cell patients, and thereby gave birth to the sickle cell disease (SCD) movement in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Cândida, the wife, who carries sickle cell trait, now heads the municipal SCD unit for Salvador. She, with light skin and wavy brown hair, might be considered white in the United States, but when I asked her why she had created the organization she responded: “Eu sou negra!” (I am black). Her darker-skinned husband, who considers himself a black activist, coordinates the national SCD association and helped craft policy for SCD. As a family, Cândida and Altair shift between multiple roles: genetic carrier, parent, government official, and SCD advocate. Together these two activists have helped shape the racial discourse on SCD by associating the disease with “blackness” on the individual, organizational, and national level.

Sickle cell disease is the most common hereditary hematologic disorder in Brazil and throughout the world. In Brazil, the estimated prevalence is between 2% and 8% of the population. My research explores how patients, non-governmental organizations, and the Brazilian government, at state and federal levels, have contributed to the discourse of SCD as a “black” disease, despite a prevailing cultural ideology of racial mixture. Specifically, this project analyzes how the Brazilian state, advocacy, and patient communities within the nation have, at times, branded SCD an Afro-Brazilian disease. At the state level, I’ll describe the reigning racial ideology and how the development of racialized health policy contests their own viewpoint. On the organizational level, I’ll investigate the alignment of the SCD movement with the black movement of Brazil and the decisions made by some of these organizations to influence health policy using anti-racist motives. Lastly, I will explore the actual embodiment of SCD in the patient population and the “identity crisis” many may experience upon being diagnosed with a “black” disease.

With this framework in mind, I aim to answer the question—How are different actors (re)defining race and health through culture, biology, policy and politics in contemporary Brazil? This multi-level identity crisis is in constant contestation of competing racial frameworks at the micro, meso, and macro level. I will manage these complexities with a flexible notion of biological citizenship that considers frameworks of biology, social determinants, and policy in ways that is uniquely responsive to the cultural and historical specifics of how race, identity, health, and legitimacy operate in Brazil.

To do this, I will spend ten months in Brasília, Salvador, and Rio de Janeiro investigating the construction of sickle cell disease on three different levels: advocacy organization around patient rights, individual patient and family experience, and governmental policy development and implementation. To assess the social, geographical, and political context of my subjects, I will use a series of historical and qualitative methodologies.

My work will deepen and re-think narratives of Brazil’s racial history through the lens of SCD. It also stands to generate a better understanding of the historical genealogy as it informs the current implementation of SCD policy. This analysis can provide lessons to both Brazil and the US on how future policy can be designed. Specifically, whether policy developed around populations (or sub-set of populations) can be measured against and be as effective as policy developed around disease.

Issue Brief – Race and Ethnicity Matters: Concepts and Challenges of Racial and Ethnic Classifications in Public Health

The Connecticut Health Disparities Project
Connecticut Department of Public Health
Hartford, Connecticut
Fall 2007

Alison Stratton, PhD

Ava Nepaul, MA

Margaret Hynes, PhD, MPH

Race, Ethnicity and Health Disparities: An Introduction

Extraordinary improvements in the health of all Americans have been made since the early 20th century. However, not everyone benefits equally from these advances in the public’s health. Nor is every group equally burdened by the leading causes of death, which in the United States today are no longer infectious diseases, but rather chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes.

“Health disparities”—those avoidable differences in health among specific population groups that result from cumulative social disadvantages (Stratton, Hynes, and Nepaul 2007)—exist for many minority populations in the United States. As used here, “minorities” are those populations in a society that are in a position of cultural and political non-dominance and disadvantage. As a result, they may experience reduced healthcare quality and access, and increased rates of disease, disability, and death compared to the overall U.S. population. For example, U.S. minority populations might include racial and ethnic minorities, limited English proficiency populations, people living in poverty, and homeless persons.

The Connecticut Health Disparities Project at the Department of Public Health (DPH), in conjunction with other agencies and programs, is taking a new look at health disparities and the collection of “race” and “ethnicity” data. Differential treatment of people based on the ideas of race and ethnicity is a social reality for all Americans (Nepaul, Hynes and Stratton 2007) and has a large impact on Americans’ health and general well-being. In order to track the health impact of these ideas of race and ethnicity, health departments at all levels need to collect consistent and comprehensive health information using racial and ethnic classification tools.

However, race and ethnicity data alone are not sufficient to accurately depict health disparities (Nepaul, Hynes and Stratton 2007). In fact, social structural factors (such as poverty, [low income environments, socioeconomic status and social supports) are equally if not more important as fundamental causes of health disparities (Link and Phelan 1995).

In this Issue Brief, then, we seek to address these questions: How have people defined and used the concepts of “race,” and “ethnicity?” How useful or consistent is our current collection of racial and ethnic data in the effort to reduce and eliminate health disparities? What other factors have an impact on people’s health? Below we: 1) introduce the history, theoretical foundations, and uses of the ideas of “race” and ethnicity” in public health data collection; 2) discuss why they are difficult, yet necessary, concepts to use in studying health in the United States; and 3) stress the need for inclusion of socio-economic and other demographic factors in the collection and analysis of health data to more fully illuminate health disparities…

…Race and ethnicity are neither scientifically reliable nor valid categories, and assignments to racial or ethnic categories are often based on observer biases, changing situational identities, and historical-political vagaries (Lee 1993; Kaplan and Bennett 2003; Williams 2007). In real life, people do not have only one fixed racial or ethnic identity which remains the same over time and space and that can be accurately measured. A further complication inherent in categorization is that people embrace biracial, multiracial, and multi-ethnic identities, which makes the categories even more difficult to sustain, compare, and enumerate. Current racial and ethnic categories for federal data collection are not sensitive to the complex intra-group heterogeneity that exists in the nation (Kaplan and Bennett 2003; Office of Management and Budget 1997).

Despite such inconsistencies in use and logic, the ideology of race is deeply ingrained in American culture. People acting on these beliefs and practices create a social reality for themselves and others based in part on these perceived racial or ethnic differences between people. This reality includes the structures, beliefs and practices of health care, medicine and economics that contribute to health disparities for minority populations (Williams, Lavizzo-Mourey and Warren 1994)…

Read the entire report here.

Age of First Cigarette, Alcohol, and Marijuana Use Among U.S. Biracial/Ethnic Youth: A Population-Based Study

Addictive Behaviors
Volume 38, Issue 9, September 2013
pages 2450–2454
DOI: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2013.04.005

Trenette T. Clark, Associate Professor of Social Work
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Otima Doyle, Assistant Professor of Social Work
University of Illinois, Chicago

Amanda Clincy
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Highlights

• We found an intermediate biracial phenomenon.
• White-American Indian youth start smoking cigarettes earlier than all groups.
• White-Asian youth begin smoking marijuana and drinking at earlier ages than Whites.
• White-Asian youth engaged in all substances at earlier ages than Asian youth.

This study examines age of first cigarette, alcohol, and marijuana use among self-identified biracial youth, using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). We found an intermediate biracial phenomenon in which some biracial youth initiate substance use at ages that fall between the initiation ages of their 2 corresponding monoracial groups. When controlling for the covariates, our findings show White-Asian biracial youth begin smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol at earlier ages than Whites and engaging in all forms of substance use at earlier ages than Asian youth. Results indicate White-American Indian youth start smoking cigarettes at earlier ages than all biracial and monoracial groups. Our findings underscore the need for future research to examine substance-use initiation and progression among biracial/ethnic youth.

Read or purchase the article here.

Author takes on modern myths about race

Skokie Review
Chicago, Illinois
2013-04-05

Mike Isaacs

he 8-year-old girl who had difficulty breathing had been misdiagnosed for a long time, but then a technician looked at her X-ray and asked incredulously why she had not been treated for cystic fibrosis.

The reason was because she was black, and cystic fibrosis was thought to be a white people’s disease. The technician had never met the girl when he asked his question.

“It’s bad medicine to look at someone’s race and say you should get this test or that test, because you may be completely wrong,” said distinguished author and educator Dorothy Roberts.

To Roberts, who penned “Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics and Big Business Re-Create Race in the 21st Century,” this is just one example of a distorted view of science and race playing out today.

“There’s no such thing as a white disease or a black disease or an Asian disease,” Roberts said during a provocative talk Sunday at Skokie’s Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago. “That doesn’t make sense, because there’s no gene that belongs to a particular race that doesn’t belong to other races.”

She argues that the tie between biology and race is a myth that has been resurrected again, this time with the help of a false reliance on modern-day science…

…Some of the same theories from the era of eugenics, she said, are being resuscitated in 21st century science.

Roberts isn’t saying, though that we’re all identical – one reason she isn’t keen on President Clinton’s famous declaration about the Human Genome Project that all human beings, regardless of race, are more than 99 percent the same.

“It makes it sound like we’re all alike, and you can see that everyone isn’t alike,” she said. “There’s lots of genetic variation in the human species, but it’s not grouped into races.”…

Read the entire article here.

The operationalization of race and ethnicity concepts in medical classification systems: issues of validity and utility

Health Informatics Journal
Volume 11, Number 4 (December 2005)
pages 259-274
DOI: 10.1177/1460458205055688

Peter J. Aspinall, Emeritus Reader in Population Health
University of Kent, UK

This article looks at the operationalization of race and ethnicity concepts in medical classification systems, notably the main bibliographical databases of MEDLINE and EMBASE. In particular, an attempt is made to assess recent changes, including the impact of the 2004 major changes to the MeSH headings for race and ethnic groups, and the introduction of ‘Continental Population Groups’. The underlying conceptual basis of the typologies, their relevance for capturing specific population groups, and their overall usefulness in appraising the literature on ethnic/racial disparities in health are examined. The bibliographical database thesauri reveal the pervasiveness of the notion of the biological basis of health differences by race/ethnicity as well as continuing use of antiquated racial terminology. Their system-oriented terminology is likely to limit the effectiveness of retrieval by users who may lack knowledge of their hierarchical structures.

Read or purchase the article here.

Beyond Race: Human Biological Diversity (Third Edition)

Cognella
2013

Joelle Presson, Affiliate Research Assistant Professor
Department of Biology
University of Maryland

Jan Jenner
University of Alabama, Birmingham

Race. It’s an idea that dominates our culture and continues to generate societal tensions. But what really are human races? Are races meaningful in a biological sense? What is the significance of the variety of human skin and hair colors? Are black, white, Asian, and Native American valid categories that reflect basic human differences?

Beyond Race: Human Biological Diversity answers these questions and provides the most recent scientific studies on human genetic groups and on the origins of the human family tree. Prepare to see racial stereotypes challenged as Beyond Race: Human Biological Diversity integrates basic biological knowledge with current understanding of human genetics, evolution, and human variation. Beyond Race allows students to view humanity through the lens of modern biology and re-evaluate society’s traditional ideas about human races. Exciting new findings about human evolution are presented along with DNA analyses that have revised our understanding of human history. In this context the reader will reflect on race and how racial distinctions have influenced society’s attitude to and treatment of different groups of people.

Beyond Race begins with discussions of the concepts that are the foundation of biology. These foundations provide the basic biological context that is essential to a genuine understanding of the current revolution in the study of human relationships. Coverage of Darwin’s principles, evolution, biological classification, the emergence of life from chemistry, cell reproduction, and genetics lead to a sophisticated appreciation of DNA lineages. The reader will find all of this invaluable in navigating the modern world of genetic and ancestry testing. The study of genomics also is central to understanding human biological diversity and is woven into the content of Beyond Race.

As a result of this comprehensive and integrated coverage, students will learn that the separation of humans into “races” is not biologically valid and that the idea of race can now be replaced with the concept of a more accurately detailed human family tree. The primary goal of Beyond Race is not to give students simple answers to complex questions concerning race, but rather to enable them to draw their own conclusions about the value of continuing to use “races” as labels for human beings.

Sections entitled Threads… begin each chapter and link the readings to real-world events that are already familiar to students. They demonstrate the clear, vital, critically important connections between the science studied in the classroom and life on a broader stage. Of special note are the Now You Can Understand, What Do You Think?, and Chapter Review sections that conclude each chapter. These offer opportunities for reflection and synthesis, reinforce important ideas and concepts, and enhance student retention of the material. Additional Reading, a short annotated bibliography that closes each chapter, links chapter content to a broader pool of intellectual resources.

Beyond Race: Human Biological Diversity is designed for use in courses on Human Biology and Genetics.

The Mismeasure of Man

W. W. Norton & Company
June 1996 (Originally published in 1981)
448 pages
5.5 × 8.3 in
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-393-31425-0

Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Geology
Harvard University

The definitive refutation to the argument of The Bell Curve.

When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits.

 Yet the idea of biology as destiny dies hard, as witness the attention devoted to The Bell Curve, whose arguments are here so effectively anticipated and thoroughly undermined. In this edition, Stephen Jay Gould has written a substantial new introduction telling how and why he wrote the book and tracing the subsequent history of the controversy on innateness right through The Bell Curve. Further, he has added five essays on questions of The Bell Curve in particular and on race, racism, and biological determinism in general. These additions strengthen the book’s claim to be, as Leo J. Kamin of Princeton University has said, “a major contribution toward deflating pseudo-biological ‘explanations’ of our present social woes.”

Racial Theories in Context (Second Edition)

Cognella
2013
224 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60927-056-8

Edited by:

Jared Sexton, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Film & Media Studies
University of California, Irvine

This book presents a critical framework for understanding how and why race matters — past, present, and future. The readings trace the historical emergence of modern racial thinking in Western society by examining religious, moral, aesthetic, and scientific writing; legal statutes and legislation; political debates and public policy; and popular culture. Readers will follow the shifting ideological bases upon which modern racial theories have rested, from religion to science to culture, and the links between race, class, gender, and sexuality, and between notions of race and the nation-state.

The authors of Racial Theories in Context discuss the relationship of racial theories to material contexts of racial oppression and to democratic struggles for freedom and equality:

• First and foremost in this discussion is the vast system of racial slavery instituted throughout the Atlantic world and the international movement that sought its abolition.
• Continuing campaigns to redress racial divisions in health, wealth, housing, employment, and education are also examined.
• There is a focus on the specificity of racial formation in the United States and the centrality of anti-black racism.
• The book also looks comparatively at other regions of racial inequality and the construction of a global racial hierarchy since the 15th century CE.

Contents

• Introduction / Jared Sexton
• A Long History of Affirmative Action—For Whites / Larry Adelman
• The Cost of Slavery / Dalton Conley
• Statement on Gender Violence and the Prison-Industrial Complex / INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and Critical Resistance
• Introduction To Racism: A Short History / George M. Fredrickson
• Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West / Darlene Clark Hine
• Understanding the Problematic of Race Through the Problem of Race-Mixture / Thomas C. Holt
• The Sexualization of Reconstruction Politics / Martha Hodes
• The Original Housing Crisis / Derek S. Hoff
• The American Dream, or a Nightmare for Black America? / Joshua Holland
• The Hidden Cost of Being African American / Michael Hout
• Slavery and Proto-Racism in Greco-Roman Antiquity / Benjamin Isaac
• Colorblind Racism / Sally Lehrman
• The Wealth Gap Gets Wider / Meizhu Lui
• Sub-Prime as a Black Catastrophe / Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro
• Unshackling Black Motherhood / Dorothy E. Roberts
• Is Race -Based Medicine Good for Us? / Dorothy E. Roberts
• Understanding Reproductive Justice / Loretta J. Ross
• The History of the Idea of Race / Audrey Smedley
• The Liberal Retreat From Race / Stephen Steinberg
• “Race Relations” / Stephen Steinberg

Race and Ethnic Relations in the Twenty-First Century: History, Theory, Institutions, and Policy

Cognella
2011
436 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-93555-160-7

Edited by:

Rashawn Ray, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Maryland, College Park

This book examines the major theoretical and empirical approaches regarding race/ethnicity. Its goal is to continue to place race and ethnic relations in a contemporary, intersectional, and cross-comparative context and progress the discipline to include groups past the Black/White dichotomy. Using various sociological theories, social psychological theories, and subcultural approaches, this book gives students a sociohistorical, theoretical, and institutional frame with which to view race and ethnic relations in the twenty-first century.

Table of Contents

• Race and Ethnic Relations in the Twenty-First Century / Rashawn Ray
• The Embedded Nature of ‘Race’ Requires a Focused Effort to Remove the Obstacles to a Unified America / Dr. James M. Jones
• PART 1 THE SOCIOHISTORICAL CONTEXT OF RACE
  • The Science, Social Construction, and Exploitation of Race / Rashawn Ray
  • Science of Race
    • The Evolution of Racial Classification / Tukufu Zuberi
  • Social Construction of Race
    • Racist America: Racist Ideology as a Social Force / Joe R. Feagin
  • Exploitation of Race
    • White Racism and the Black Experience / St. Clair Drake
• PART 2 THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL PERSPECTIVES
  • Racial Attitudes Research: Debates, Major Advances, and Future Directions / Rashawn Ray
  • Individual and Structural Racism
    • Racial Formation: Understanding Race and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era / Michael Omi and Howard Winant
    • From Bi-racial to Tri-racial: Towards a New System of Racial Stratification in the U.S.A. / Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
  • The Social Psychology of Prejudice and Perceived Discrimination
    • Race Prejudice as a Sense of Group Position / Herbert Blumer
    • Reactions Toward the New Minorities of Western Europe / Thomas F. Pettigrew
  • Racial Attitudes and Public Discourses
    • Racial Attitudes and Relations at the Close of the Twentieth Century / Lawrence D. Bobo
  • Race, Gender, and Sexuality
    • Getting Off and Getting Intimate: How Normative Institutional Arrangements Structure Black and White Fraternity Men’s Approaches Toward Women / Rashawn Ray and Jason A. Rosow
  • Colorism, Lookism, and Tokenism
    • “One-Drop” to Rule them All? Colorism and the Spectrum of Racial Stratifi cation in the Twenty-First Century / Victor Ray
  • Assimilation Perspectives: Group Threat Theory, Contact Theory, and Ethnic Conflict
    • The Ties that Bind and Those that Don’t: Toward Reconciling Group Threat and Contact Theories of Prejudice / Jeffrey C. Dixon
  • Citizenship, Nationalism, and Human Rights
    • Citizenship, Nationalism, and Human Rights / Shiri Noy
• PART 3 THE CUMULATIVE PIPELINE OF PERSISTENT INSTITUTIONAL RACISM
  • The Cumulative Pipeline of Persistent Institutional Racism / Rashawn Ray
  • Individual and Structural Racism
    • A Different Menu: Racial Residential Segregation and the Persistence of Racial Inequality / Abigail A. Sewell
  • Education
    • Cracking the Educational Achievement Gap(s) / R. L’Heureux Lewis and Evangeleen Pattison
  • The Labor Market, Socioeconomic Status, and Wealth
    • Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination / Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan
    • Black Wealth/White Wealth: Wealth Inequality Trends / Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro
    • The Mark of a Criminal Record / Devah Pager
  • The Criminal Justice System
    • Toward a Theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality / Robert J. Sampson and William Julius Wilson
  • The Health Care System
    • Root and Structural Causes of Minority Health and Health Disparities / Keon L. Gilbert and Chikarlo R. Leak
• PART 4 CONFRONTING THE PIPELINE: SOCIAL POLICY ISSUES
  • Engaging Social Change by Embracing Diversity / Rashawn Ray
  • When Is Affirmative Action Fair? On Grievous Harms and Public Remedies / Ira Katznelson
  • Engaging Future Leaders: Peer Education at Work in Colleges and Universities / Alta Mauro and Jason Robertson
  • What Do We Think About Race? / Lawrence D. Bobo