Mixed Race Studies

The Morbid Proclivities and Retrogressive Tendencies in the Offspring of Mulattoes

The Journal of the American Medical Association
Volume 20, Number 1 (1893-01-07)
pages 1-2
DOI: 10.1001/jama.1893.02420280009001

W. A. Dixon, M.D.

Read in the Section of Diseases of Children, at the Forty-third Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association, held at Detroit, Mich., June 7, 1892.

Observations extending over a period of more than thirty years have thoroughly impressed the conviction upon my mind that the offspring of mulattoes are the subjects of constitutional diseases to a greater degree than are those of unmixed blood, and that when confined strictly to their own class, they scarcely reach the fourth generation in descent, by reason of disease and sterility.

I have often wondered if others have had occasion to notice this feature in mulatto life, or whether the conclusions at which I have arrived are false and unwarranted from being based upon observations confined to a local district, yet rich in examples that go far to establish the view propounded. I believe that there is not much to be found in current medical writings upon the subject. Our locality is on the border between the free and the slave States of fifty years ago and more. It…

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How race becomes biology: Embodiment of social inequality

American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Special Issue: Race Reconciled: How Biological Anthropologists View Human Variation
Volume 139, Issue 1 (May 2009)
pages 47–57
DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.20983

Clarence C. Gravlee, Associate Professor of Anthropology
University of Florida, Gainesville

The current debate over racial inequalities in health is arguably the most important venue for advancing both scientific and public understanding of race, racism, and human biological variation. In the United States and elsewhere, there are well-defined inequalities between racially defined groups for a range of biological outcomes—cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, certain cancers, low birth weight, preterm delivery, and others. Among biomedical researchers, these patterns are often taken as evidence of fundamental genetic differences between alleged races. However, a growing body of evidence establishes the primacy of social inequalities in the origin and persistence of racial health disparities. Here, I summarize this evidence and argue that the debate over racial inequalities in health presents an opportunity to refine the critique of race in three ways: 1) to reiterate why the race concept is inconsistent with patterns of global human genetic diversity; 2) to refocus attention on the complex, environmental influences on human biology at multiple levels of analysis and across the lifecourse; and 3) to revise the claim that race is a cultural construct and expand research on the sociocultural reality of race and racism. Drawing on recent developments in neighboring disciplines, I present a model for explaining how racial inequality becomes embodied—literally—in the biological well-being of racialized groups and individuals. This model requires a shift in the way we articulate the critique of race as bad biology.

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Note on the Skin-Colour of the Crosses Between Negro and White

Biometrika
Volume 6, Number 4 (March 1909)
pages 348-353
DOI: 10.1093/biomet/6.4.348

Karl Pearson (1857-1936), F.R.S.

Those who feel compelled at present to hold their final judgment with regard to Mendelism in suspense, who do not think the statistical proof of its generality by any means yet complete, and who still question on logical grounds many of the statements made with regard to it, have nevertheless been ready to emphasise the paramount service of Mendel in drawing attention to the great factor of segregation in many inheritance problems. This admission can be made without overlooking the facts—too often disregarded—that segregation is not a universal principle, that it is, where it does occur, often incomplete, and that even where it occurs and is more or less complete it does not necessarily follow the simple Mendelian ratios. The theory of the “pure gamete,” the “unit character” and the  “allelomorph” may have aided, suggested and controlled much experimental work on inheritance, but this theory has undoubtedly been pushed—chiefly by young and enthusiastic disciples of Mendelism, who thought that at last a formula of heredity requiring no mathematical knowledge had been discovered—far beyond the limits of actual experimental work, or in some cases beyond the inferences allowable from the data actually observed. The public has been dosed by the general Mendelian practitioner with:

(DR) x (DR) = (DD) + 2(DR) + (RR)

and told that it solved all difficulties. But the higher consultants know that at the very best many complications arise, that even in segregation transitional forms occur occasionally or even frequently, and that “unit characters” are not independent but often highly correlated. They are also fully conscious that much straining of the theory of probability often is needed to make the ratios fit a simple Mendelian formula. The reason for these prefatory remarks lies in the fact that some time ago it was asserted by an ardent Mendelian that skin colour in crosses between dark and light skinned races would probably be found to obey Mendelian principles.   It had been hitherto almost universally accepted that skin colour did…

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Afro-Saxon psychosis or cultural schizophrenia in African-Caribbeans?

The Psychiatrist
Volume 24, Issue 3 (2000)
pages 96-97
DOI: 10.1192/pb.24.3.96

Hari D. Maharajh, Psychiatric Hospital Director
St Ann’s Hospital, Trinidad, West Indies

“Everybody in Miguel Street said that Man-man was mad, and so they left him alone, but I am not sure now that he was mad and I can think of many people much madder than Man-man was… That again was another mystery about Man-man. His accent, if you shut your eyes while he spoke, you would believe an Englishman—a good class Englishman who wasn’t particular about grammar—was talking to you.” (Naipaul, 1959)

The experience of both the psychiatrist and population is of critical importance in the description of indigenous phenomena. This becomes even more relevant when both the researcher and the tested population are influenced by diverse cultures. In the paper entitled ‘Roast breadfruit psychosis’ (Hickling & Hutchinson, 1999), the authors have extrapolated a cultural concept enshrined in Caribbean humour and pathos into a diseased state. We wish to demonstrate the widespread use of a host of metaphors within the Caribbean and other communities illustrating the concept of cultural marginalisation. This is reflected in the song, prose, poetry and art of the region.

The effect of social and cultural factors in the aetiology, course and outcome of mental illness appears to be an area of renewed interest in British psychiatry. While British psychiatrists have abandoned the fading image of the visiting messianic doctor, the island-hopping academic and the colourful description of culture-bound syndromes in exotic and distant lands, it appears as though there is today a reversal of role.

More recently, new African-Caribbean psychiatrists in Britain seem content to invent syndromes exhibiting mimicry, defying nosology, logic and rational thought and devoid of scholarly description.

The ‘Black-White man’ has never been an issue of the ‘windrush’ of 300 000 West Indians who migrated to Britain between 1951-1961. Nevertheless, politicians, poets, writers and calypsonians have adequately described the phenomenon of ‘Black people who think themselves White’ in the Caribbean. These social commentators did not consider acculturation and assimilation into a new culture as negative factors but as processes of social ascendancy and respectability. This transition was actively pursued voluntarily en masse; in fact, the Jamaican poet Louise Bennett described the exodus from her island as follows:

“By de hundred, by de t’ousan From country and from town By de ship-load, by de plane-load Jamaica is Englan boun.” (Ferguson, 1999)

Following independent status from Britain in 1962, a Trinidadian academic, Lloyd Best introduced into the Caribbean literature the term ‘Afro-Saxon’. It was not intended to be a pejorative term, but a descriptive analysis of the ruling class then, that had adopted, absorbed and internalised the values of the White colonial masters. This, he pointed out was a natural phenomenon, since post-colonialisation, the ruling elites pursued the norms of respectability of the White man and aspired to it for acceptance and survival (Best, 1965). Similarly, Samuel Selvon’s (1956) novel The Lonely Londoners captured the feelings and aspirations of West Indian immigrants in Britain.

Selvon, a Trinidadian of mixed Indian and Scottish parentage arrived in London in 1950. Creating from his own experience, he captured in narrative form, the atmosphere of West Indians in London. In his novel, which is part comic, part tragic, Selvon sought “to evoke the bittersweet existence of a rootless community that is both excited and terrified by its new life and the leaving behind of the old” (Ferguson, 1999). Through a number of characters, he most vividly described differing responses to the experience of migration. Such feelings would be expected of any migrant group into a new environment regardless of their colour, race or culture. Disturbed racial identification is, therefore, a natural phenomenon of any colonised or migrant people. It is non-specific and no ethnic group should be singled out.

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Study of HLA antigens of the Martinican population

Tissue Antigens
Volume 26, Issue 1 (July 1985)
pages 1–11
DOI: 10.1111/j.1399-0039.1985.tb00928.x

Nicole Monplaisir
Blood Transfusion Center of Martinique

Ignez Valette
Blood Transfusion Center of Martinique

Virginia Lepage
Groupe de Recherches d’Immunogenetique de la Transplatation Humaine, INSERM – U 93, Paris, France

Veronique Dijon
Blood Transfusion Center of Martinique

Elizabeth Lavocat
Blood Transfusion Center of Martinique

Colette Ribal
Blood Transfusion Center of Martinique

Colette Raffoux
Groupe de Recherches d’Immunogenetique de la Transplatation Humaine, INSERM – U 93, Paris, France

This is the first time a study has been undertaken on the HLA profile of the Martinican population, a population which is essentially the product of intermixture between African-Negroes and French Caucasians. Two hundred and thirty-eight non-related subjects were typed for the A and B loci, 158 subjects for C locus and 128 for DR locus.

After analysis of our parameters (antigen and gene frequencies, linkage disequili-bria, etc.) and their comparison to those found in the Black and Caucasian control populations, we came to the conclusion that our racially-mixed population is closer to the African-Negro population than to the French Caucasian. A study of the average gene flow enabled us to evaluate the Caucasian contribution as being about 30%. This figure is subject to change inasmuch as racial intermixture continues. Socio-cultural variables are assumed to play a minimal role, given the high rate of illegitimacy.

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The social and economic circumstances of mixed ethnicity children in the UK: findings from the Millennium Cohort Study

Ethnic and Racial Studies
First Published online: 2011-03-10
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2011.556745

Lidia Panico, Research Student
Department for Epidemiology and Public Health
University College London

James Y. Nazroo, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research
University of Manchester

The number of people with a ‘mixed’ ethnicity heritage is growing in contemporary Britain. Research in this area has largely focused on implications for cultural and racialized identities, and little is known about associated economic and social factors. Data from the Millennium Cohort Study, a representative panel survey of children born in 2000-2001, are used to examine the circumstances of mixed ethnicity children in comparison with their non-mixed and white counterparts. Findings suggest a cultural location between ‘white’ and minority identities, and socio-economic advantage in comparison with non-mixed counterparts. For example, households of non-mixed white children had poorer economic profiles than households of both mixed white and mixed Indian children. This effect is associated with the presence of a white parent, and the factors underlying it are examined. Although the statistical approach used bypasses a consideration of the dynamics of identity, it provides important evidence on stratification and inequality, and the factors driving this.

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Race and health care: problems with using race to classify, assess, and treat patients

University of Texas
May 2010
64 pages

Atalie Nitibhon

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Public Affairs

Though racial classifications may serve as a mechanism for identifying and correcting disparities among various groups, using such classifications in a clinical setting to detect and treat patient needs can be problematic. This report explores how medical professionals and researchers use race in health care for purposes of data collection, risk assessment, and diagnosis and treatment options. Using mixed race individuals as an example, it then discusses some of the problems associated with using race to group individuals, assess risk, and inform patient care. Finally, it discusses how certain components of personalized medicine, such as genetic testing, Electronic Health Records, and Rapid Learning Systems could help address some of the concerns that arise from the application of race in a health care setting.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1: Introduction
  • What is Race?
• Chapter 2: Race and Health Care
  • Data Collection/Health Statistics
  • Risk Assessment
  • Diagnosis/Treatment
• Chapter 3: The Case of Mixed Race
• Chapter 4: Addressing the Issue
  • Genetic Testing
  • Genetic Testing Policy
    • Privacy and Security
    • Accuracy
    • Medical Education
    • Access
    • Research
  • Electronic Health Records and Rapid Learning Systems
  • Electronic Health Records Policy
  • Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records
• Chapter 5: Conclusion
• References
• Vita

…Chapter 3: The Case of Mixed Race

As mentioned during the previous discussion entitled “What is Race?”, no such thing as “pure race” exists, so it stands to reason that everyone is, to some degree, “multiracial” or of “mixed race.” However, for the purposes of this discussion, the terms “multiracial,” “mixed race,” and “mixed heritage” refer to individuals with parents who are classified as being from two distinct racial or ethnic categories. Mixed heritage individuals described by such a definition provide an excellent example of some of the problems associated with relying on race to classify individuals, assess risk, or inform patient care.

Racial identification, either on the part of the individual or by an external actor (e.g., a medical professional) is an area of concern, particularly in terms of the reliability of using race to assess health risk. For example, an individual who has one black parent and one Hispanic parent may self-identify as only one or the other. If she identifies as black and does not think to share the racial or ethnic identities of both of her parents with the medical professionals administering care, how comprehensive will the patient assessment be? Or, if a patient has one Asian parent and one white parent, but a medical professional identifies her as Hispanic, what effects does that external misidentification have on the adequacy, accuracy, and equitability of the physician’s assessment of the patient? Furthermore, patients do not inform health care professionals that they believe they have disease X, thus allowing the clinician to then administer exams to confirm that diagnosis. Instead, patients present a list of symptoms to their physician, and then expect a diagnosis and treatment. While most physicians will follow proper medical protocol in assessing and diagnosing a patient, her beliefs and biases, however well-meaning they may be, could influence the type of treatment the patient receives. Thus, if the physician believes the Asian/White patient to be Hispanic, the physician’s perceptions about Hispanics in the health care setting may subconsciously influence her assessment and care of the patient…

…In general, the absence of options for multiethnic or multiracial individuals reveals part of the problem in using race as a risk assessment tool: it neglects to account for the extent of genetic variation that underlies the concept of race. Thus, not only does it disregard a number of people who do not fit neatly into any of the given categories, but it may also misgauge the genetic contributions of individuals who do select a specific race or ethnicity with which they identify socially….

…The 2000 Census marked the first time individuals had the option to “mark one or more” race; the resulting data reveal that nearly 7-million individuals self-identified as multiple races. Another study projects that individuals who self-identify as mixed race will make up 21 percent of the population by 2050. The growing number of individuals who self-identify as multiracial indicates that the “traditional” methods of grouping people according to race need reassessment. Similarly, the manner in which medical professionals consider race to inform patient care needs reassessment. Nonetheless, inclusion of the option to mark one or more on the Census does not mean that mixed heritage individuals are a new “phenomenon.” Recalling the idea that nobody is purely one race, it stands to reason that doctors have been treating “mixed heritage” patients for quite some time now. In some respects, that illustrates the notion that the actual “race” of an individual is irrelevant; the only way to treat the patient is to treat the patient…

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Does Multiracial Matter? A Study of Racial Disparities in Self-Rated Health

Demography
Volume 48, Number 1
pages 127-152
DOI: 10.1007/s13524-010-0005-0

Jenifer L. Bratter, Associate Professor of Sociology
Rice University

Bridget K. Gorman, Associate Professor of Sociology
Rice University

How do self-identified multiracial adults fit into documented patterns of racial health disparities? We assess whether the health status of adults who view themselves as multiracial is distinctive from that of adults who maintain a single-race identity, by using a seven-year (2001–2007) pooled sample of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). We explore racial differences in self-rated health between whites and several single and multiracial adults with binary logistic regression analyses and investigate whether placing these groups into a self-reported “best race” category alters patterns of health disparities. We propose four hypotheses that predict how the self-rated health status of specific multiracial groups compares with their respective component single-race counterparts, and we find substantial complexity in that no one explanatory model applies to all multiracial combinations. We also find that placing multiracial groups into a single “best race” category likely obscures the pattern of health disparities for selected groups because some multiracial adults (e.g., American Indians) tend to identify with single-race groups whose health experience they do not share.

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The “Melting Pot” A Myth

The Journal of Heridity
Volume 8, Number 3 (March 1917)
pages 99-105

Study of Members of Oldest American Families Shows that the Type is Still Very Diverse—No Amalgamation Going on to Produce a Strictly American Sub-Type—Characteristics of the Old American Stock

America as “The Melting Pot” of peoples is a picture often drawn by writers who do not trouble themselves as to the precision of their figures of speech.

Dr. Ales Hrdlicka has been investigating the older contents of this pot, and finds that even the material which went into it first has not yet so melted. Several hundred members of the old, white, American stock have been most carefully measured and examined in many ways, to find whether the people making up this stock are tending to become alike—whether a new sub-type of the human race is being formed here in America, with intermarriage, environment, and under the pressure of outward circumstances.

Dr. Hrdlicka finds very definitely that as yet such is not the case. The force of heredity is too strong to be radically altered in a century” or two, and even the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, the Virginia cavaliers, the Pennsylvania Dutch and the Huguenots, while possibly not as much unlike as their ancestors probably were, are still far from a real blend.

“The Melting Pot” is a figure of speech; and, as far as physical anthropology is concerned, it will not be anything more in this country, at least for many centuries…

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The Mulatto Problem

The Journal of Heredity
Volume 16, Number 8 (August 1925)
pages 281-286

Ernest Dodge
Washington, D. C.

The numerous races and subraces of mankind could hardly have maintained their distinct existence to so late a date in history save for the geographical barrier generally found between different stocks. The only other bulwarks against amalgamation are artificial caste distinctions and such degree of mutual repulsion or lessened attraction as may exist when racial characteristics differ in the extreme.

Whenever and wherever the one dependable barrier of geographic separation between two radically different types is swept away, it should be the business of Eugenics to investigate the biological results of crossing. If these prove to be beneficial or even neutral, then artificial walls of caste should be discouraged, as these are always inconvenient and may become intolerable. But if the results of amalgamation are found to be markedly injurious, then eugenic research will not only strengthen the force of social inhibition but lift it from the plane of mere prejudice or pride to the level of an ethical mandate. In the United States a problem exists which demands extensive and impartial eugenic research,’ but which unfortunately has never received it on any adequate scale. Nine-tenths of our population are a heterogeneous mixture of many European races which collectively we call by the misnomer of “Caucasian.” The other one-tenth belong to a type so different and so prepotent for perpetuating their differences in mixed offspring, that present-day sentiment is strongly crystalized against amalgamation of the two populations.

We should err, however, if we assumed that caste barriers now existent keeping black and white America distinct throughout all centuries to come. Past history would point to a different expectation. Probably one in five of the Afro-American people has enough of the Caucasian in his makeup to be noticed by an observer, while doubtless many considered to be full blacks have one-eighth or one-sixteenth part of white ancestry. True it is that the major part of this influx of white blood occurred a considerable time ago, having been tolerated by a- sort of patriarchal moral code under slavery and in the earlier years after emancipation. Improvement in education, economic condition, and racial self respect has doubtless reduced the number of colored mothers willing to consent to extra-legal unions; and the sentiment also of the majority race is probably less tolerant than formerly toward such alliances. As for legal intermarriage, it has always been too infrequent to be the leading factor in the problem.

But the saying is a true one that “you can’t un-scramble eggs.” Unless it should be a fact that the children and grandchildren of mulattoes are inferior to pure negroes in fertility and viability, the composite complexion of the Afro-American community must inevitably grow lighter as the centuries succeed one another. For it cannot be expected that the interbreeding of two contiguous populations will ever be reduced to zero. And every child that shall ever be born of a mixed union increases permanently the percentage of European blood in the colored population. The process might indeed be slow, but it could work in only one direction.

It becomes, therefore, a matter of real importance to learn what the ultimate results of past or future intermingling will be. The present article is meant in part as a plea for the endowment of scientific research in ways that will be indicated before we close…

…(IV.) There is one final possibility that must be reckoned with, though it is contrary to all prevailing ideals. That is that race and caste barriers may sometime in the long centuries be quite swept away and the entire American people become a race of quintroons. Such a thing will not come about by any cataclismic break in existing customs. But the foregoing discussion points the way to its final possibility—unless eugenic researches should prove such a result to be so radically undesirable that society would erect against miscegenation a bulwark of caste thrice stronger even than now…

…And then as for the white race: if impartial research should conceivably prove that’even the smallest admixture of colored blood is a pronounced racial handicap, lessening the mental processes, the moral fiber, fecundity and the resistance to disease, then it would become a duty to the future to maintain and further strengthen at any cost all barriers against amalgamation. But if, on the other hand, the most careful research should indicate that the results of an ultimate “quintroonifying” of America would be at the utmost no worse – than neutral, then would our people be justified in ceasing to worry about the future and in letting each coming generation handle its own caste problem with whatever degree of laxity or vigor shall best suit its own predilections, immediate conditions, or conscience…

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