Mixed Race Studies

“Slippin’ Into Darkness”: The (Re)Biologization of Race

Journal of Asian American Studies
Volume 13, Number 3 (October 2010)
pages 343-358
E-ISSN: 1096-8598 Print ISSN: 1097-2129

Michael Omi, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies
University of California, Berkeley

While the dominant mantra in humanities and the social sciences is that “race is a social construction, not a biological one,” in the wake of the Human Genome Project, a vigorous debate has emerged about whether race is indeed a meaningful and useful genetic concept. This essays argues that debates about the very concept of race—the system of classification we employ, the meanings we ascribe to racial categories, and their use in social analysis and policy formation—are rendered more complex, indeterminate, and muddy with the increasing re-biologization of race.

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Selling eugenics: the case of Sweden

Notes & Records of the Royal Society
Volume 64, Number 4
pages 379-400
DOI: 10.1098/rsnr.2010.0009

Maria Björkman
Department of Thematic Studies, Technology and Social Change
Linköping University

Sven Widmalm
Department of Thematic Studies, Technology and Social Change
Linköping University

This paper traces the early (1910s to 1920s) development of Swedish eugenics through a study of the social network that promoted it. The eugenics network consisted mainly of academics from a variety of disciplines, but with medicine and biology dominating; connections with German scientists who would later shape Nazi biopolitics were strong. The paper shows how the network used political lobbying (for example, using contacts with academically accomplished MPs) and various media strategies to gain scientific and political support for their cause, where a major goal was the creation of a eugenics institute (which opened in 1922). It also outlines the eugenic vision of the institute’s first director, Herman Lundborg. In effect the network, and in particular Lundborg, promoted the view that politics should be guided by eugenics and by a genetically superior elite. The selling of eugenics in Sweden is an example of the co-production of science and social order.

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Factors in the Microevolution of a Triracial Isolate

American Journal of Human Genetics
Volume 18, Number 1 (January 1966)
pages 26-38

W. S. Pollitzer
Department of Anatomy
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

R. M. Menegaz-Bock
Genetics Training Committe
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

J. C. Herion
Department of Medicine
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Triracial Isolates today attract the attention of the anthropologist, the geneticist, and the medical scientist as questions arise concerning the origin of such isolates, their history, social status, breeding structure, and inherited pathological conditions. This paper describes the physical, serological, and clinical characteristics of a hybrid population in northeastern North Carolina (Witkop et al., 1960; Menegaz-Bock, 1962), its racial composition, and the cultural and biological factors in its evolution.

History

The population can be traced at least as far back as the American Revolution. The most common surname in this region today is the same as that of two brothers, said to be descended from Cherokee Indians and whites, who fought in that war. The census of 1790 for the county in which the majority of this population now live lists this name only under the designation “all other free persons;” four of seven other surnames frequent in this population are listed as “free white,” while three are listed under both of these headings. Many of these names, well-known in the isolate today, can be traced through the census reports of the nineteenth century. In 1800, ten are listed, mostly under “free persons of color,” and the census of 1810 lists six of these as “other free persons except Indians not taxed.” By 1820, most of these names appear in the column “free Negro.” Eleven surnames common in the current population are listed in the census of 1830 as “free colored persons,” and most of these are listed under the same heading again in 1840. The census of 1850, designating free inhabitants as “white,” “black,” and “mulatto,” registers a dozen of these family names as “mulattoes” and half of these also as “white.” In 1860, the census for the western district of the county listed 13 of the common names as free inhabitants, either white, black, or mulatto. In the 1870 census for the township where most of the population now lives, five of seven last names common in the group include mulattoes. The census of 1880 contains ten names common in the township now, and all but two of these are to be found under “mulatto.” The census of 1890 was destroyed, and names are not released for the censuses from 1900 on…

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Multiethnicity and Multiethnic Families: Development, Identity, and Resilience

Xlibris
2010
384 pages
ISBN 13 Softcover: 978-1-4500-1231-7
ISBN 13 Hardcover: 978-1-4500-1232-4
ISBN 13 Ebook: 978-1-4500-0340-7

Edited By:

Hamilton McCubbin, Krystal Ontai, Lisa Kehl, Laurie McCubbin, Ida Strom, Heidi Hart, Barbara DeBaryshe, Marika Ripke and Jon Matsuoka

Guided by the increasing number of interracial marriages, cross-cultural adoptions and resulting multiethnic individuals and  families, scholars and scientists reveal the complex and persistent changes in the ethnic profile of Americans, families and their communities. 

The editors of this book selected the research of 31 nationally and internationally recognized scholars who present 14 chapters of current knowledge on the changing demographics of multiethnicity and their implications for human development and identity development, social and family relationships, functioning, stress, coping and resilience.

The senior contributing scholars and their disciplines are:  Sharon Lee, PhD, Demography; Emmy Werner, PhD, Child Development; Jonathan Okamura, PhD, Sociology; Cathy Tashiro, PhD, Nursing;  Hamilton McCubbin, PhD, Family Science; Barbara DeBaryshe, PhD, Human Development; Cardell Jacobson, PhD, Sociology; Jenifer Bratter, PhD, Psychology;  Xuanning Fu, PhD, Anthropology; Richard Lee, PhD, Psychology;  Laurie McCubbin, PhD, Counseling Psychology;  Farzana Nayani, PhD, Ethnic Studies; Jeannette Johnson,  PhD, Psychology; and Michael Ungar, PhD, Social Work.

Multiethnicity and Multiethnic Families: Development, Identity, and Resilience (Le`a Publications) addresses core theoretical, methodological and policy issues surrounding the changing demographics of multiethnic and particularly indigenous groups in the United States. The issues of historical trauma, schema, appraisal, adaptation, measurement and intervention are magnified. The introduction and fourteen chapters aim to build upon prior writings and research and to improve upon our understanding of these populations with all their complexities. Present and future research and knowledge gained on what it means to be multiethnic is vital to our efforts to shape their futures and improve upon our professional understanding and investment in enabling this emerging population to thrive as well as survive.

Chapters include:

Multiraciality and health disparities: Encountering the contradictions and conundrums of race, ethnicity, and identity, by Cathy Tashiro

Read the front matter here.

Science: Environmentalist

Time Magazine
1936-05-11

In Washington last week one of the world’s most distinguished anthropologists told the National Academy of Sciences about an Englishman who was raised in Italy and married a Jewess. In consequence this Englishman’s gestures gradually became half Italian, half Jewish.

Anthropology is neither an old science like mathematics, astronomy and medicine, nor a modern one like genetics or electronics. The ancient Greeks were willing enough to assign man a place in the animal kingdom and some of them, notably Anaximander, had an inkling of evolution. But they were content to speculate and philosophize. In the early 19th Century anthropology as a science had made little headway. Species and varieties of plants and animals were considered changeless, and so were the races of man. The strange manlike bones found here & there in caves and quarries were thought to be the remains of monsters. The beliefs and practices of primitive people were shrugged off as so much sordid playacting. When the origin and fluidity of species, the significance of fossils and the rationale of primitive cultures were better understood, anthropology began to make progress as a serious study of man in all his aspects.

…Franz Boas got into anthropology 53 years ago. He has invaded almost every branch of this science: linguistics, primitive mentality, folklore, ethnology, growth and senility, the physical effects of environment. He reminds his colleagues of the oldtime family doctor who did everything from delivering babies to pulling teeth.

By no means all anthropologists share Dr. Boas’ belief in the tremendous physical influence of environment. But when he has something to say they listen respectfully…

…Magna Charta. Currently in England a group of scientists including Sir Arthur Smith Woodward and Julian Huxley are engaged in knocking the flimsy props from under Nazi ideas of race purity and race superiority. A quarter-century ago Franz Boas was attacking the same sort of ideas. At that time the view was popular that different races had their characteristic mentalities which determined their culture. Boas had piled up enough data to convince him that such was not the case. The Mind of Primitive Man was published in 1911. When he was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1931, that book was called “A Magna Charta of self-respect for the ‘lower’ races.”

Boas observed that nowhere on earth was there such a thing as a pure race, and that the term “race” was a vague and approximate one at best. He doubted that there were any “superior” races. To Boas it seemed that if one person was innately superior to another, it was because there was more genetic difference between family lines than between racial types. Anatomists cannot tell the difference between the brains of a Swede and a Negro. They may distinguish the skulls, but it has been shown over & over that neither the size nor shape of the skull, within the range of normality, has anything to do with intelligence. Dr. Boas has no confidence in intelligence tests as measures of race superiority, because such tests cannot be divorced entirely from environment and experience. During the War it was found that Chicago Negroes did better with intelligence tests than Louisiana blacks, although the two groups were anthropologically alike…

…Dr. Boas argues that if common race prejudice had “instinctive” antipathy for its source, it would show itself in the most intimate of all contacts, the sexual relation. But throughout history slave-owners have bedded with female slaves of different race, whites have mated with Indians and Negroes. Southern children show no aversion whatever to black nurses, must be taught by their elders not to accept blacks as equals. The strongest antipathies are those between social castes like those of India and ancient Egypt — between people of the same race…

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The Population Variance of the Proportion of Genetic Admixture in Human Intergroup Hybrids

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
December 1971
Volume 68, Number 12
pages 3168–3169
PMCID: PMC389614

T. Edward Reed, Professor of Zoology and Anthropology; Associate Professor of Paediatrics
University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

For each individual in a human hybrid population there is a proportion μi, whose value is usually unknown, that expresses the fraction of his genes deriving from a specified parental population. The distribution of these individual proportions about the mean proportion μ is not known for any large hybrid population in man. It is of interest to know whether the population variance of individual proportions (μi) can be estimated from the variation between different, independent estimates of the mean proportion (μ).This possibility was tested with data on Negroes of the Oakland, California area, by the use of some of the principles of analysis of variance. Even with a large sample and the useful Duffy blood-group system to indicate admixture, almost no information about the population variance of individual proportions is provided by between-sample variation in estimates of μ. It is concluded that group data on admixture proportions usually do not give useful information about the population variance. It is further concluded that a recent estimate of this variance by Shockley is in error.

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Caucasian Genes in American Negroes

Science (1969-08-22)
Volume 165
pages 762-768
DOI: 10.1126/science.165.3895.762

T. Edward Reed, Professor of Zoology and Anthropology; Associate Professor of Paediatrics
University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Measurement of non-African ancestry is difficult, but it is worthwhile for several genetic reasons.

It is very difficult to describe the genetic history of a large, defined human population in a meaningful way. As a result there have been few opportunities, at the population level, to study the consequences of known genetic events in the recent past of modem populations. The Negro population of the United States, however, is one of the exceptions to these generalizations. The American individual to whom the term Negro is applied is almost always a biracial hybrid. Usually between 2 and 50 percent of his genes are derived from Caucasian ancestors, and these genes were very probably received after 1700. While it is obviously of social and cultural importance to understand Negro hybridity, it is less obvious that there are several pertinent genetic reasons for wishing to know about the magnitude and nature of Caucasian ancestry in Negroes. Recent data, both genetic and historical, now make possible a better understanding of American Negro genetic history than has been possible heretofore. Here I review and criticize the published data on this subject, present new data, and interpret the genetic significance of the evidence.

In order to put the genetic data in proper context, I must first give a little of the history of American slavery. The first slaves were brought to what is now the United States in 1619. Importation of slaves before 1700 was negligible, however, but after that date it proceeded at a high rate for most of the 18th century. Importation became illegal after 1808 but in fact continued at a low rate for several more decades (1, 2). The total number of slaves brought into the United States was probably somewhat less than 400,000 (3). Charleston, South Carolina, was the most important port of entry, receiving 30 to 40 percent of the total number (4). More than 98 percent of the slaves came from a very extensive area of West Africa and west-central Africa-from Senegal to Angola-and, in these areas, from both coastal and inland regions. Shipping lists of ships that brought slaves to the United States-and to the West Indies, often to be sent later to the United States provide a fairly detailed picture of the geographic origins of the slaves and a less complete picture of their ethnic origins. Table 1 gives the approximate proportions of American slaves brought from the eight major slaving areas of Africa. The contribution from East Africa is seen to be negligible, whereas the area from Senegal to western Nigeria contributed about half the total and the region from eastern Nigeria to Angola contributed the other half. An earlier tabulation for entry at Charleston alone (5) is quite similar, except that the contribution from the Bight of Biafra is much less (0.021 as compared to 0.233) and that from “Angola” is appreciably greater (0.396 as compared to 0.245).

At some early point in American slavery, matings between slaves and Caucasians began to occur. Quantitative data are lacking, and we can say only that most of these matings occurred after 1700. Our concern here is the genetic consequences of the matings the introduction of Caucasian genes into the genome (or total complement of genetic material) of the American Negro. We could, in theory, estimate the Caucasian contribution to American Negro ancestry in a very simple way if certain strict criteria were met. In practice it is not possible to show that all these criteria are met, but this fact has not stopped geneticists, including myself, from making estimates…

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Intellectual Development of Children from Interracial Matings

Science (1970-12-18)
Volume 170, Number 3964
pages 1329-1331
DOI: 10.1126/science.170.3964.1329

Lee Willerman
Perinatal Research Branch
National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, National Institutes of Health

Alfred F. Naylor
Perinatal Research Branch
National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, National Institutes of Health

Ntinos C. Myrianthopoulos
Perinatal Research Branch
National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, National Institutes of Health

Interracial offspring of white mothers obtained significantly higher IQ scores at 4 years of age than interracial offspring of Negro mothers, suggesting that environmental factors play an important role in the lower intellectual performance of Negro children.

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White mother given mixed race sperm in IVF loses compensation claim

British Medical Journal
Volume 341, Number 5806
2010-10-15
DOI: 10.1136/bmj.c5806

Clare Dyer

Two children in Northern Ireland whose white mother was mistakenly impregnated with sperm from South Africa labelled “Caucasian (Cape Coloured)” during in vitro fertilisation have failed in a compensation claim at the High Court in Belfast.

The children’s mother, who brought the case on their behalf, claimed that their quality of life was adversely affected because they looked markedly different from their parents and had quite different skin colour from each other. She said that they were subject to “abusive and derogatory comment and hurtful name calling from other children, causing emotional upset.”…

Read or purchase the article here.

[Note from Steven F. Riley]

Admittedly from a cursory glance, this article is perhaps the kind that belongs on the front page of  a supermarket tabloid.  However, the plaintiff’s claim of “abusive and derogatory comment and hurtful name calling from other children, causing emotional upset.” because of “differently looking” children does seem to merit some kind of thoughtful and intelligent commentary.

Needless to say, millions of families with “differently looking” children by the way of “correctly labeled” sperm and egg rendezvous—or by adoption—face the prospect “abuse and derogatory” comments every day.  Thus a successful claim might have laid down a very, very interesting precedent.

Mapping genes that predict treatment outcome in admixed populations

The Pharmacogenomics Journal
Published Online: 2010-10-05
DOI: 10.1038/tpj.2010.71

Tesfaye Mersha Baye, Assistant Professor
University of Cincinnati College of Medicine

Russell Alan Wilke, Associate Professor of Medicine
Vanderbilt University Medical Center

There is great interest in characterizing the genetic architecture underlying drug response. For many drugs, gene-based dosing models explain a considerable amount of the overall variation in treatment outcome. As such, prescription drug labels are increasingly being modified to contain pharmacogenetic information. Genetic data must, however, be interpreted within the context of relevant clinical covariates. Even the most predictive models improve with the addition of data related to biogeographical ancestry. The current review explores analytical strategies that leverage population structure to more fully characterize genetic determinants of outcome in large clinical practice-based cohorts. The success of this approach will depend upon several key factors: (1) the availability of outcome data from groups of admixed individuals (that is, populations recombined over multiple generations), (2) a measurable difference in treatment outcome (that is, efficacy and toxicity end points), and (3) a measurable difference in allele frequency between the ancestral populations.