Mixed Race Studies

The fallacy of racial pharmacogenomics

Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research
Volume 44, Number 4 (April 2011)
pages 268-275
DOI: 10.1590/S0100-879X2011007500031

S. D. J. Pena
Departamento de Bioquímica e Imunologia, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil
GENE – Núcleo de Genética Médica, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil

Personalized pharmacogenomics aims to use individual genotypes to direct medical treatment. Unfortunately, the loci relevant for the pharmacokinetics and especially the pharmacodynamics of most drugs are still unknown. Moreover, we still do not understand the role that individual genotypes play in modulating the pathogenesis, the clinical course and the susceptibility to drugs of human diseases which, although appearing homogeneous on the surface, may vary from patient to patient. To try to deal with this situation, it has been proposed to use interpopulational variability as a reference for drug development and prescription, leading to the development of “race-targeted drugs”. Given the present limitations of genomic knowledge and of the tools needed to fully implement it today, some investigators have proposed to use racial criteria as a palliative measure until personalized pharmacogenomics is fully developed. This was the rationale for the FDA approval of BiDil for treatment of heart failure in African Americans. I will evaluate the efficacy and safety of racial pharmacogenomics here and conclude that it fails on both counts. Next I shall review the perspectives and the predicted rate of development of clinical genomic studies. The conclusion is that “next-generation” genomic sequencing is advancing at a tremendous rate and that true personalized pharmacogenomics, based on individual genotyping, should soon become a clinical reality.

Introduction

The American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson defined the “perimeter of ignorance” as the boundary where scientists face a choice: continue the quest for knowledge or invoke a deity or other supernatural forces. He used as an example no less than Isaac Newton himself, whose law of gravity enabled calculation of the force of attraction between any two objects. When computing the orbits of the planets around the sun, Newton feared that the mutual attraction between them would render the solar system unstable. He then concluded that God occasionally stepped in to make things right. A century later, the French astronomer Pierre-Simon de Laplace created a new mathematical tool called perturbation theory and used it to demonstrate that the solar system is in fact stable over periods of time much longer than Newton could predict. Laplacian science, therefore, no longer needed to postulate the interference of supernatural forces to explain astronomical facts.

Newton’s appeal to God, however unnecessary, may at first sight appear as a humble attitude of a great man. However, Tyson demonstrates that, on the contrary, it represented presumptuousness on his part: if his mathematics was not good enough to explain the phenomenon, then the problem was too complicated for any other human mind to figure out, then or anytime in the future. By “embracing ignorance” Newton’s attitude negatively infused a temporary stage of incomplete knowledge with a false permanency, running counter to the philosophy of open-mindedness and discovery that characterizes Science.

Pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics are likewise in a dilemma right at the edge of the perimeter of ignorance…

…To try to deal with this situation it has been proposed to use interpopulational variability as a reference for drug development and prescription, leading to the development of “race-targeted drugs”, as exemplified by the case of BiDil for treatment of heart failure in African Americans. The rationale for such strategy is that, since we still lack the pharmacogenomic knowledge necessary to implement true personalized treatment, we make do by using the race or the ethnic-geographic affiliation of a given patient as the replacement of the germane individual genotyping at critical loci.

Therein lies the fallacy of racial pharmacogenomics – being predicated on the idea that individual genotyping will be impossible to achieve in the near future, it “embraces ignorance”. Moreover, it often does so under false premises. For instance, in the FDA news release entitled “FDA Approves BiDil Heart Failure Drug for Black Patients” it is stated that this represents “a step toward the promise of personalized medicine”. But racial medicine is group medicine – most definitely it is not personalized medicine…

…I propose that, rather than thinking about populations, ethnicities or races, we should focus on the unique genome of a particular individual, which is structured as a mosaic of polymorphic haplotypes with diverse genealogical histories. This shifts the emphasis from populations to persons. We should strive to see each individual as having a singular genome and a unique life history, rather than try to impose on him/her characteristics of a group or population. Under this model, ideas such as that of human races or “race-targeted drugs” become meaningless and vanish like smoke.

The safety of racial pharmacogenomics

The adoption of racial pharmacogenomics by the FDA has serious implications that extend much beyond the restricted limits of the medical arena. Thus, it has to be evaluated not only scientifically, but also within a historical, sociological and philosophical context.

In the past, the belief that human races had substantial and clearly delimited biological differences contributed to justify discrimination and was used to oppress and foment injustices, even within the medical context. The concept of race is still loaded with ideology and carries within it relationships of power and domination. It is similar to a banana peel: empty, slippery and dangerous.

Thus, our final conclusion is that racial pharmaco-genomics fails on grounds of insufficient benefit/cost ratio: it has much to recommend against it and very little scientific justification in its favor.

To use racial pharmacogenomics as a palliative measure is tantamount to “embracing ignorance”. It erroneously confers persistence and credence to the idea that human races do exist. As pointed out by the sociologist Paul Gilroy, such persistence is toxic, contaminating and weakens all society…

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Nella Larsen’s Passing: More than Skin Deep

McNair Scholars Research Journal
Volume 15
pages 71-83
June 2011

Sarah Hicks
California State University, Long Beach

Nella Larsen’s novella Passing focuses on Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry-Bellew, two female Mulatto characters who pass into white communities; however, two white male minor characters, Hugh Wentworth and John “Jack” Bellew reveal an irregular definition of passing. Wentworth and Bellew challenge our assumptions of where the racist resides within the United States. Because of this, Larsen asks the reader to broaden the definition of passing. As Larsen applies passing on a deeper lever, she manipulates these characters to live in regional boundaries that are counterintuitive to our ideas of the Northern liberal and the Southern racist. What we find, however, is the passing of characters that are true to their borders. In this way, Larsen suggests passing is more than skin deep.

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Neither Enemies nor Friends: Latinos, Blacks, Afro-Latinos

Palgrave Macmillan
April 2005
352 pages
6 1/8 x 9 1/4 inches
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4039-6567-7, ISBN10: 1-4039-6567-6
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4039-6568-4, ISBN10: 1-4039-6568-4

Anani Dzidzienyo, Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Portuguese & Brazilian Studies
Brown University

Suzanne Oboler, Professor of Latin American and Latina/o Studies
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York

In this collection, leading scholars focus on the contemporary meanings and diverse experiences of blackness in specific countries of the hemisphere, including the United States. The anthology introduces new perspectives on comparative forms of racialization in the Americas and presents its implications both for Latin American societies, and for Latinos’ relations with African Americans in the U.S. Contributors address issues such as: Who are the Afro-Latin Americans? What historical contributions do they bring to their respective national polities? What happens to their national and socio-racial identities as a result of migration to the United States? What is the impact of the growing presence of Afro-Latin Americans within U.S. Latino populations, particularly with respect to the continuing dynamics of racialization in the United States today? And, more generally, what are the prospects and obstacles for rethinking alliances and coalition-building between and among racial(ized) minorities and other groups in contemporary U.S. society?

Table of Contents

• Part I: Comparative Racialization in the Americas
  • Flows and Counterflows: Latinas/os, Blackness, and Racialization in Hemispheric Perspective—Suzanne Oboler and Anani Dzidzienyo
• Part II: The Politics of Racialization in Latin America
  • A Region in Denial: Racial Discrimination and Racism in Latin America—Ariel E. Dulitzky
  • Afro-Ecuadorian Responses to Racism: Between Citizenship and Corporatism—Carlos de la Torre
  • The Foreignness of Racism: Pride and Prejudice Among Peru’s Limeños in the 1990s—Suzanne Oboler
  • Bad Boys and Peaceful Garifuna: Transnational Encounters Between Racial Stereotypes of Honduras and the United States (and Their Implications for the Study of Race in the Americas)—Mark Anderson
  • Afro-Mexico: Blacks, Indígenas, Politics, and the Greater Diaspora—Bobby Vaughn
  • The Changing World of Brazilian Race Relations?—Anani Dzidzienyo
• Part III: The Politics of Racialization in the United States
  • Framing the Discussion of African American–Latino Relations: A Review and Analysis—John J. Betancur
  • Neither White nor Black: The Representation of Racial Identity Among Puerto Ricans on the Island and in the U.S. Mainland—Jorge Duany
  • Scripting Race, Finding Place: African Americans, Afro-Cubans, and the Diasporic Imaginary in the United States—Nancy Raquel Mirabal
  • Identity, Power, and Socioracial Hierarchies Among Haitian Immigrants in Florida—Louis Herns Marcelin
  • Interminority Relations in Legislative Settings: The Case of African Americans and Latinos—José E. Cruz
  • African American and Latina/o Cooperation in Challenging Racial Profiling—Kevin R. Johnson
  • Racial Politics in Multiethnic America: Black and Latina/o Identities and Coalitions—Mark Sawyer
  • Racism in the Americas and the Latino Scholar—Silvio Torres-Saillant
  • Witnessing History: An Octogenarian Reflects on Fifty Years of African American–Latino Relations—Nelson Peery

Triangular Mirrors and Moving Colonialisms

Etnográfica
Volume 6, Number 1 (2002)
pages 127-140

Anani Dzidzienyo, Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Portuguese & Brazilian Studies
Brown University

Though there does not exist an undifferentiated colonialism category because of specificities relating to historical time conjunctions, the interfacing of such conjunctions with metropolitan projects, and the modalities of contesting colonial hegemonies and transformations in the structural/institutional relations between (ex)colonial and (ex)colonised, there is, however, the exigency for an ongoing contemplation and analysis of the reflections and refractions in the mirrors of empire and colonialism. By focussing on contradictions that characterize present-day relations between African countries and Brazil, there is the possibility for unraveling inter/intra colonial/ racial contradictions and how they impact on structures of power. Brazil, because of the widely recognized and increasingly proclaimed “africaness” becomes a mirror that simultaneously reflects and refracts multiple images of colonialism, race and empire.

Why is Brazil in this discussion, especially in view of the fact that my concerns pertain to colonialism and decolonization in Africa in the post-World War II period? Is there an implicit suggestion that there is a colonial tinge about Brazil’s African relations? Could it actually be the case that specific Brazilian articulations have veered in the direction of “colonialist” practices/perceptions? What, after all, constitutes colonialism?

For the purposes of this discussion I do not propose to offer (an)other definition for colonialism, nor do I propose to use “postcolonialism” as an analytical or descriptive concept save to note, following McClintock, that the term postcolonial suggests or imposes a certain linearity, a centering of colonialism (Euro) as the actual starting point of the life and development of societies and political economies of those areas that became entangled with or ensnared into European expansion overseas, and the creation of “colonial” models of life and governance in these sites. Postcoloniality suggests a terminal point in a process whereas, in fact, the consequences of colonialism spawned in conjunction with or opposition to specific local patterns of behavior do not simply melt away. Postcolonial sounds less confrontational than neo-colonial and appears to privilege cultural and literary constructions, highlighting formalistic processes of decolonization (flag, national anthem, heads of station). Further, it does not interrogate the continuity of the political culture and political economy constructed and left as a legacy by colonialism (see McClintock 1995).

Focussing on Brazilian-African relations offers the distinct advantage of (re)visiting Brazil’s own efforts at carving out a niche for the country, drawing upon specific historical, cultural, economic and political assests presented as a demonstration of the possibilities of South-South relations rendered even more manifest because of Brazil’s bona fides as an ex-colony – one inextricably linked to “Africa” and African polities seeking new modalities of change and development in the “post-independence” or decolonized new age…

…It is at this point that local, national and international images and perspectives jostle one another for attention in our (re)considerations of empire and end of empire. These discussions then cannot be demarcated by any specific ending of the empire because of the co-existence of past mirrors. Not that all of Africa is directly engaged with Brazil to the same extent or with equal intensity. In the following pages, an effort is made to analyze the multiple dimensions of Brazil-Africa relations without necessarily privileging the Portuguese connection but without loosing sight of its fundamentality for both Brazil and Africa. The role of race, specifically how race manifests itself in international relations – with specific reference to the representations of African-American concerns – provides a mirror for Brazil-Africa relations. Hence the attention paid to USA/Afro USA in this essay…

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Passing for what? Aspects of Identity in Nella Larsen’s Novels

Black American Literature Forum
Volume 20, Number 1/2 (Spring-Summer, 1986)
pages 97-111

Cheryl A. Wall, Board of Governors Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English
Rutgers University

True, she was attractive, unusual, in an exotic, almost savage way, but she wasn’t one of them.
—Quicksand (124)

“… I was determined … to be a person and not a charity or a problem, or even a daughter of the indiscreet Ham. Then, too, I wanted things. I knew I wasn’t bad-looking and that I could ‘pass.'”
—Passing (56)

At the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Nella Larsen published two novels, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929). They were widely and favorably reviewed. Applauded by the critics, Larsen was heralded as a rising star in the black artistic firmament. In 1930 she became the first Afro-American woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Writing. Her star then faded as quickly as it had risen, and by 1934 Nella Larsen had disappeared from Harlem and from literature. The novels she left behind prove that at least some of her promise was realized. Among the best written of the time, her books comment incisively on issues of marginality and cultural dualism that engaged Larsen’s contemporaries, such as Jean Toomer and Claude McKay, but the bourgeois ethos of her novels has unfortunately obscured the similarities. However, Larsen’s most striking insights are into psychic dilemmas confronting certain black women. To dramatize these, Larsen draws characters who are, by virtue of their appearance, education, and social class, atypical in the extreme. Swiftly viewed, they resemble the tragic mulattoes of literary convention. On closer examination, they become the means through which the author demonstrates the psychological costs of racism and sexism.

For Larsen, the tragic mulatto was the only formulation historically available to portray educated middle-class black women in fiction. But her protagonists subvert the convention consistently. They…

Obama election stokes debate over what is biracial

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
2009-02-03

L. A. Johnson

Steve Mellon/Post-Gazette

Heather Curry believes President Barack Obama is denying his white heritage by identifying himself as African-American.

“It’s great that he’s biracial,” says Ms. Curry, 19, a Point Park University advertising major who identifies herself as biracial. “I wish he would accept it a little bit more.”

The election of Mr. Obama—the son of a white woman from Kansas and a man from Kenya—has jump-started a national dialogue on race and racial identity as America’s view of multiracial people changes.

Mr. Obama always has acknowledged his biracial background but identifies himself as African-American. With Mr. Obama, people see who and what they want to see, says Joy M. Zarembka, the Washington, D.C.-based author of “The Pigment of Your Imagination: Mixed Race in a Global Society.” “And most everyone can relate to him — whether [they’re] white, black, rich, poor, foreign, American, etc.”…

…Ms. Curry thinks the media have helped define him as only black and fears that history will forget that America’s “first black president” actually is a biracial man.

“I feel like there are not enough [biracial] role models out there,” says Ms. Curry, whose father was white and mother is black. “We need to say we’re proud of our heritage.”

Her roommate, Erica Stewart, has a different view. Ms. Stewart has a white mother and a black father. Because her mother raised her, she identifies more with white culture than black culture, but she embraces aspects of both and often is mistaken for Hispanic.

“If [Obama] feels more African-American, I don’t have issues with that,” said Ms. Stewart, 19, an art major at the Community College of Allegheny County. “If I had grown up with [my father] instead of my mom, I would have identified more as an African American.”

Friends since middle school in Erie, the two young women recall how they struggled to figure out their own racial identity, routinely seeming too black to some whites and too white to some blacks…

…Ms. Curry thinks Mr. Obama identifying as African-American could be confusing to mixed-race children, making them feel they have to choose or making them think, “If Obama says he’s black, does this mean I’m black?” She thinks biracial people shouldn’t choose one race over the other because they are both.

“I’m biracial,” she says. “I will fight somebody who calls me black.”

Mr. Obama has a special resonance with African-American people, people of African descent, people of color in general and multiracial people.

“Because he identifies as African-American rather than multiracial … there’s a certain tension there,” says G. Reginald Daniel, a University of California, Santa Barbara, sociology professor and author of “More Than Black?: Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order.”

Elliott Lewis, a mixed-race man, journalist and author of “Fade: My Journeys in Multiracial America,” finds the ongoing debate about whether Mr. Obama is black or biracial frustrating…

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Skin Bleaching and Global White Supremacy: By Way of Introduction

Journal of Pan African Studies
Volume 4, Number 4 (2011)
pages 4-46
23 illustrations

Yaba Amgborale Blay, Assistant Teaching Professor of Africana Studies
Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The cosmetic use of chemical agents to lighten the complexion of one’s skin, also referred to as skin whitening, skin lightening, and/or skin bleaching, is currently a widespread global phenomenon. While the history of skin bleaching can be traced to the Elizabethan age of powder and paint, in its current manifestations, skin bleaching is practiced disproportionately within communities “of color” and exceedingly among people of African descent. While it is true that skin bleaching represents a multifaceted phenomenon, with a complexity of historical, cultural, sociopolitical, and psychological forces motivating the practice, the large majority of scholars who examine skin bleaching at the very least acknowledge the institutions of colonialism and enslavement historically, and global White supremacy contemporarily, as dominant and culpable instigators of the penchant for skin bleaching. As an introduction to this Special Issue of The Journal of Pan African Studies focusing on skin bleaching and global White supremacy, the purpose of this paper is to critically examine the symbolic significance of whiteness, particularly for and among African people, by outlining the history of global White supremacy, both politically and ideologically, discussing its subsequent promulgation, and further investigating its relationship to the historical and contemporary skin bleaching phenomenon.

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Race Matters: Race, Telenovela Representation, and Discourse in Contemporary Brazil

University of Iowa
May 2010
193 pages

Samantha Nogueira Joyce

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Communication Studies in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa

In Race Matters: Race, Telenovela Representation, and Discourse in Contemporary Brazil, I investigate the primetime telenovela Duas Caras (2008), examining how different factors such as narrative, audience reaction, as well as media criticism and commentary played a dynamic role in creating a meta-discourse about race in contemporary Brazil. In a larger sense, I examine how the social discourse about contemporary race relations and racism in that country were circulated, constructed and reconstructed during the time the program aired. Additionally, I explore the role of the media, particularly the telenovela, in debunking the idea that Brazil is a racial democracy. Secondly, the research incorporates the Brazilian notion that telenovelas are “open texts”, meaning they are co-authored by a variety of industrial, creative, cultural and social actors, into a methodological approach that expands the traditional idea of textual analysis. In addition to reading the telenovela text itself, this study investigates the production process, audience responses and broader media coverage. Thus, the public discourse about the telenovelas is a key part of the text itself.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• I. RACE MATTERS: RACE, TELENOVELA REPRESENTATION, AND DISCOURSE IN CONTEMPORARY BRAZIL
  • Introduction
  • Method
  • “Data” (Textual) Analysis
  • Cultural Value
  • Literature Review
  • Brazilian Television History
  • Soap Operas Vs Telenovelas: ‘Distant Relatives’
  • The Centrality of Telenovelas
  • Audience, Democratic Participation and Publis Spheres
  • Entertainment-Education
  • Ethical Dilemas
  • Conclusions: Current Reality, Future Possibilities
  • Outline of Chapters
• II. BLACK FLOWS: DUAS CARAS, THE LEGACY OF WHITENING AND RACIAL DEMOCRACY IDEOLOGY IN BRAZIL
  • Race and Raça. The United States and Brazil: Similar History, Disparate Outcomes
  • The Culteral Role of Narratives of Cross-Racial Love
  • The Black Movement in Brazil
  • Affirmative Action Policies, Quotas and Racial Identity In Brazil
  • Conclusions
• III. “MY LITTLE WHITEY”. “MY BIG, DELICIOUS NEGRO”. TELENOVELAS, DUAS CARAS, AND THE REPRESENTATION OF RACE
  • Brazilian Blacks and TV
  • Historical Uses of Racial Stereotypes. American and Brazilian TV
  • Representing Contradicions: Evilásio’s Case
  • From a Traditionally “White Priviledged” Space to “Multicolored Duas Caras”
  • Duas Caras, Ratings, Racism and Public Pressure
  • My Little Whitey and My Big Delicious Negro
• IV. DEU NO BLOGÃO! (“IT WAS IN THE BIG BLOG!”). WRITING A TELENOVELA, A BLOG, AND A METADISCOURSE
  • Mãe Setembrina
  • The Barretos
  • The Role of Ratings: IBOPE
  • Conclusions
• V. DUAS CARAS AS A NEW APPROACH TO SOCIAL MERCHANDIZING
  • The Social Merchandising Approach
  • E-E and SM: Similarities and Disparities
  • Emotional Involvement and Personal Agendas
  • Duas Caras as the “Future of E-E”
  • Racial Matters as a “Social Good”
  • E-E, SM and the Importance of Celebrity
  • Conclusions
• VI. CONCLUSIONS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY

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How the Movies Made a President

The New York Times
2009-01-16

Manohla Dargis

A. O. Scott

Barack Obama’s victory in November demonstrated, to the surprise of many Americans and much of the world, that we were ready to see a black man as president. Of course, we had seen several black presidents already, not in the real White House but in the virtual America of movies and television. The presidencies of James Earl Jones in “The Man,” Morgan Freeman in “Deep Impact,” Chris Rock in “Head of State” and Dennis Haysbert in “24” helped us imagine Mr. Obama’s transformative breakthrough before it occurred. In a modest way, they also hastened its arrival.

Make no mistake: Hollywood’s historic refusal to embrace black artists and its insistence on racist caricatures and stereotypes linger to this day. Yet in the past 50 years—or, to be precise, in the 47 years since Mr. Obama was born—black men in the movies have traveled from the ghetto to the boardroom, from supporting roles in kitchens, liveries and social-problem movies to the rarefied summit of the Hollywood A-list. In those years the movies have helped images of black popular life emerge from behind what W. E. B. Du Bois called “a vast veil,” creating public spaces in which we could glimpse who we are and what we might become…

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Race and History in Brazil (Denying Brazil / Aleijadinho: Passion, Glory and Torment)

Facets Multi-Media
2000 (Release date 2011-02-22)
192 minutes
Brazil
Product Code: DV100942 (2-DVD set)

Joel Zito Araújo
Geraldo Santos Pereira
 

Race and its impact on the art and history of Brazil are highlighted in this two-disc set. Joel Zito Araújo’s documentary Denying Brazil (A Negacao do Brasil, 92 mins.) analyzes contemporary Brazilian soap operas, calling attention to the ways archetypes and stereotypes influence identity in the Afro-Brazilian community. Well-known soap actors Milton Gonzalvez, Zeze Mota, and Maria Ceica offer provocative comments about their experiences. This is joined by Geraldo Santos Pereira’s Aleijadinho: Passion, Glory and Torment (Aleijadinho: Paixao, Gloria e Suplicio, 100 mins.) a fictionalized drama about the life of 18th century sculptor Antonio Francisco Lisboa, also known as Aleijadinho. Born the son of a slave, Lisboa struggles with prejudice, mental illness, and disease, but never stops expressing himself through his art. The story unfolds in flashback as a professor investigates the tragic life of the artist. In Portuguese with English subtitles.