Mixed Race Studies

Breast cancer and racialized medicine

Race, Racism & Human Genetics IDS 243: Race, Racism, and Human Genetics
Willamette University
Salem, Oregon
2014-11-28

Stephanie Matsuura

Katie Herr

Camille Debreczeny

Race, Racism & Human Genetics IDS 243: Race, Racism, and Human Genetics is an interdisciplinary course taught at Willamette University by Emily Drew and Chris Smith. This blog represents the work of students enrolled in the course, and their reactions to current scholarly and popular work relating to the biology of human difference.

Racial disparities in breast cancer are often attributed to biology uncritically, without considering social factors. In many genetic studies, rhetorical framing of human diversity conflates differences between populations with racial categories. An unconscious complicity in the racial worldview informs these studies, which are then used to justify racialized explanations for disparities in breast cancer. Many researchers recognize that individualized, complete genome analysis would provide better care for patients, but lack the technological and economic resources to make this a realistic goal. Instead they rely on racialized medicine, which has serious consequences for women of color with breast cancer.

Racialized medicine occurs when the U.S. racial worldview goes unchallenged in the way it shapes medical research, health care practices, and public health policy. It is a way of making inequalities in health and illness seem natural by erroneously linking them to “innate” and “biological” differences between racial groups. In the U.S., women of color are disproportionately affected by breast cancer. Black women in particular have higher breast cancer mortality rates than any other racial/ethnic group in the country (Happe 2006). In this blog we aim to cover the main possible explanations for observed racial disparities in both incidence and prognosis of breast cancer. Studies have attributed racial disparities in both incidence and prognosis to the genetics underlying breast cancer as well as to social factors…

Read the entire article here.

Who Counts & Who’s Counting? 38th Annual Conference National Association for Ethnic Studies Conference

National Association for Ethnic Studies, Inc.
2010-04-08 through 2010-04-10
L’Enfant Plaza Hotel
Washington, D.C.

Dr. Larry Shinagawa, NAES 2010 Conference Chair

Our theme of “Who Counts and Who’s Counting” signals the importance of Washington, D.C. as a physical, cultural, and social nexus for policy decisions that will shape the 21st Century. With the 2010 Census signaling the dramatic changes that are affecting all ethnic and racial communities in the United States, who is doing the counting and how we construct the discourse and policies of who counts will be central to the future of all residents of the United States and will shape global relations around the world. We hope you will participate in this important dialogue; welcome to NAES 2010 in Washington, D.C.!

A paritial tenative program is below (All times are local EDT):

Session II – Thursday 10:30 – 10:45
Whiteness studies
Heidi Cooper, Emily Drew, Zaid Mahir

Racial classifications and stereotypes
Jamelia Bastien, Bonazzo Claude, Jacco van Sterkenburg

Session III – Thursday 13:30 – 14:45
Black identities
Janet Awokoya, Anne Brubaker, Yanyi Djamba, Mizaba Abedi

Defining Race
Tiffany King, Arturo Nunez, Maisha Wester

Session IV – Thursday 15:00 – 16:15
Beyond the binary of race
Kaysha Corinealdi, José Luis Morín, Jodie Roure

Session IX – Saturday 09:00 – 10:15
European Identities
Daniel Carawan, Jon Keljik, Elizabeth Onasch, Samantha Pockele

The race in “mixed” race? Reiterations of power and identity
Sue-Je Gage, Rainier Spencer, Nicole Truesdell