Mixed Race Studies

I’m black. My siblings aren’t. What people need to know about Latinos and diversity.

The Boston Globe Magazine
2019-10-27

Karina E. Cueavas, Producer
Telemundo Boston, NBC Universal

Adobe Stock

What Big Papi, Gwen Ifill, and Celia Cruz have in common.

“Is she adopted?” That was the first question my brother’s math teacher asked my mom as we awaited seating at his ninth-grade graduation ceremony. I was only in fifth grade and I didn’t know what adopted meant. But I did see my mom’s frown. Her mouth twitched and I knew what was about to come wouldn’t be nice.

Minutes later my dad walked up to my mom, who was fuming. Asked what happened and she let him know. My dad only wished he were present to give the math teacher a piece of his mind.

My mom had already cursed Mr. Tonato out. And she had every right to do so. Now, let me make it very clear: Being adopted is wonderful, but I was the biological product of two very different looking people. And to many that was an alien concept. Little did I know that wasn’t the first time my parents ever got asked that question. It was just the first time I ever heard it. It certainly wouldn’t be the last.

I’m Afro-Latina. My mom is a white Latina and my siblings have her skin tone. Our dad is Afro-Latino. Both my parents are originally from the Dominican Republic. And this has been our story throughout my entire life. My mom having to explain to people that I’m her daughter. Me trying to teach people that Latinos come in different shades, sometimes all within one family. To add to some people’s confusion, my siblings and I are bilingual — we speak Spanish, our parents’ native language.

The kicker here — I grew up in New York City. The melting pot of the United States. Sometimes it felt suffocating to navigate the streets feeling as if even in such a diverse city, I didn’t belong. I wasn’t alone in that train of thought. I was part of what the book The Afro-Latin@ Reader describes in detail: “a large and vibrant, yet oddly invisible community in the United States: people of African descent from Latin America and the Caribbean.”…

Read the entire article here.

Is there a racial ‘care gap’ in medical treatment?

PBS News Hour
2016-04-05

A new survey has found implicit biases in medical students that may explain why black patients are sometimes undertreated for pain, with some students believing that black people feel less pain and have thicker skin than white people. For more on the perplexing discovery, Gwen Ifill talks to Dr. David Satin of the University of Minnesota and Dorothy Roberts of the University of Pennsylvania.

GWEN IFILL: A new study finds African-American patients are often treated differently when it comes to medicine and care. The survey of more than 500 people, 400 of them medical students, found implicit bias exists that may help explain why black people are sometimes undertreated for pain.

Among its findings: Medical students believed that African-Americans felt less pain than white patients, and even thought their skin was thicker.

For more on this perplexing discovery, we turn to Dr. David Satin of the University of Minnesota Medical Center, and Dorothy Roberts of the university of Pennsylvania.

Thank you both for joining us.

Dr. Satin, try to describe this disparity for me. Why does this exist? And is it new?

DR. DAVID SATIN, University of Minnesota Medical Center: So, Gwen, we have known that this has been an issue for at least a couple decades.

And every now and then, a study comes out that underscores the need for the field of medicine, and in particular medical education, to do some work and get it right.

So, this is a problem, and it’s been a problem, and hopefully this study will spur on more activity.

GWEN IFILL: Dorothy Roberts, is this a medical problem or a sociological problem?

DOROTHY ROBERTS, University of Pennsylvania: It’s both.

I think what’s really important and fascinating about the study is that it, for the first time, links what we have long known as undertreatment of pain for black patients with doctors, or at least medical students’ false beliefs about biological differences based on race.

And those beliefs, as the study has shown, are widely held by laypeople as well. They’re deeply embedded, longstanding myths about racial difference, especially biological differences between races, which goes back to the very concept that race is a biological difference that is widespread in U.S. society. So it’s sociological, as well as medical…

Read the entire transcript here. Watch the interview here.

The PBS NewsHour Launches Year Long Conversation on Race, Diversity and Intolerance

PBS NewsHour
2015-08-31

Media Relations Contacts:

Nick Massella, Director of Audience Engagement and Communications
James Blue, Senior Content and Special Projects Producer

WASHINGTON, DC (August 31, 2015) – Michael Brown. Freddie Gray. Eric Garner. These are just three names that have dominated news coverage in the past year. Different stories and different circumstances, provoking similar conversations about race on a national and international level. They underscore the reality that America’s deepest wound is far from healed.

Meanwhile, debates about immigration and citizenship have left many feeling alienated and angry on all sides of the issues. A recent New York Times / CBS News poll shows that the majority of Americans think race relations are bad.

With all of that in mind, the PBS NewsHour with Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff has launched a yearlong series focusing on diversity, divisions and various efforts and ideas to bridge and heal these issues. This series includes a deep look at the enduring and painful issues we will call Race Matters. On broadcast and online, NewsHour will host conversations on finding solutions to the painful divides that continue to plague our communities.

Returning to the NewsHour to take a leading role in this project is special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault. The series will take viewers throughout the United States to the Americans having tough conversations on these important issues and will feature experts on race relations and their proposals for how to address race-fueled issues. This is a periodic series that will air on the program frequently throughout the year…

Read the entire press release here.

Writer Jesmyn Ward reflects on survival since Katrina

PBS NewsHour
2015-08-24

Gwen Ifill, Co-Anchor & Managing Editor

Jesmyn Ward, Associate Professor of English
Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana

After writer and Tulane University professor Jesmyn Ward survived Hurricane Katrina while staying at her grandmother’s house, she wrote “Salvage the Bones,” an award-winning novel about a Mississippi family in the days leading up to the devastating storm. She joins Gwen Ifill to discuss how the storm affected the rural poor who could not escape, and now, who may not be able to return.

Read the transcript here.