Mixed Race Studies

Race as a Social Construct in Head and Neck Cancer Outcomes

Otolaryngology—Head Neck Surgery
Volume 144, Number 3 (March 2011)
pages 381-389
DOI: 10.1177/0194599810393884

Maria J. Worsham, PhD
Department of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery
Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, Michigan

George Divine, PhD
Biostatistics and Research Epidemiology
Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, Michigan

Rick A. Kittles, PhD
Section of Hematology/Oncology, Department of Medicine and Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
School of Public Health, University of Illinois, Chicago

Objective. The authors examined ancestry informative markers (AIMs) to estimate the amount of population admixture and control for this heterogeneity for stage and survival in a primary head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) cohort.

Study Design. Historical cohort study.

Setting. Integrated health care system.

Subjects. The cohort comprised 358 patients with HNSCC who self-reported race as Caucasian American (CA), African American (AA), or other.

Methods. DNA was interrogated for West African (WA) and European genetic background by genotyping AIMs. Associations of race (self-report or WA ancestry) with stage and survival were analyzed using logistic regression and Cox regression modeling. A subgroup analysis for diagnosis (late vs early stage) and survival (time to death) and WA ancestry was performed for self-reported AAs.

Results. There were significant associations between stage and self-reported race (P = .04 [univariate]) and with cancer site (oropharynx: P = .014; hypopharynx: P = .026 [multivariate]). For prognosis, there were significant multivariate associations between stage (P = .002), age (>65 years, P < .001), and cancer site (hypopharynx: P < .001; oral cavity: P = .049), but self-reported race was not associated with overall survival. Interestingly, there was no association with degree of WA ancestry and stage or survival. In the subgroup analysis of genetic ancestry among self-reported AAs, cancer site remained an independent risk factor for stage (other site: P = .026) and survival (oropharynx: P = .036). Late stage persisted as an independent variable for poor survival (P = .032).

Conclusions. Stratification within AAs by WA ancestry revealed no correlation with stage or survival, suggesting that HNSCC outcomes with race may be owing to social/behavior factors rather than biological differences.

Read or purchase article here.

Call for Proposals: Escaping to Destinations South: The Underground Railroad, Cultural Identity, and Freedom Along the Southern Borderlands

National Park Service
Network to Freedom
2012-06-20 through 2012-06-24
St. Augustine, Florida

Call for proposal deadline is Sunday, 2012-01-15, 23:59 PST (Local Time).

The 2012 Conference theme is the resistance to slavery through escape and flight to and from the South, including through international flight, from the 16th century to the end of the Civil War. Traditional views of the Underground Railroad focus on Northern destinations of freedom seekers, with symbols such as the North Star, Canada, and the Ohio River (the River Jordan) constructed as the primary beacons of freedom. This conception reduces the complexity of the Underground Railroad by ignoring the many freedom seekers that sought to obtain their freedom in southern destinations.

Likewise, borders and the movement across them by southern freedom seekers are also very crucial to our understanding of the complexities of the Underground Railroad. Freedom seekers often sought out political and geographical borderlands, as crossing these locations usually represented the divide between slavery and freedom. To this end, the conference will explore how southern freedom seekers seized opportunities to escape slavery into Spanish Florida and the Seminole Nation, to the Caribbean Islands, and into the western borderlands of Indian Territory, Texas, and Mexico.

Other topics of interest include stories of southern freedom seekers during the War of 1812 and the American Civil War in commemoration of the 200^th and 150^th anniversaries, respectively, as well as the American Revolutionary War. The conference will also commemorate the 450^th anniversary of the City of St. Augustine’s founding and the important role of Africans to this history.

Submission Procedures

Proposals should be submitted on the attached form by email (2012NationalUGRRConference@oah.org) to the Organization of American Historians, beginning October 2011. Complete panel proposals should include no more than 3 presenters, and a chair/moderator or commentator. Commentators may be omitted in order for the audience to serve in that role. Each participant will receive 20 minutes for his or her presentation. Session membership should be limited by the need to include substantial time for audience questions and comments. Individual submissions that are accepted will be placed on a panel by the Program Committee.

All proposals must include the following information:

• a complete mailing address, e-mail address, phone number, and affiliation for each participant;
• an summary of no more than 500 words, required only for panel proposals;
• a description of no more than 250 words for each presentation; and
• bio/vita of no more than 250 words for each participant.

Submission Deadline

The deadline for proposals is Sunday, January 15, 2012, by 11:59 pm PST.

For more information, click here.

Living the Multiracial Experience: Shifting Racial Expressions, Resisting Race, and Seeking Community

Qualitative Social Work
Volume 11, Number 1 (January 2012)
pages 42-60
DOI: 10.1177/1473325010375646

Kelly Faye Jackson, Assistant Professor of Social Work
Arizona State University

The growing presence and visibility of mixed race persons in the US demands that social workers critically examine and understand the complexity of multiracial identity. This qualitative investigation examined the narratives of ten multiracial adults about their identity experiences living as multiracial persons. Utilizing paradigmatic analysis of narratives, five major themes emerged. Four of these themes correspond to categories found in existing multiracial scholarship, and include: (1) Shifting racial/ethnic expressions; (2) Racial/ethnic ambiguity; (3) Feeling like an outsider; and (4) Seeking community. The final theme, (5) Racial resistance, contributes new knowledge to our understanding of how multiracial individuals respond to societal pressures to conform to traditional means of categorizing others by race. Findings from this study confirm a collective multiracial experience; one with direct ties to the social and environmental pressures associated with having a multifaceted identity in a color-conscious society. Practice implications and directions for future research are offered.

Read or purchase the article here.

The Herndons: An Atlanta Family

University of Georgia Press
2002-06-21
272 pages
8 x 10
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8203-2309-1

Carole Merritt, Director
The Herndon Home, Atlanta, Georgia

A compelling portrait of one of Atlanta’s most prominent African American families

Born a slave and reared a sharecropper, Alonzo Herndon (1858-1927) was destined to drudgery in the red clay fields of Georgia. Within forty years of Emancipation, however, he had amassed a fortune that far surpassed that of his White slave-master father.

Through his barbering, real estate, and life insurance ventures, Herndon would become one of the wealthiest and most respected African American business figures of his era. This richly illustrated book chronicles Alonzo Herndon’s ascent and his remarkable family’s achievements in Jim Crow Atlanta.

In this first biography of the Herndons, Carole Merritt narrates how Herndon nurtured the Atlanta Life Insurance Company from a faltering enterprise he bought for $140 into one of the largest Black financial institutions in America; how he acquired the most substantial Black property holdings in Atlanta; and how he developed his barbering business from a one-chair shop into the nation’s largest and most elegant parlor, the resplendent, twenty-three chair “Crystal Palace” in the heart of White Atlanta.

The Herndons’ world was the educational and business elite of Atlanta. But as Blacks, they were intimately bound to the course of Black life. The Atlanta Race Riot of 1906 and its impact on the Herndons demonstrated that all Blacks, regardless of class, were the victims of racial terrorism.

Through the Herndons, issues of race, class, and color in turn-of-the-century Atlanta come into sharp focus. Their story is one of by-the-bootstraps resolve, tough compromises in the face of racism, and lasting contributions to their city and nation.

African American Community Building in Atlanta: A Guide to the Study of Race in America

Southern Spaces
An interdisciplinary journal about regions, places, and cultures of the U.S. South and their global connections
2004-03-17

Carole Merritt, Director
The Herndon Home, Atlanta, Georgia

The development of the African American community in Atlanta is a fruitful subject for the study of race in America. Racial policy and practice in response to emancipation and the failures of reconstuction were evolving in Atlanta during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Blacks and Whites in a rapidly growing city made for a volatile mix of people and sharply conflicting agendas. The size and structure of the African American community and the nature of its business and institutional development reveal sharply the problems of race in the leading city of the New South.

Sections:

• Introduction
• Context
• Community Development
• Business Enterprise
• Study Focus/Issues
• Recommended Resources

Introduction: Defining the Subject

 “The problem of the twentieth century,” W. E. B. Du Bois wrote one hundred years ago, “is the problem of the color-line.” He was referring to the worldwide hierarchy of race that places lighter people over darker people. As educator, writer, and political activist he dedicated his life to the struggle for racial equality. But long before his death in exile, sixty years later on the eve of the civil rights March on Washington, Du Bois knew well that the color line would divide the world through the twenty-first century and, more likely, for centuries to come.
 
As race has been a persistent problem, so too has the study of race. The difficulty of confronting the pain and guilt of racial conflict has made race a virtually taboo topic of discussion and an elusive subject of study. The constantly changing racial references are telling examples of the ongoing difficulties in addressing race in this country. “We shall,” wrote teacher Leila Amos Pendleton, “as a rule speak of ourselves as “Negroes” and always begin the noun with a capital letter.” Recognizing, however, that in 1912 the word was considered by some a term of contempt, she hoped that in time “our whole race will feel it an honor to be called ‘Negroes’.” From the use of “colored” and “Negro” to “African American,” “Black,” and “Bi-racial,” the problem of naming and being named has reflected the struggles of the racial order. From “integration” of the 1950s through “maximum feasible participation” of the 1960s, to “diversity” of the present, the shifting terminology reveals the persistent problem of confronting race in public policy. But study promises clarity, forcing us to be explicit. Building effective frameworks for research may in time better structure private dialogue and public policy. This research guide is part of such an effort. It seeks to clarify terms, narrate critical developments, define issues, and identify relevant sources of information.
 
The focus of this research guide is the African American community in Atlanta during the twentieth century. From the perspective of a specific community in a particular place at a critical period, studying race becomes more manageable and gains depth. Since race is pervasive in American society, a wide variety of topics and research strategies would be fruitful for study. The development of the African American community in Atlanta, however, is a particularly fruitful subject for the study of race. Racial policy and practice in response to emancipation and the failures of reconstruction were evolving in Atlanta during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Blacks and Whites in a rapidly growing city made for a volatile mix of people and sharply conflicting agendas. The size and structure of Atlanta’s African American community and the nature of its business and institutional development reveal sharply the problems of race in the leading city of the New South. The research guide addresses the context within which the African American community evolved, highlights the community’s development, and assesses the impact of race…

Bi-racial and Bi-ethnic Atlanta

Until recent decades, Atlanta’s population, like that of the South, has been almost exclusively Black and White. Moreover, because Black labor and the racial climate tended to discourage large numbers of immigrants, Atlanta’s foreign-born population was only 3% at the turn of the century. Race in America, particularly in the South, has tended to override ethnicity. Race and ethnicity, however, overlap. Both terms incorporate ancestry, geographical origins, and cultural traits. By this definition Whites and Blacks belong to ethnic groups as well as to racial groups. In the South they were primarily of British and African ethnicity. There is a critical distinction, however, between race and ethnicity that informs the study of race in America. One’s ethnicity, unlike one’s race, can change. The acculturation of America’s Scotch-Irish, for example, has transcended their ethnicity. But race for the subordinate group is immutable. It is the biological given that generation after generation, in spite of any racial mixture or cultural assimilation, is never dissolved. Black ancestry, however distant or minimal, permanently identifies its descendants as Black. The immutability of Black racial identity is at the core of racism. White supremacy depends upon White racial purity. The absolute standard of White over Black would be subverted and unenforceable were Blacks allowed to breed out of their race.

The South, therefore, is hardly ethnically homogeneous as is often maintained. Only if the African American presence is ignored can one conclude that the South lacks ethnic diversity. Indeed, the South as a region is defined by its diversity, racial and ethnic. The biracial and bi-ethnic character that flows from British and African ancestry has driven the South, its politics, economics, and culture. The Atlanta story tells how American racism rose to new heights with the system of Jim Crow and how that system operated as both constraint and opportunity in the development of the city’s African American community.

The Rise of Jim Crow

 

Although the Civil War overturned slavery, another system of racial domination was developed to replace it. Jim Crow, as it came to be called, reached its full flowering in Southern cities like Atlanta by the turn of the twentieth century. In the rural areas, the cotton economy ensured continuities in the control of Black life and labor. But in the city, where there were no such economic continuities, it was necessary to find new ways to secure White supremacy. And in a city like Atlanta where commerce and industry were in their infancy and where Black and White migrants were at times in competition for the same jobs and living space, Black subordination had to be institutionalized in law and custom. Jim Crow legislation reflected the failures of reconstruction as Whites were restored to political power and the controls of slavery were extended. The prohibition of marriage between Whites and Blacks was one of the first pieces of legislation that sought to protect the very heart of White supremacy. Making interracial marriage illegal denied to mixed race children all claims to White property and, more significantly, to White identity. The codes that restricted property ownership and the vagrancy laws that permitted forced labor were other early attempts to maintain the controls of slavery. The White-only primary and the institution of voter qualifications guaranteed Black disfranchisement. Blacks were subjected to racially segregated schools, streetcars, libraries, restaurants and parks. The urban environment created new opportunities for the application of Jim Crow. Atlanta relegated Blacks to separate elevators. The new zoo at Grant Park provided separate entrances, exits and pathways for Blacks and Whites. Atlanta became the first Georgia city to legislate segregation in residential areas. There was virtually no area of Black life that was not restricted by Jim Crow…

Read the entire article here.

Race Problems in America

Science Magazine
Volume 29, Number 752 (1909-05-28)
pages 839-849
DOI: 10.1126/science.29.752.839

Franz Boas

The development of the American nation through amalgamation of diverse European nationalities and the ever-increasing heterogeneity of the component elements of four people have called attention to the anthropological and biological problems involved in this process. I propose to discuss here these problems with a view of making clear the hypothetical character of many of the generally accepted assumptions. It will be our object to attempt a formulation of the problens, and to outline certain directions of inquiry, that promise a solution of the questions involved, that, at the present time, can not be answered with scientific accuracy. It is disappointing that we have to accept this critical attitude, because the events of our daily life bring before our eyes constantly the grave issues that are based on the presence of distinct types of man in our country, and on the continued influx of heterogeneous nationalities from Europe. Under the pressure of these events, we seem to be called upon to formulate defnite answers to questions that require the most painstaking and unbiased investigation. The more urgent the demand for final conclusions, the more needed is a critical examination of the phenomena and of the available methods of solution…

…I think we have reason to be ashamed to confess that the scientific study of these questions has never received the support either of our government or of any of our great scientific institutions; and it is hard to understand why we are so indifferent towards a question which is of paramount importance to the welfare of our nation. The anatomy of the American negro is not well known; and, notwithstanding the oftrepeated assertions regarding the hereditary inferiority of the mulatto, we know hardly anything on this subject. If his vitality is lower than that of the fullblooded negro, this may be as much due to social causes as to hereditary causes. Owing to the very large number of mulattoes in our country, it would not be a difficult matter to investigate the biological aspects of this question thoroughly; and the importance of the problem demands that this should be done. Looking into a distant future, it seems reasonably certain that with the increasing mobility of the negro, the number of fullbloods will rapidly decrease; and since there is no introduction of new negro blood, there can not be the slightest doubt that the ultimate effect of the contact between the two races must necessarily be a continued increase of the amount of white blood in the negro community. This process will go on most rapidly inside of the colored community, owing to intermarriages between mulattoes and full-blooded negroes. Whether or not the addition of white blood to the colored population is sufficiently large to counterbalance this leveling effect, which will make the mixed bloods with, a slight strain of negro blood darker, is difficult to tell; but it is quite obvious, that, although our laws may retard the influx of white blood considerably, they can not hinder the gradual progress of intermixture. If the powerful caste system of India has not been able to prevent intermixture, our laws, which recognize a greater amount of individual liberty, will certainly not be able to do so; and that there is no racial sexual antipathy is made sufficiently clear by the size of our mulatto population. A candid consideration of the manner in which intermixture takes place shows very clearly that the probability of the infusion of white blood into the colored population is considerable. While the large body of the white population will always, at least for a very long time to come, be entirely remote from any possibility of intermixture with negroes, I think that we may predict with a fair degree of certainty a condition in which the contrast between colored people and whites will be less marked than it is at the present time. Notwithstanding all the obstacles that may be laid in the way of intermixture, the conditions are such that the persistence of the pure negro type is practically impossible. Not even an excessively high mortality and lack of fertility among the mixed type, as compared with the pure types, could prevent this result. Since it is impossible to change these conditions, they should be faced squarely, and we ought to demand a careful and critical investigation of the whole problem…

Read the entire article here.

Letter to the Editor: Alleged Extinction of Mulatto

Science Magazine
Volume 20, Number 517 (1892-12-30)
page 375
DOI: 10.1126/science.ns-20.517.375

A few months since an article appeared in a medical journal affirming that the pure mulatto colonies of southern Ohio were dying out after the fourth generation. Can any reader point me to the article in question, or to any definite information bearing on the permanence of the mulatto as a species (or variety)?

Polytechnic Society,
Louisville, Kentucky
JAS. Lewis Howe

The Slavery Democracy prates and chaters about ‘negro equality, ‘Black Republicans,’ and ‘nigger stealing,’ to use its classic phrase and improved orthography. It has or affects to have, a great horror of ‘niggers.’ And any one who advocates the principles of human Freedom, as they were enunciated and laid down in enduring forms by the Fathers of the Republic, is a ‘woolly head,’ and these same Democrats have learned to speak of them with a peculiar nasal twist. You would suppose that these gentlemen, whose olfactories are so sensitive and acute, never saw a nigger except in a menagerie. And yet, would you believe it, the very first service rendered to him on earth is performed by a nigger; as an infant, he draws the milk, which makes his flesh and blood and bones, from the breast of a nigger; looks up in her face and smiles, and calls her by the endearing name of ‘mammy,’ and begs, perhaps, in piteous tones, for the privilege of carrying ‘mammy’ to the Territories; he is undressed and put to bed by a nigger, and nestles during the slumbers of infancy in the bosom of a nigger; he is washed, dressed and taken to the table by a nigger, to eat food prepared by a nigger; he is led to school by a nigger; every service that childhood demands is performed by a nigger, except that of chastisement, which, from the absence of good manners in many cases, it is to be feared is not performed at all. When down appears on his lip, the tonsorial service is performed by a nigger; and when he reaches manhood, he invades the nigger quarters, to place himself in the endearing relation of paternity to half niggers. Finally, if he should be ambitious, it may occur that he will come to congress to represent a constituency, three-fifths of whom are niggers, and talk about ‘Black Republicans,’ ‘amalgamation,’ ‘nigger equality,’ ‘nigger stealing,’ and the offensive odor of niggerism.”

The Honorable Owen Lovejoy, of Illinois (and “conductor” on the Underground Railroad), “The Democracy and ‘Niggers’,” Franklin Repository, April 20, 1859, page 5, column 6. http://valley.lib.virginia.edu/news/fr1859/pa.fr.fr.1859.04.20.xml#05.

Escaping to Destinations South: The Underground Railroad, Cultural Identity, and Freedom Along the Southern Borderlands

National Park Service
Network to Freedom
2012-06-20 through 2012-06-24
St. Augustine, Florida

The Network to Freedom has joined with local partners to present an annual UGRR [Underground Railroad] conference beginning in 2007. These conferences bring together a mix of grass roots researchers, community advocates, site stewards, government officials, and scholars to explore the history of the Underground Railroad. Rotated to different parts of the country, the conferences highlight the unique history of various regions along with new research.

The 2012 Conference theme is the resistance to slavery through escape and flight to and from the South, including through international flight, from the 16th century to the end of the Civil War. Traditional views of the Underground Railroad focus on Northern destinations of freedom seekers, with symbols such as the North Star, Canada, and the Ohio River (the River Jordan) constructed as the primary beacons of freedom. This conception reduces the complexity of the Underground Railroad by ignoring the many freedom seekers that sought to obtain their freedom in southern destinations.

Likewise, borders and the movement across them by southern freedom seekers are also very crucial to our understanding of the complexities of the Underground Railroad. Freedom seekers often sought out political and geographical borderlands, as crossing these locations usually represented the divide between slavery and freedom. To this end, the conference will explore how southern freedom seekers seized opportunities to escape slavery into Spanish Florida and the Seminole Nation, to the Caribbean Islands, and into the western borderlands of Indian Territory, Texas, and Mexico.

Escape from enslavement was not just about physical freedom, but also about the search for cultural autonomy. The conference will explore the transformation and creation of new cultural identities among southern freedom seekers that occurred as a result of their journeys to freedom, such as the dispersal of Gullah Geechee culture and the formation of Black Seminole cultural identity.

The 2012 Conference will include participation by independent and academic scholars at all levels, educators, community activists, public historians and preservationists, and multi-media and performance artists. The conference seeks to create a cultural, historical, and interpretive exchange between domestic and international descendent communities of southern freedom seekers.

Gullah Geechee and Black Seminole descendants are particularly welcome at the conference.

For more information, click here.  Call for papers information (Deadline 2012-01-15) is here.