Mixed Race Studies

Pacific Islanders: a Misclassified People

The Chronicle of Higher Education
2013-06-03

Kawika Riley, Chief Executive and Founder
Pacific Islander Access Project
also adjunct lecturer at George Washington University

Imagine that you’re a parent, teacher, or counselor who helped a promising student apply for financial aid. She’s an underrepresented minority, so you encouraged her to apply to several scholarships for minority students. A few weeks later, she receives a wave of responses from them, all saying the same thing: She’s not eligible to apply. Why? Because the colleges have misclassified her; even though she’s an underrepresented minority student, they’ve decided to treat her as if she’s not.

Now imagine that instead of one student’s being misclassified, this is happening to every student who belongs to one of the fastest-growing minority groups in America. Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders don’t need to imagine any of this. This is their reality.

For more than 20 years, U.S. Census data have shown that Pacific Islanders are far less likely to graduate from college than is the general population. The statistics have fluctuated slightly over time, but the trend is that Pacific Islanders are about half as likely as the general population to hold bachelor’s degrees, and even less likely to receive advanced degrees.

…Before 1997, the federal standard for racial classification grouped Asians and Pacific Islanders together. But 16 years ago, the standards were updated, and Pacific Islanders and Asians were recognized as two distinct groups. Unfortunately, the myth of a homogeneous “Asian Pacific” race persists, and the use of “API” data suggests that statistics on “Asian Pacific Islanders” reflect the conditions of both Asians and Pacific Islanders.

They don’t….

Read the entire article here.

Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America by Ayanna Thompson (Klett review)

Theatre Journal
Volume 65, Number 2, May 2013
pages 303-304
DOI: 10.1353/tj.2013.0043

Elizabeth Klett, Assistant Professor of Literature
University of Houston, Clear Lake

Ayanna Thompson’s exciting book analyzes a wide variety of sites for performing, interrogating, and dismantling Shakespeare and race in contemporary American popular culture. Arguing that “Shakespeare’s American cultural value and legacy cannot be weighed through performances in traditional venues only” (7), Thompson extends her purview beyond expected forms (such as professional theatre productions and literary and film adaptations) to include nontraditional modes of performance (such as YouTube videos and prison and youth-oriented productions). The book as a whole provides a fascinating and multilayered appraisal of the uses (and misuses) of race in American appropriations of Shakespeare and his plays.

One of the most notable aspects of Thompson’s book is her ability to work with conflicting statements and oppositional ideas, which she often presents, at least initially, as epigraphs to her chapters. For example, she tackles the debate over so-called color-blind casting by foregrounding the very different views of August Wilson and Robert Brustein. Similarly, the book revisits the eternal tensions between universalizing and historically particularist interpretations of Shakespeare, suggesting that Shakespeare is both freeing and something from which one must be freed. Thompson does not attempt to resolve these kinds of contradictions and instabilities; instead, she revels in them, exploring what they reveal about contemporary American culture and its preoccupations with Shakespeare and race. She does take sides, however; as her first chapter warns, the book is occasionally polemical, “because this is a project that requires action and not just passive reflection” (14). Her main goal is “to bring contemporary race studies and contemporary Shakespeare studies into an honest and sustained dialogue,” contending that many performances, citations, and analyses of Shakespeare ignore or elide racial issues (3).

The second and third chapters focus on two films and a young adult novel that engage with Shakespeare and race in varied ways. Thompson’s analysis of each is intriguing and made me want to watch the films and read the novel for myself. In Suture (1993), a film noir about two brothers, one white and one black, Thompson finds a vexed “desire for colorblindness in contemporary American life” (27); although the film strategically ignores the racial differences between them, it also exposes the seam of the racial divide in a culture that elevates stereotypically white standards of beauty. Her argument is fascinating, but the connection to Shakespeare (cited several times in the film) feels somewhat tenuous. Her analysis of Bringing Down the House (2003), a studio vehicle for Steve Martin and Queen Latifah, however, is brilliant. Unpacking the meanings implicit in the character of “William Shakespeare,” a dog owned by a rich conservative, played by Joan Plowright, Thompson concludes that in this satirical film, “Shakespeare represents the epitome of Western culture because he represents the exclusivity of white culture” (37). Targeting both bardolatry and the false universality of whiteness, this big-budget film thus reveals larger ideas circulating in American culture about the meanings of Shakespeare and race and justifies Thompson’s choice of popular materials for her analysis. She goes on to place a more obscure source, the 1992 novel Black Swan by Farrukh Dhondy, in the context of other writers (such as Maya Angelou) who have imagined a black Shakespeare. While she argues that the novel “asks the reader to interrogate if/how the identity and race of Shakespeare impact one’s understanding of the plays,” she also notes that reviewers of the novel tend to whitewash the main characters’ racial identities (55).

Thompson’s fourth chapter is one of the strongest, offering an intelligent discussion and analysis of cross-racial casting. In it, she analyzes the rhetoric employed by classical theatre companies, such as the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), to describe their approach to race and casting practices, revealing how these companies attempt to yoke Shakespearean universality and multiculturalism together to create “relevant” performances (73). Thompson does not find the results wholly satisfactory, even at well-intentioned companies like OSF. Her “holistic” approach to multicultural casting would incorporate “diversity initiatives” at every level of production to ensure…

Lung function, race and ethnicity: a conundrum

European Respiratory Journal
Volume 41, Number 6  (June 1, 2013)
pages 1249-1250
DOI: 10.1183/09031936.00053913

Philip H. Quanjer
Deptartment of Pulmonary Diseases and Department of Paediatrics
Erasmus Medical Centre
Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

In this issue Braun et al. make a plea for an international workshop to review aspects of race and ethnicity in relation to lung function. This is a timely initiative, as many people struggle in epidemiological and genetic studies, and in clinical practice, with the interpretation of test results in an increasingly multi-ethnic society. Our notions of race derive from Blumenbach, who defined “Four varieties of mankind, one species” (adding a fifth variety in 1781). Definitions of “race” and “ethnic” are confusing and often used interchangeably. This ambiguity is reflected in the frequent use of race/ethnicity, a transitional concept adopted for use while phasing out “race” from the USA census. At this stage the USA census recognises two ethnicities: “Hispanic or Latino”, and “not Hispanic or Latino”, and five races; Hispanic/Latino individuals have a mixed European, African and native American ancestry. American citizens were allowed to self-identify with more than one race in 2000: 2.4% self-identified as multiracial. In sharp contrast, France passed a law in 1978 barring the government from collecting all racial and ethnic data (the Act prohibits collecting “any information that shows, directly or indirectly, racial or ethnic origins, political, philosophical or religious opinions, trade union membership, moral principles, or information that relates to health or sexual life” without either the written consent of the individual or an advance recommendation of the National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties, which must first be approved by the Conseil d’État). The collection of data on race and ethnicity by governments serves administrative and statistical purposes; the classifications should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature. However, this caveat is not heeded, and the classifications are widely used in everyday life, science and medicine, where race/ethnicity is used as a proxy for other phenomena.

Humans (Homo sapiens) originated in eastern Africa and migrated to the rest of the world. Analysis of microsatellite loci shows progressive loss of genetic diversity as our species grew and spread; genetic variability outside Africa is generally a subset of that within Africa. In general, a species is biologically defined as a group of similar organisms that can reproduce only with each other. Hence, genetically and biologically, Homo sapiens is one species, but with genetic diversity. Only 5–15% of genetic variation occurs between large groups living on different continents, the remaining variation occurring within such groups. A clustering algorithm applied to multilocus genotypes from worldwide human populations produced genetic clusters largely coincident with major geographic regions, suggesting that global human genetic diversity is a result of gradual variation and isolation by distance rather than major genetic discontinuities.

A widely held view among anthropologists, biologists and sociologists is that race is a socio-political construct based on the notion that groups can be demarcated on the basis of important and clear differences in phenotype, skin colour, ancestry, socio-economic status (SES) and geographical location, etc. Hoffman, a highly respected statistician who was particularly interested in the “negro problem” in the US, gave scientific racism its credibility and respectability. He posited that white people were at the top of the hierarchy and social order; “minority” racial groups were both biologically inferior and barriers to progress. One of Hoffman’s arguments was that “pure blacks” had “inferior vitality” because their vital capacity (VC) was found to be 6–12% smaller than in whites; this contributed to the belief that the inferior black race, that had a higher death rate, was doomed to extinction. The word “vital” in VC, so named by Hutchinson, and the smaller VC, led Hoffman to a value judgement. His views were contested by contemporary scientists, who pointed out that SES and inequalities in access to medical care, etc. should be taken into account in studies of biological differences between ethnic groups. Nevertheless, Hoffman’s views remained very influential; they have contributed to great atrocities and still affect personal interactions and social institutions.

Categorising subjects into racial/ethnic groups is done on the assumption that race/ethnicity is a proxy for genetic relatedness; this misrepresents genetic variation and leads to confounding. In general, in studies comparing differences in disease prevalence between two ethnic groups, if an unmeasured environmental variable (such as SES) co-varies in the same fashion as the proportion in one group, a racial difference might be due to this unmeasured variable. For example, in a study of differences in mortality between African and European Americans, Burney and Hooper concluded that the higher mortality in African Americans could only be explained by their lower forced VC, reminiscent of the views of Hoffman. Correlation does not prove causality: direct analysis of the relevant gene or causative factor is the only reliable way to evaluate risk in an individual.

Race, ethnicity and ancestral categories falsely suggest genetic homogeneity within and heterogenity between groups; they ignore the genetic variability within groups, gene–environment interactions and differences due to socially mediated mechanisms. Therefore, many scientists advocate abolishing such categorisation in research, versus those who believe there is still a role for the continued use of self-identified race and ethnicity in biomedical and genetic research…

Read the entire article here.

Defining race/ethnicity and explaining difference in research studies on lung function

European Respiratory Journal
Volume 41, Number 6  (June 1, 2013)
pages 1362-1370
DOI: 10.1183/09031936.00091612

Lundy Braun, Royce Family Professor in Teaching Excellence and Professor of Medical Science and Africana Studies
Brown University

Melanie Wolfgang
Brown University

Kay Dickersin, Professor, Director, Center for Clinical Trials
Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

The 2005 guidelines of the American Thoracic Society/European Respiratory Society recommend the use of race- and/or ethnic-specific reference standards for spirometry. Yet definitions of the key variables of race and ethnicity vary worldwide. The purpose of this study was to determine whether researchers defined race and/or ethnicity in studies of lung function and how they explained any observed differences.

Using the methodology of the systematic review, we searched PubMed in July 2008 and screened 10 471 titles and abstracts to identify potentially eligible articles that compared “white” to “other racial and ethnic groups”.

Of the 226 eligible articles published between 1922 and 2008, race and/or ethnicity was defined in 17.3%, with the proportion increasing to 70% in the 2000s for those using parallel controls. Most articles (83.6%) reported that “other racial and ethnic groups” have a lower lung capacity compared to “white”; 94% of articles failed to examine socioeconomic status. In the 189 studies that reported lower lung function in “other racial and ethnic groups”, 21.8% and 29.4% of explanations cited inherent factors and anthropometric differences, respectively, whereas 23.1% of explanations cited environmental and social factors.

Even though researchers sought to determine differences in lung function by race/ethnicity, they typically failed to define their terms and frequently assumed inherent (or genetic) differences.

Read or purchase the article here.