Mixed Race Studies

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: “I’m one part of the universe, trying to figure out another part of the universe.”

Guernica
2021-08-02

Lacy M. Johnson

On quarks, leptons, and the patriarchy.

​“Articulating scientific questions is social,” Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein writes in The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred, a fascinating and hard-to-classify book that blends clear and cogent writing about the science of theoretical physics with piercing critiques of the cultures in which that science occurs. In her work as a theoretical physicist, Prescod-Weinstein articulates scientific questions about dark matter and space-time, as well as social ones about who gets to do physics and the power relations involved in how it’s done. In The Disordered Cosmos, Prescod-Weinstein brings these scientific and social questions together. Informed by Black feminism, she moves from discussions of quarks and leptons to explanations of the roots and history of patriarchy, from hidden figures to the insights of observational astronomy.

One of the few Black women in her field, Prescod-Weinstein has had a remarkable career. Originally from East Los Angeles, she is an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of New Hampshire, where she is also core faculty in women’s and gender studies. She has held research positions at the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics & Space Research and the Center for Theoretical Physics at MIT, as well as a postdoctoral fellowship at the Observational Cosmology Lab at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. For a time, she was editor-in-chief at the online experimental literary magazine The Offing.

She brings this varied and multifaceted background to bear on The Disordered Cosmos, which is part science book, part personal narrative, part cultural critique. But this work is more than the sum of its parts. The Disordered Cosmos calls on us to consider the harmful power relations far too many of us are far too willing to accept, and — through its probing inquiries into who gets to ask scientific questions and do scientific work — offers a compelling vision of a more expansive and inclusive universe. Early in the book she offers two big dreams for Black children: “to know and experience Blackness as beauty and power” and “to know and experience curiosity about the night sky, to know it belonged to their ancestors.” She writes, “That, too, is freedom.”

Chanda and I talked over Zoom in early June about dark matter, the season of Star Trek that’s “queer as fuck,” and why it’s important to be aware of whom you’re writing “not just for but to.”…

Read the entire interview here.

Richard Alba, a sociologist who has written about race categorization and the census, said that typically, a large share of Hispanic Americans check the box for white in the race question. Now, he said, they were given the chance to describe their backgrounds more fully, an addition, he said, that could have flipped them into the multiracial category.

Sabrina Tavernise, Tariro Mzezewa and Giulia Heyward, “Behind the Surprising Jump in Multiracial Americans, Several Theories,” The New York Times, August 13, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/us/census-multiracial-identity.html.

For James McCune Smith, Racism Was All Over Anthropology

JSTOR Daily
2021-08-11

Livia Gershon
Nashua, New Hampshire

James McCune Smith via Wikimedia Commons/Jonathan Aprea

What if the creation story of anthropology isn’t exclusively about white men classifying people as primitive?

In the first half of the nineteenth century, intellectuals working in the nascent field of anthropology sought to divide humanity into more and less civilized races, debating whether these differences were due to biology or deep-seated cultural patterns. At least that’s what Americans today tend to remember about the early days of the discipline. But, anthropologist Thomas C. Patterson writes, that may be because historians studying anthropology have selectively ignored other viewpoints within the field. To counteract this tendency, Patterson invites us to learn about the Black anthropologist James McCune Smith.

McCune Smith was born enslaved in New York City. He became legally free as a teenager in 1827 under New York state’s Emancipation Act. He apprenticed as a blacksmith while studying Latin and Greek. Denied admission to Columbia University because of his race, he attended the University of Glasgow and went on to become a medical doctor…

Read the entire article here.

Portrait of the Artist as a Black Man

Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices
Summer 2021

Herb Harris
Arlington, Virginia

When you turn the corner
And you run into yourself
Then you know that you have turned
All the corners that are left

Langston Hughes

The more I stared at the drawing, the more alien and unrecognizable it became. I had labored over every line, but it was not the person I intended to draw. It began as a self portrait, but a stranger emerged who had been living somewhere within me. He was now crashing through the page.

I am a descendant of slaves and their owners. This contradiction manifests itself in every aspect of my physical appearance. My beige skin is light enough to pass as white. My angular nose and thin lips corroborate this story. My almond-shaped brown eyes are deep-set and give little clue to my identity. My hair might give me away, but its loose brown curls suggest to most people some vaguely white-ish ethnicity rather than an African origin. In general, people take in these details and read the whole as white. When I tell others that I am black, this usually requires a lengthy explanation that stretches back into little-known aspects of the history of slavery. I have to explain to people, who often seem to be hearing it for the first time, that sexual exploitation of slaves was so widespread that most black people in the United States today have some degree of European heritage. They generally imagine some version of a sanitized mythology that involves consensual romance.

“You mean like Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson?”

“No, I mean like rape.”…

Read the entire article here.

Afro-Latinos in the U.S. Economy

Lexington Books
May 2021
174 pages
Trim: 6½ x 9
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-4985-4624-9
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4985-4625-6

Michelle Holder, Associate Professor of Economics
John Jay College, City University of New York

Alan A. Aja, Professor of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies
Brooklyn College, City University of New York

Afro-Latinos in the U.S. Economy outlines the current position and status of Afro-Latinxs in the economy of the United States. Very little research has thus far been disseminated in the field of economics on the contributions of Afro-Latinxs regarding income and wealth, labor market status, occupational mobility, and educational attainment. On the other hand, cultural studies, literary criticism, and social science fields have produced more research on Afro-Latinxs; the discipline of economics is, thus, significantly behind the curve in exploring the economic dimensions of this group. While the Afro-Latinx community constitutes a comparatively small segment of the U.S. population, and is often viewed as the nexus between two of the country’s largest minority groups—African Americans and Latinxs, who comprise 13 percent and 17 percent, respectively, of the U.S. population—Holder and Aja outline how the group’s unique economic position is different than non-black Latinxs. Despite possessing higher levels of education relative to the Latinx community as a whole, U.S. Afro-Latinxs do not experience expected returns in income and earnings, underscoring the role anti-Blackness plays in everyday life regardless of ancestral origin. The goal of this book is to provide a foundation in the economic dimensions of Afro-Latinxs in the U.S. which can be used to both complement and supplement research conducted on this group in other major disciplines.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION –DEMOGRAPHIC AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT
• Chapter 2: INCOME, POVERTY AND WEALTH AMONG AFRO LATINXS
• Chapter 3: THE LABOR MARKET STATUS OF AFRO-LATINXS
• Chapter 4: AFRO-LATINAS IN THE U.S.
• Chapter 5: AFRO-LATINXS AND INCARCERATION
• Chapter 6: AFRO–LATINXS, DISCRIMINATION AND THE NEED FOR BOLD POLICIES AND MOVEMENTS

Episode 154: Boundaries of Love: Interracial Marriages and the Meaning of Race

Black and Highly Dangerous
2020-12-13

Tyrell Connor, Co-host and Assistant Professor of Sociology
State University of New York, New Paltz

Daphne Michelle, Visiting fellow in Education
Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Science

For today’s episode, we explore how interracial couples navigate racial boundaries by interviewing Dr. Chinyere Osuji, an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University-Camden and author of Boundaries of Love: Interracial Marriage and the Meaning of Race. During the conversation, we discuss her motivation for writing the book (43:10), her decision to conduct research in the U.S. and Brazil (45:50), and the notion of interracial marriage as a potential solution to racism (48:28). We also explore how her identity as a Black woman shaped her conversations with couples about interracial dating (52:25), trends related to why people pursued interracial relationships (55:30), how couples navigated public life and boundary policing (1:04:15), how interracial couples think about their children’s racial identity (1:11:00), and how couples navigate discussions about race (1:16:02). We close the interview by discussing her upcoming project (1:19:50).

Listen to the interview here.

Behind the Surprising Jump in Multiracial Americans, Several Theories

The New York Times
2021-08-13

Sabrina Tavernise, National Correspondent

Tariro Mzezewa, National Correspondent

Giulia Heyward, 2021-2022 reporting fellow for the National desk

Kori Alexis Trataros, of White Plains, N.Y., sees generational differences in how Americans think about race. “Our generation is so great at having open conversation,” she said. Janick Gilpin for The New York Times

Families across the country have grown more diverse. A design change in the census form also allowed the government to report people’s identity in greater detail.

WASHINGTON — The Census Bureau released a surprising finding this week: The number of non-Hispanic Americans who identify as multiracial had jumped by 127 percent over the decade. For people who identified as Hispanic, the increase was even higher.

The spike sent demographers scrambling. Was the reason simply that more multiracial babies were being born? Or that Americans were rethinking their identities? Or had a design change in this year’s census form caused the sudden, unexpected shift?

The answer, it seems, is all of the above.

Multiracial Americans are still a relatively small part of the population but the increase over the decade was substantial and, the data shows, often surprising in its geography. The number of Americans who identified as non-Hispanic and more than one race jumped to 13.5 million from 6 million. The number of Hispanic Americans who identify as multiracial grew to 20.3 million from 3 million. In all, the two groups now represent about 10 percent of the population.

The largest increase in non-Hispanic Americans of two or more races was in Oklahoma, followed by Alaska and Arkansas.

Americans who were mixed race recorded a wide range of identities. People who identified themselves as both white and Asian made up about 18 percent of the total number of non-Hispanic multiracial Americans in 2020. Those who reported their race as both white and Black accounted for 20.5 percent. Americans who were both white and Native American were 26 percent of the total, according to Andrew Beveridge, who founded Social Explorer, a data analytics company…

Read the entire article here.

If doctors and clinical educators rigorously analyze algorithms that include race correction, they can judge, with fresh eyes, whether the use of race or ethnicity is appropriate. In many cases, this appraisal will require further research into the complex interactions among ancestry, race, racism, socioeconomic status, and environment. Much of the burden of this work falls on the researchers who propose race adjustment and on the institutions (e.g., professional societies, clinical laboratories) that endorse and implement clinical algorithms. But clinicians can be thoughtful and deliberate users. They can discern whether the correction is likely to relieve or exacerbate inequities. If the latter, then clinicians should examine whether the correction is warranted. Some tools, including eGFR and the VBAC calculator, have already been challenged; clinicians have advocated successfully for their institutions to remove the adjustment for race.^43,44 Other algorithms may succumb to similar scrutiny.⁴⁵ A full reckoning will require medical specialties to critically appraise their tools and revise them when indicated.

Darshali A. Vyas, Leo G. Eisenstein, and David S. Jones, “Hidden in Plain Sight — Reconsidering the Use of Race Correction in Clinical Algorithms,” The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 2020, Number 383, 882. https://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMms2004740.

Race and ethnicity highlights:

• The White population remained the largest race or ethnicity group in the United States, with 204.3 million people identifying as White alone. Overall, 235.4 million people reported White alone or in combination with another group. However, the White alone population decreased by 8.6% since 2010.
• The Two or More Races population (also referred to as the Multiracial population) has changed considerably since 2010. The Multiracial population was measured at 9 million people in 2010 and is now 33.8 million people in 2020, a 276% increase.
• The “in combination” multiracial populations for all race groups accounted for most of the overall changes in each racial category.
• All of the race alone or in combination groups experienced increases. The Some Other Race alone or in combination group (49.9 million) increased 129%, surpassing the Black or African American population (46.9 million) as the second-largest race alone or in combination group.
• The next largest racial populations were the Asian alone or in combination group (24 million), the American Indian and Alaska Native alone or in combination group (9.7 million), and the Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone or in combination group (1.6 million).
• The Hispanic or Latino population, which includes people of any race, was 62.1 million in 2020. The Hispanic or Latino population grew 23%, while the population that was not of Hispanic or Latino origin grew 4.3% since 2010.

It is important to note that these data comparisons between the 2020 Census and 2010 Census race data should be made with caution, taking into account the improvements we have made to the Hispanic origin and race questions and the ways we code what people tell us.

United States Census Bureau, “2020 Census Statistics Highlight Local Population Changes and Nation’s Racial and Ethnic Diversity,” Release Number CB21-CN.55, August 12, 2021. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/population-changes-nations-diversity.html.

How scientists are subtracting race from medical risk calculators

Science Magazine
2021-07-22

Jyoti Madhusoodanan
Portland, Oregon

Anuj Shrestha

To pediatrician Nader Shaikh, the rhythm of treating babies running high fevers is familiar. After ruling out the obvious colds and other common viruses, he must often thread a catheter into a months-old baby to draw a urine sample and check for a urinary tract infection (UTI). “You have to hold the baby down, the baby’s crying, the mother is usually crying too,” says Shaikh, who works at the University of Pittsburgh. “It’s traumatic.”

UTIs, although relatively rare in children under age 2, carry a high risk of kidney damage in this group if left untreated. Often, the only symptom is a high fever. But high fevers can also signal a brain or blood infection, or a dozen other illnesses that can be diagnosed without a urine sample. To help clinicians avoid the unnecessary pain and expense of catheterizing a shrieking infant, Shaikh and his colleagues developed an equation that gauges a child’s risk of a UTI based on age, fever, circumcision status, gender, and other factors—including whether the child is Black or white. Race is part of the equation because previous studies found that—for reasons that aren’t clear—UTIs are far less common in Black children than in white ones.

The UTI algorithm is only one of several risk calculators that factor in race, which doctors routinely use to make decisions about patients’ care. Some help them decide what tests to perform next or which patients to refer to a specialist. Others help gauge a patient’s lung health, their ability to donate a liver or kidney, or which diabetes medicines they need.

In the past few years, however, U.S. doctors and students reckoning with racism in medicine have questioned the use of algorithms that include race as a variable. Their efforts gained momentum thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement. In August 2020, a commentary published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) highlighted the use of race in calculators as a problem “hidden in plain sight.” It’s widely agreed that race is a classification system designed by humans that lacks a genetic basis, says Darshali Vyas, a medical resident at Massachusetts General Hospital and co-author on the paper. “There’s a tension between that [understanding] and how we see race being used … as an input variable in these equations,” Vyas says. “Many times, there’s an assumption that race is relevant in a biological sense.”…

Read the entire article here.