Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Funding Race as Biology: The Relevance of “Race” in Medical Research

    Funding Race as Biology: The Relevance of “Race” in Medical Research

    Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology
    Volume 12, Issue 2 (Spring 2011)
    pages 571-618

    Taunya Lovell Banks, Jacob A. France Professor of Equality Jurisprudence and Francis & Harriet Iglehart Research Professor of Law
    University of Maryland School of Law

    Note from Steven F. Riley: See the articles, “Fracture Risk Assessment without Race/Ethnicity Information,” and “Taking race out of the equation in measuring women’s risk of osteoporosis and fractures” about the positive results of taking “race” out of medicine.

    I. INTRODUCTION: ‘DEM BONES, ‘DEM BONES, ‘DEM “BLACK” BONES

    In 1940 the State of North Carolina classified my friend as “colored” despite her “white skin, blue eyes, [and] curling blond hair.” She—like her parents, grandparents, and many other black Americans—is often mistaken for white. Sixty years later when she went for a bone densitometry test—a must for postmenopausal women—the technician asked her to fill out a form that asked her race. Surprised, she asked why. The technician explained that “since the bones of black people are different than the bones of white people, the doctor needed this information to interpret the scan correctly.”

    The radiologist who analyzed my friend’s bone scan acknowledged that there is a debate within the radiology community about the scientific validity of interpreting an X-ray through the lens of race. But, he claimed, it is impossible to interpret the bone scan without factoring in race because the machines that analyze the bone scan can only produce an analysis if the race of the person being analyzed is included. The doctor could not explain how the x-ray machine defined “race,” replying that the definitions “were created by the companies that built the machines.”

    My friend asked if there was any way she could get more helpful advice about the condition of her bones. The radiologist thought for a moment, then suggested that perhaps my friend should have her bone densitometry test performed twice, once as “white,” then as “black.” The condition of her bones, he told her, would lie somewhere between the two results. However, my friend concluded that “one-half of a fantasy definition of ‘white’ plus one-half of a fantasy definition of ‘black’ will only yield one whole fantasy: it will not provide a sound medical diagnosis.”  Thus she marked “black” or “African American” because that had always been her legal and social identity. So what did the results really tell her doctor?

    For years my friend taught and wrote about the social construction of race and knew that her doctor’s explanation about the use of race as a biological term by the radiology community was flawed. She found it reminiscent of the World War II era when the Nazis kept “separate blood banks for ‘Jewish blood’ and ‘Aryan blood,’ [and] American blood banks were separating ‘white blood’ and ‘black blood’.” The United States has a long and continuing history of “unconscionable medical research” involving black Americans.

    In 1950 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), mindful of race-science’s dark and not so distant history, drafted a statement on the use of race in modern science. This statement, developed by an esteemed group of anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists, concludes: “[f]or all practical social purposes ‘race’ is not so much a biological phenomenon as a [damaging] social myth.” Today most scientists agree that race and ethnicity (ethno-race) classifications are the result of social and political conditions, as opposed to biological differences. There is, however, disagreement about the scientific validity of these categories.

    Even though an increasing number of scientists believe that too often ethno-race is used as a surrogate for various socioeconomic and environmental factors, for most of the late twentieth century social science and medical researchers continued to use ethno-race in a biological context.

    Nevertheless, there are times when ethno-racial designations have value in medical research. As one scholar writes, “using race as a social category” to study the impact of racism on health and access to medical care is critical to eliminating health inequities based on race. But, she cautions that using race as a biological category can reflect and reinforce racial stratification as well as racist notions of inherent human difference. Several commentators call this phenomenon the reification of race, where the social concept of race is transformed “into a specific, definite, concrete, and now presumably genetic category which can feed back into preexisting lay understandings of racial difference.”…

    …This article proceeds from the assumption that there are few clear instances, other than perhaps access to health care or measuring equality in medical treatment, where the use of ethno-race in medical research is appropriate. Even in those limited situations the justification for using ethno-race, how the ethno-racial categories are defined, and the method for assigning ethno-race warrant close scrutiny and oversight, especially when these studies are funded with federal money. In the next section, this article explains the scientific basis for that assertion. First, it explores the debates within the medical community about the connection between race and biology in biomedicine. Then it examines literature on race-related stress to determine whether this might be an instance where ethno-racial labels help explain health outcomes, and argues that guidelines or regulation are needed.

    The third section of this article examines two sets of guidelines on the use of ethno-race in biomedical research: guidelines adopted by high impact medical journals, and federal guidelines on the use of ethno-race in federally funded biomedical research. Finding these measures inadequate, this article argues that the only way to quickly change research behavior in this area is through greater regulation and oversight of federal medical research grants. More stringent government regulation and oversight of federally funded biomedical research grants that use ethno-race may trigger changes in the medical culture faster than litigation.

    In the fourth section this article proposes a regulatory scheme that offers a standard to measure the appropriateness of ethno-race in applications for federally funded biomedical research that will cause both researchers and grant reviewers to give more thought to how and why ethno-race is used in research protocols. This article concedes that this proposal is only a first step, and acknowledges that meaningful progress also requires strong and effective measures designed to change how biology is taught in undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools. But without a change in the medical culture, another generation of researchers and health care providers will be trained to think about ethno-racial differences inappropriately.

    Before effective remedies for the problem described can be discussed, it is important to clarify both the meaning and use of the term “race” in scientific discussions. The next section of this paper looks at debates within the scientific community about the meaning of ethno-racial labels…

    Read the entire article here.

  • From Bang to Whimper: A Heart Drug’s Story

    From Bang to Whimper: A Heart Drug’s Story

    The New York Times
    2012-12-24

    Abigail Zuger, M.D.

    Jonathan Kahn, Race in a Bottle: The Story of BiDil and Racialized Medicine in a Post-Genomic Age. Columbia University Press, December 2012, 336 pages.

    On June 23, 2005, American medicine managed to take a small step forward and a giant step backward at precisely the same time, with government approval of the first medication to be earmarked for a specific racial group. It was BiDil, a drug designed to treat heart failure in blacks.

    Enthusiasts hailed BiDil’s approval by the Food and Drug Administration as a landmark event in the nascent field of pharmacogenomics, which aims to create drugs tailored to fit an individual’s genetic makeup as precisely as a bespoke suit drapes its owner’s shoulders. Critics just winced and clocked one more misstep in medicine’s long history of race-related disasters.

    You would think that the elucidation of the human genome would have cleared up most of the hoary untruths surrounding race and health. But as Jonathan Kahn makes clear in his worthy if convoluted review of the events surrounding the birth of BiDil, the genome has in many respects only made things worse.

    It has been clear for decades that race has minimal relevance to the body’s inner workings. Research has repeatedly shown that the biologic variations among individuals of the same race are reliably great enough for race to retain little utility as a biologic predictor. You might as well sort people by height. Or, in the words of an editorial writer for Nature Biotechnology in 2005, “Pooling people in race silos is akin to zoologists grouping raccoons, tigers and okapis on the basis that they are all stripy.”…

    Read the entire review here.

  • Why More Races Could Appear on the 2020 Census

    Why More Races Could Appear on the 2020 Census

    PolicyMic
    2013-01-07

    Justine Gonzalez

    The U.S. Census is re-evaluating how they measure race for the 2020 Census. Our country is rapidly diversifying, both culturally and racially, which makes the Census’ job that much more critical and complicated. As the 2010 Census has shown, Latinos, who often have difficulty assigning themselves a particular “race,” have replaced African Americans as the nation’s largest minority group, with 50 million in 2010 (challenging the appropriateness of the use of the term “minority”).

    The U.S. Census currently officially recognizes five racial categories: white, black or African-American, Asian, American Indian/Alaska Native and Pacific Islander. Census data is used for a variety of purposes such as determining the makeup of voting districts, monitoring discriminatory practices in hiring, and racial disparities in education and health. The data also informs and validates the work of many community-based organizations, and allows researchers to analyze and assess the social, health and economic status of specific population groups.

    Race has always been difficult to understand and many disagree on the actual benefits of assigning/ defining race as we do. The concept of race in the United States is heavily influenced by the end of slavery, segregation, waves of immigration from all over the world, and intermarriage. Our current racial categories do not recognize currently growing racial and ethnic diversity, nor do they acknowledge the current immigration trends and how they may change over time…

    …The term “Latino” (or “Hispanic”) is a contested term that attempts to broadly unite a group of people who are different culturally and racially but united by (perhaps) a language, though sometimes not even that. In the 2010 Census, this problem of grouping can be seen in that the “some other race” category ranked as the third-largest racial category, and NPR claims that 97% of those respondents were of Hispanic descent.

    Another trend among darker-skinned Latinos and Afro-Latinos is to check “Black” as Race along with checking “Latino.” I have always done this—on college applications, the Census and other official documents—yet it does not fully capture the complexity of my racial composition. As a Puerto Rican, born and raised in New York City (aka a Nuyorican), checking ‘Black’ is an homage to my African roots—and for others, a recognition of my dark skin. In America, the definition of white still very much implies white purity. Just one ounce of “black blood” defines someone as black. Nonetheless, on a personal level, I do not see my race as ‘Black’; that is just how society would define me. My race is inextricably connected to my ethnicity in a way that no combination of box-checking can accurately describe…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Midnight at the Barrelhouse: The Johnny Otis Story

    Midnight at the Barrelhouse: The Johnny Otis Story

    University of Minnesota Press
    2010
    272 pages
    23 b&w plates, 6 x 9
    cloth ISBN: 978-0-8166-6678-2

    George Lipsitz, Professor of Black Studies and Sociology
    University of California, Santa Barbara

    Considered by many to be the godfather of R&B, Johnny Otis—musician, producer, artist, entrepreneur, pastor, disc jockey, writer, and tireless fighter for racial equality—has had a remarkable life by any measure. In this first biography of Otis, George Lipsitz tells the largely unknown story of a towering figure in the history of African American music and culture who was, by his own description, “black by persuasion.”

    Born to Greek immigrant parents in Vallejo, California, in 1921, Otis grew up in an integrated neighborhood and identified deeply with black music and culture from an early age. He moved to Los Angeles as a young man and submerged himself in the city’s vibrant African American cultural life, centered on Central Avenue and its thriving music scene. Otis began his six-decade career in music playing drums in territory swing bands in the 1930s. He went on to lead his own band in the 1940s and open the Barrelhouse nightclub in Watts. His R&B band had seventeen Top 40 hits between 1950 and 1969, including “Willie and the Hand Jive.” As a producer and A&R man, Otis discovered such legends as Etta James, Jackie Wilson, and Big Mama Thornton.

    Otis also wrote a column for the Sentinel, one of L.A.’s leading black newspapers, became pastor of his own interracial church, hosted popular radio and television shows that introduced millions to music by African American artists, and was lauded as businessman of the year in a 1951 cover story in Negro Achievements magazine. Throughout his career Otis’s driving passion has been his fearless and unyielding opposition to racial injustice, whether protesting on the front lines, exposing racism and championing the accomplishments of black Americans, or promoting African American musicians.

    Midnight at the Barrelhouse is a chronicle of a life rich in both incident and inspiration, as well as an exploration of the complicated nature of race relations in twentieth-century America. Otis’s total commitment to black culture and transcendence of racial boundaries, Lipsitz shows, teach important lessons about identity, race, and power while encapsulating the contradictions of racism in American society.

  • Discovery of his roots leads him to track history of Chinese in Mexico

    Discovery of his roots leads him to track history of Chinese in Mexico

    UCLA Today
    Faculty and Staff News
    2010-12-06

    Letisia Marquez

    Growing up in a predominantly white Los Angeles County suburb, Robert Chao Romero, an assistant professor of Chicana and Chicano studies, learned to hide his Chinese background.
     
    The son of a Chinese mother and Mexican father, Romero recalled starting the first grade in Hacienda Heights and a classmate telling him an anti-Chinese joke.
     
    “It was just a dumb kid’s joke, but it sort of sent the message to me that being Chinese is bad,” he added…

    …One tidbit that had always intrigued Romero was that his parents knew a Chinese family who had lived in Mexico for many years. He decided to look into the history of Chinese Mexicans and discovered that although Spanish professors had written about the population, he could not find a book about Chinese Mexicans in English.
     
    “The more I explored the topic, the more I realized this is a rich history that’s a forgotten history for the most part,” Romero said. “And I think a large part of the reason it’s forgotten is because it’s a dark chapter, unfortunately.”
     
    Years later, Romero completed “The Chinese in Mexico, 1882-1940,” (University of Arizona, 2010) book which details the tragic history of Chinese immigrants in Mexico…

    Read the entire article here.

  • “Chino-Chicano”: A Biblical Framework for Diversity (Part I)

    “Chino-Chicano”: A Biblical Framework for Diversity (Part I)

    Jesus for Revolutionaries: A Blog About Race, Social Justice, and Christianity
    2013-01-03

    Robert Chao Romero, Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies and Asian American Studies
    University of California, Los Angeles

    I’m a “Chino-Chicano.” I was born in East Los Angeles and raised in the small town of Hacienda Heights. My dad is an immigrant from Chihuahua, Mexico and my mom an immigrant from Hubei in central China. The Romeros lost their family fortune during the Mexican Revolution by siding with Pancho Villa, and eventually immigrated to El Paso, Texas. They moved to East Los Angeles in the 1950’s and we’ve been here in Southern California ever since. My mom’s family immigrated to Los Angeles from China via Hong Kong and Singapore in the 1950’s. My maternal grandfather, Calvin Chao, was a famous pastor in China who launched the first Chinese branch of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. The Chaos fled their native land because my grandfather was on a communist “hit list.” As an interesting side note, my Mom’s family traces directly back to the founding emperor of the Song Dynasty!

    Growing up “mixed,” I had a lot of struggles with racial identity. I was very proud of my Mexican heritage, but at a young age got sent the message that being Chinese was a bad thing. On the first day of first grade a kid walked up to me, pretended to hold an imaginary refrigerator in his hands, and said, “Here’s a refrigerator, open it up. Here’s a coke, drink it. Me Chinese, me play joke, me do pee-pee in your Coke.” Kids are so mean.  I was so scarred by that event that I denied my Chinese heritage for the next 18 years.  Once I even remember telling a friend that my mom was our housekeeper because I was embarrassed that she came to pick me up from school…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Don’t consign Mary Seacole to history, Michael Gove is urged

    Don’t consign Mary Seacole to history, Michael Gove is urged

    The Independent
    London, England
    2013-01-04

    Kevin Rawlinson

    Petition launched to prevent Crimean War nurse being written out of school textbooks

    Leading black Britons have united to urge the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, to abandons his plan to remove the country’s most celebrated black historical figure from the school curriculum.

    The campaign group Operation Black Vote has launched a petition to demand that Mary Seacole, who cared for soldiers on the front line during the Crimean War, and was as famous as Florence Nightingale during her lifetime, is not left out of textbooks.

    “What does removing her name achieve, other than telling those who are racist that they have a point?” asked the writer and campaigner Darcus Howe, who is supporting the petition…

    …Seacole’s efforts in the Crimea earned her the adulation of thousands of ex-servicemen, despite her postwar descent into bankruptcy. Her exploits were largely forgotten after her death in 1881, before a successful campaign was launched to ensure that her story was taught in primary schools.

    Mr Gove’s plan to remove her from the syllabus once again has outraged many black people, including the Labour MP, Diane Abbott, and the Rev Jesse Jackson, the  US civil rights campaigner who also supports the petition. Ms Abbott said yesterday: “Students in this country already learn about traditional figures such as Winston Churchill, Oliver Cromwell and Florence Nightingale. Mary Seacole is simply another such important individual. Not of less significance and certainly not expendable.

    “In addition to this, she is one of the most distinct examples of how black history is an integral part of British  history. Michael Gove should be fully aware of the message that this decision sends.”…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Catching Up With Black in America’s Soledad O’Brien

    Catching Up With Black in America’s Soledad O’Brien

    Clutch Magazine
    2012-12-14

    Zettler Clay

    A while ago, I took my little cousins to Toys “R” Us. Three of them. 8 years old, 6 years old, 4 years old. It was going smoothly enough until we came across a row of dolls.

    There were two on the end. A fully-adorned Black doll on the left. A fully-adorned white doll on the right. She picked the one on the right.

    My radar immediately went off. I gently suggested the melanated doll.

    No dice. I strongly suggested this doll. Nothing. We weren’t getting anywhere and I was met with the confused look of a little girl whose older cousin had a problem with what she wanted. After he said she could get what she wanted.

    I was short on time. She was short on understanding. So I relented.

    I haven’t been able to shake this experience. The notion of colorism — the lighter the skin, the better the “doll” — hits us early in life and never leaves. It’s endemic in our community, a point brought to the surface by CNN’s latest addition to the Black in America series, Who is Black in America?

    “It’s nothing wrong with seeing color,” said CNN anchor and special correspondent Soledad O’Brien. “It becomes a problem when people limit and define you by it.”…

    …Classification creates forms. Forms create separateness, which leads to competition. Colonization. And a wondering lot of people left to discover who they are because of who they’re not.

    But why the focus on defining minorities? What about a White in America? It is this criticism that O’Brien hears. And agrees with…

    For a few candid moments, I caught up with O’Brien about defining “blackness,” future of Black in America, white supremacy’s effects on Black women and self-identification.

    Me: This is a huge subject to tackle.

    Soledad O’Brien: You think! (laughs)…

    Me: How much has this series helped in your self-identification?

    SO: I’ve always had a very strong self-identification. I’ve never struggled with my racial classification. I was very lucky. My mom used to always tell me, “don’t let anyone tell you you’re not Black. Don’t let anybody tell you you’re not Latino.” My parents instilled a very strong sense of identity. Even in the recent doc as I was talking to the young women, I kept thinking, “this is soooo not my experience.” I found that other people had many more challenges about racial ambiguity. I find it fascinating to learn about different communities and geographic history. Black people in Atlanta vs. Black people in Minneapolis (where we’re shooting now). Black people in Philly vs. Black people in New York. Just the history of these communities. I have found it rewarding to see the differences in us and how similar we are…

    Read the entire interview here.

  • 1.1 But Where are You Really From? Part IV: Oh, really? You were born in Guelph?

    1.1 But Where are You Really From? Part IV: Oh, really? You were born in Guelph?

    Schema Magazine
    Schema In-Depth
    2009-08-03

    Araba Ocran-Caesar, Guest Contributor

    Perhaps growing up in Vancouver has changed the way I approach the question, “But where are you really from?” There is no doubt that my geographical position in this country changes the climate in which that question is asked. Since I’ve had the opportunity to live and work in Toronto, I have been able to switch gears and not view this infamous question as such a nagging issue. Some might say that it’s a compliment to be asked because that means people are genuinely interested in me and my origins. Hmm. Not so much.

    Because so many Canadians are from immigrant families I rarely thought it was unusual for people to ask about my background. It was only when people started to focus on one aspect of my ancestry that I caught on to some other, deeply rooted motivations. My heritage is European, African and Caribbean; I do not place an emphasis on any one culture over another (but let me tell you, other people do). In my case, all components of my heritage make me who I am, and, yes, over time I have felt offended when people pick apart my African and Caribbean backgrounds. Let me explain further: Once my “blackness” is confirmed, the revelation is followed up with labels and snap judgements. It’s painfully evident that my Welsh heritage is not tackled with the same stereotyping determination. Fortunately, every now and again, the odd person appears with whom I can dialogue and we both walk away learning something about each other…

    …Perhaps you are all familiar with the “one drop” philosophy, adopted by American slave owners. Essentially, as long as an individual had even one drop of African blood, that individual was considered Black, regardless of what could sometimes be a very mixed lineage. Well, the “one drop” concept is, in some ways, alive and well today and is the unspoken subtext that spurs someone to ask “What are you,” when I am clearly and visibly something other than white. So possibly the question could more precisely be phrased as “What part of you is black?” Not, “Where are you from?” After all, when I truthfully answer with Guelph, Ontario, no one is never satisfied!…

    Read the entire article here.

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