Racial Categories (racial + category)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


The Language of Multiple Identities among Dominican Americans

JOURNAL OF LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 2 2000
Benjamin Bailey
As a group whose members are Hispanic, American, and largely of African descent, Dominican Americans must negotiate distinctive issues of identity in the United States. Language is central to these negotiations, both as a symbol of identity and as a medium through which to construct and display local social meanings. Dominican Americans use linguistic forms from multiple varieties of two codes, Spanish and English, to situationally activate various facets of their multiple identities. This multivariety linguistic and interactional construction of identities undermines implicit assumptions of uniformity and essentialism in U.S. linguistic and ethnic/racial categories, particularly in the construction of the category "African American." [source]


Epigenetics and the embodiment of race: Developmental origins of US racial disparities in cardiovascular health

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY, Issue 1 2009
Christopher W. Kuzawa
The relative contribution of genetic and environmental influences to the US black-white disparity in cardiovascular disease (CVD) is hotly debated within the public health, anthropology, and medical communities. In this article, we review evidence for developmental and epigenetic pathways linking early life environments with CVD, and critically evaluate their possible role in the origins of these racial health disparities. African Americans not only suffer from a disproportionate burden of CVD relative to whites, but also have higher rates of the perinatal health disparities now known to be the antecedents of these conditions. There is extensive evidence for a social origin to prematurity and low birth weight in African Americans, reflecting pathways such as the effects of discrimination on maternal stress physiology. In light of the inverse relationship between birth weight and adult CVD, there is now a strong rationale to consider developmental and epigenetic mechanisms as links between early life environmental factors like maternal stress during pregnancy and adult race-based health disparities in diseases like hypertension, diabetes, stroke, and coronary heart disease. The model outlined here builds upon social constructivist perspectives to highlight an important set of mechanisms by which social influences can become embodied, having durable and even transgenerational influences on the most pressing US health disparities. We conclude that environmentally responsive phenotypic plasticity, in combination with the better-studied acute and chronic effects of social-environmental exposures, provides a more parsimonious explanation than genetics for the persistence of CVD disparities between members of socially imposed racial categories. Am. J. Hum. Biol., 2009. © 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]


Race and global patterns of phenotypic variation

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2009
John H. Relethford
Abstract Phenotypic traits have been used for centuries for the purpose of racial classification. Developments in quantitative population genetics have allowed global comparison of patterns of phenotypic variation with patterns of variation in classical genetic markers and DNA markers. Human skin color shows a high degree of variation among geographic regions, typical of traits that show extensive natural selection. Even given this high level of geographic differentiation, skin color variation is clinal and is not well described by discrete racial categories. Craniometric traits show a level of among-region differentiation comparable to genetic markers, with high levels of variation within populations as well as a correlation between phenotypic and geographic distance. Craniometric variation is geographically structured, allowing high levels of classification accuracy when comparing crania from different parts of the world. Nonetheless, the boundaries in global variation are not abrupt and do not fit a strict view of the race concept; the number of races and the cutoffs used to define them are arbitrary. The race concept is at best a crude first-order approximation to the geographically structured phenotypic variation in the human species. Am J Phys Anthropol 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]


Continuing professional development: Racial and gender differences in obstetrics and gynecology residents' perceptions of mentoring

THE JOURNAL OF CONTINUING EDUCATION IN THE HEALTH PROFESSIONS, Issue 4 2005
Victoria H. Coleman MA Research Associate
Abstract Introduction: Having a mentor during residency is often linked to greater success in professional development. The present study compares changes in the percentage of residents with mentors in 1999 and in 2004, while considering current residents' perceptions of their mentors, with particular attention focused on what role race and gender might play in resident-mentor interactions. Method: A survey was administered to 4, 721 residents who took the 2004 Council on Resident Education in Obstetrics and Gynecology in-training examination. Data are reported for respondents from four racial categories: white, African American, Hispanic, and Asian/Pacific Islander. Results were compared to those of a similar survey administered in 1999. Responses were analyzed by chi-square analysis and univariate analyses of variance. Results: The response rate was 97%. Most residents (64.9%) reported having a mentor. White female residents were least likely to have a mentor. Compared to results from 1999, the percentage of residents with a mentor, and the percentage of residents with female mentors, has increased. For all residents, personal rapport, knowledge of the field, and similarity in professional interests were the three most important factors in choosing a mentor. The proportion of residents reporting explicit discussions about career options has declined since 1999. Discussion: Ethnic minorities are more likely than white residents to have a mentor, and to report that their mentors provide helpful advice. Although the proportion of residents with a mentor has increased since 1999, the quality of the mentoring relationship is meeting resident expectations but not exceeding them. [source]


Flaws in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Rationale for Supporting the Development and Approval of BiDil as a Treatment for Heart Failure Only in Black Patients

THE JOURNAL OF LAW, MEDICINE & ETHICS, Issue 3 2008
George T. H. Ellison
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) rationale for supporting the development and approval of BiDil (a combination of hydralazine hydrochloride and isosorbide dinitrate; H-I) for heart failure specifically in black patients was based on under-powered, post hoc subgroup analyses of two relatively old trials (V-HeFT I and II), which were further complicated by substantial covariate imbalances between racial groups. Indeed, the only statistically significant difference observed between black and white patients was found without any adjustment for potential confounders in samples that were unlikely to have been adequately randomized. Meanwhile, because the accepted baseline therapy for heart failure has substantially improved since these trials took place, their results cannot be combined with data from the more recent trial (A-HeFT) amongst black patients alone. There is therefore little scientific evidence to support the approval of BiDil only for use in black patients, and the FDA's rationale fails to consider the ethical consequences of recognizing racial categories as valid markers of innate biological difference, and permitting the development of group-specific therapies that are subject to commercial incentives rather than scientific evidence or therapeutic imperatives. This paper reviews the limitations in the scientific evidence used to support the approval of BiDil only for use in black patients; calls for further analysis of the V-HeFT I and II data which might clarify whether responses to H-I vary by race; and evaluates the consequences of commercial incentives to develop racialized medicines. We recommend that the FDA revise the procedures they use to examine applications for race-based therapies to ensure that these are based on robust scientific claims and do not undermine the aims of the 1992 Revitalization Act. [source]


Acknowledging the Racial State: An Agenda for Environmental Justice Research

ANTIPODE, Issue 4 2009
Hilda E. Kurtz
Abstract:, This paper argues that environmental justice scholars have tended to overlook the significance of the state's role in shaping understandings of race and racism, and argues for the use of critical race theory to deepen insight into the role of the state in both fostering and responding to conditions of racialized environmental injustice. Critical race theory offers insights into both why and how the state manages racial categories in such a way as to produce environmental injustice, and how the state responds to the claims of the environmental justice movement. Closer attention to the interplay between the racial state and the environmental justice movement as a racial social movement will yield important insights into the conditions, processes, institutions and state apparatuses that foster environmental injustice and that delimit the possibilities for achieving environmental justice in some form or another. [source]


The use of Afrocentric features as cues for judgment in the presence of diagnostic information

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2005
Irene V. Blair
Prior research has shown that within racial category, group members with more Afrocentric facial features are presumed to have more stereotypic traits than those with less Afrocentric features. The present experiment investigated whether this form of feature-based stereotyping occurs when more diagnostic information is available. The participants were provided with photographs and information about the aggressive (or non-aggressive) behaviour of 64 African Americans in four different situations, and asked to predict the likelihood of aggression in a fifth situation. As expected, each instance of aggression increased estimates that a target would behave aggressively in the unknown situation. With degree of displayed aggression controlled, however, targets with more Afrocentric features were judged as significantly more likely to behave aggressively than targets with less Afrocentric features. Thus, stereotyping based on Afrocentric features occurs even when other obviously-relevant information is available. This suggests that it may be difficult to detect and avoid. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Is Valuing Equality Enough?

JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES, Issue 1 2009
Allophilia, Equality Values, Social Policy Support for Multiracial Individuals
We conducted a field study to investigate positive intergroup attitudes (i.e., allophilia) and equality values as potential antecedents of social policy support for multiracial individuals. Participants (N = 97) reported their social policy support for multiracial individuals in two ways,support for the recognition of "multiracial" as a distinct racial category (recognition) and support for multiracial individuals' access to programs and policies (assistance). Results revealed that allophilia motivated those who held equality beliefs to support social policies for multiracial individuals. Implications of these findings for theories of positive intergroup relations, as well as the processes that may underlie progress for multiracial individuals, are discussed. [source]


How white people suffer from white racism

PSYCHOTHERAPY AND POLITICS INTERNATIONAL, Issue 2 2003
Neil Altman
Abstract One major but subtle manifestation of white racism is the failure to recognize whiteness as a cultural and racial category. Rather, whiteness silently functions as the ,standard' from which other racial and cultural groups deviate. In this way, non-white groups and people become ,deviant' in the very act of defining them. Recognizing whiteness as a category in every way correspondent to blackness opens the door to thinking about the particularity of the state of whiteness, and the ways in which people defined as white may benefit from the privileges, and suffer from the burdens, of whiteness. The disavowal of qualities defined as ,black' or ,coloured' or ,non-white' is shown to have a special distorting and limiting effect on people defined as white. Copyright © 2003 Whurr Publishers Ltd [source]


Front and Back Covers, Volume 21, Number 4.

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 4 2005
August 200
Front and back cover caption, volume 21 issue 4 Front cover The photo on the front cover, taken from the World Monuments Fund (WMF) website, shows house in Hilinawalö Mazingö, South Nias, Indonesia which was recently included on the WMF's List of 100 most endangered sites. Built in the 19th century, the house withstood the massive earthquake of 28 March 2005 that reduced the port towns of Nias to rubble and made over 150,000 people homeless. Constructed without nails, its complex structure can absorb tremors where modern concrete houses collapse. However, the hardwoods needed to replace columns and panels damaged by fire, rain and insects are no longer available, since Nias has been stripped of primary forest. Urgent conservation work is needed if the stone-paved villages and traditional architecture of Nias are to survive further destruction. In order to house the homeless, reconstruction planners are now studying the possibility of reviving traditional designs using cheaper, renewable materials. South Nias, whose plight was barely reported in the aftermath of the earthquake, received no government attention until ten days after the disaster. In his article on pp. 5-7 of this issue, Andrew Beatty reflects on the lack of development in Nias since he began fieldwork there in 1986 and considers the context of the recovery operation, showing how selective reporting, narrowly focused on stereotypical human interest stories, has failed to address local conditions, allowing corruption and inefficiency to thrive. Local knowledge is key to the success of aid. But only better reporting of regional power structures and stakeholders, combined with greater scrutiny of official dealings, will help to ensure that aid reaches those most in need. Back cover POLICY AND RACE The back cover reproduces questions from recent censuses conducted in England and Wales (above) and the USA (below). The former asks the respondent to state 'your ethnic group'; the latter seeks information on a 'person's race'. Statistics from the responses to these questions are given on page 4 of this issue. The British census question on ethnic origin, first introduced in 1991, is unusual in the European context. The 2001 census introduced a new 'mixed' category, as well as the term 'British' as a qualifier (to permit identification as British Black or British Asian), and a 'white' category subdivided into British, Irish and others. It also included a question on religion for the first time in more than a century, in response to the concerns of those for whom ethnic affiliation relates closely to religion (e.g. South Asian Muslims). In the US, the census of 2000 offered individuals, for the first time, the opportunity to identify themselves as belonging to more than one racial category (previously people of mixed descent were asked to choose a single racial category or to respond as 'some other race'). Most countries conduct regular censuses of their populations. In 1995 the United Nations Assembly passed a resolution calling on all its member countries to compile census data by 2004. However, a census depends on the consent of the population. Germany has not taken a full census since 1987, after postponing its scheduled 1983 census because of public concern over the proposed use of census returns to update local population registers; the Netherlands has not had a census since 1971, when high rates of refusal rendered returns unreliable. In common with a number of other countries, including Denmark, these two have turned to alternative data sources, particularly population and housing registers as well as sample surveys, for population statistics. The discourse of governance and perceptions of social category are powerfully influenced by the terms officially sanctioned by governments for the classification of citizens. The US census identifies its use of race as 'sociopolitical constructs' that are not 'scientific or anthropological in nature' (quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_68186.htm). Race is surely one of the most potent and elusive of concepts anthropology is trying to make sense of, whether as a scientific or as a cultural category. In this issue of AT, Michael Banton contends that contributors to recent debate have not distinguished sufficiently between scientific classifications and the categories current in the English language of everyday life. In their review of the recent 'Anthropology and Genomics' conference, Simpson and Konrad point out how issues of race and policy arise in this dynamic field. ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY continues to offer a forum for topical debate on issues of public concern, and welcomes further contributions on these questions. [source]


Avoiding "Aborigines": Paul Hasluck and the Northern Territory Welfare Ordinance, 1953

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 4 2005
Russell McGregor
Between 1951 and 1953, Commonwealth Minister for Territories, Paul Hasluck, oversaw the drafting of an item of Northern Territory legislation that became the Welfare Ordinance, 1953. While in many ways consistent with earlier Aboriginal legislation, in one significant respect it represented a radical innovation since it never once referred to "Aborigines" or any other racial category. This article takes the Welfare Ordinance as the starting point for an exploration of Hasluck's model of Aboriginal assimilation. [source]