Mixed Race Studies

Brooklyn is: Feature of the Week [Beth Consetta Rubel]

Brooklyn Artistry
Brooklyn, New York
2015-02-02

The latest and greatest untouched talent of the borough.

Being a biracial woman from the South we wanted to know what it was like for Beth Consetta Rubel as an artist. So many things can be triggering for an artists like her. You’d think she would have to battle for both sides, especially now when it seems like racial tension is at an all time high. We spoke with Consetta, one of the illest portraiture painters today, about her experience. Talk about in your face! Beth Consetta Rubel is not the one to hold back especially through her work. Her new series Paper Bag Test shows her pride in all of it’s grace.

If you haven’t already heard about her here’s a little something you should know, her name is Beth Consetta Rubel. She’s an Austin based visual artist. Raised in the South, Rubel draws upon her personal narrative and mixed-race ancestry to create work deeply rooted in her ethnic heritage. Focusing on painting and drawing in college, she received her BFA from the University of Texas San Antonio. Her recent “Paper Bag Test Series” references historical tests used to ascertain race based on phenotype, addressing contentious political and social issues on race, cultural identity, and class struggle…

Read the entire interview here.

The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis. A Narrative Biography

Esquiline Hill Press
2012
567 pages (est.)
mobi ISBN: 978-1-58863-450-4
PDF ISBN: 978-1-58863-451-1
ePub ISBN: 978-1-58863-452-8

Harry Henderson

Albert Henderson

Edmonia Lewis was the first famous “colored sculptor” and the first to idealize her African and American Indian heritages in stone. She flourished from 1864 through 1878, and, as an artist, was a rare instrument for social change in the aftermath of the Civil War. She pressed her case for equality from her studio in Rome, Italy, and with annual tours of the United States.

Our new narrative of Lewis’s life and art updates many “established facts” – well beyond erroneous birth and death dates – with more than 100,000 words, 50 illustrations, 800 references, bibliography, index, and a reference list of more than 100 works with notes on museum holdings. It is based on private letters, public documents, essays, hundreds of news items, reviews of her work, museum collections, and more than two dozen published interviews. It reveals how a world biased against her color, class, gender and religion received her. Of special interest to African-American and American-Indian studies, as well as art, women’s, and American history, the narrative opens an abundance of previously unrecognized sources, reinterprets important relationships, names missing works, and corrects the identification of an important portrait. Students of the nineteenth century will find it a cool counterpoint to the bitter rage of Civil War and Reconstruction.

Readers familiar with her legendary icons of race may be surprised by her many portraits and her untold moves to Paris and London. They will also find answers to long-standing questions: Where, when, and how did she die? Why did her encounter with a bronze Ben Franklin leave her reeling? Why did she idealize a woman with African features only once in her career? Why did she never cite the now-famous Forever Free after her first interviews in Rome? Why did she have to stalk Henry Wadsworth Longfellow through the streets to make his portrait? Where was her studio? How often did she tour America? How did she enter her work in the 1876 Centennial expo, which had barred colored people absolutely? What were her relationships with fans, mentors, and fellow sculptors? Who were her rivals, her best friends, and her worst enemies? Fresh evidence, never before collected and collated, argues a novel motive for her erotic masterwork, the Death of Cleopatra, which sits apart in her œuvre like a hussy in a small town church. Newly realized sources also change our view of her childhood and provide ample support to refute distortions of her personal character, sexuality, and appearance.

Evidence-based care eliminates racial disparity in colon cancer survival rates, study finds

Stanford Medicine News Center
2015-01-26

Lisa Marie Potter
Office of Communication & Public Affairs

A new study finds that equitable delivery of evidence-based care eliminates the racial disparity in colon-cancer survival rates.

For the past two decades, the National Cancer Institute has documented a persistent racial disparity in colon cancer survival rates in the United States.

African-American patients have consistently had lower survival rates when compared with white patients, despite a nationwide decline in colon cancer deaths overall.

Now, a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine shows that more equitable delivery of evidence-based care can close this gap. Furthermore, the investigators found that evidence-based care was delivered at higher rates within integrated health-care organizations — those in which one organization provides all the patient’s health-care services, hospital care and insurance. The study reports that five-year death rates were lower for all colon cancer patients treated in an integrated health-care system, and the differences in survival by race were eliminated.

The study’s findings, published online Jan. 26 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, support the idea that providing equitable, high-quality, evidence-based care is a powerful tool in eliminating cancer-treatment disparities.

“Historically, we’ve taken less than a critical eye on our own health-care system in terms of how we can take the lead in addressing disparities,” said lead author Kim Rhoads, MD, MPH, assistant professor of surgery. “The big takeaway in this paper is that it’s treatment, not necessarily patient factors, but following evidence-based guidelines that gives all patients the best chance for survival. Our work also suggests a real opportunity to equalize these racial differences.”…

Read the entire press release here.

How Do Integrated Health Care Systems Address Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Colon Cancer?

Journal of Clinical Oncology
Published online: 2015-01-26
DOI: 10.1200/JCO.2014.56.8642

Kim F. Rhoads, Colon and rectal surgeon, Colorectal surgeon, Surgical oncologist; Assistant Professor of Surgery at the Stanford University Medical Center
Stanford Cancer Institute
Stanford University School of Medicine

Manali I. Patel, MD
Stanford Cancer Institute
Stanford University School of Medicine

Yifei Ma, Statistician
Stanford University School of Medicine

Laura A. Schmidt, Professor of Health Policy
Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies
University of California, San Francisco

Presented as a poster at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Quality Care Symposium, San Diego, CA, November 30-December 1, 2012.

Purpose: Colorectal cancer (CRC) disparities have persisted over the last two decades. CRC is a complex disease requiring multidisciplinary care from specialists who may be geographically separated. Few studies have assessed the association between integrated health care system (IHS) CRC care quality, survival, and disparities. The purpose of this study was to determine if exposure to an IHS positively affects quality of care, risk of mortality, and disparities.

Patients and Methods: This retrospective secondary-data analysis study, using the California Cancer Registry linked to state discharge abstracts of patients treated for colon cancer (2001 to 2006), compared the rates of National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guideline–based care, the hazard of mortality, and racial/ethnic disparities in an IHS versus other settings.

Results: More than 30,000 patient records were evaluated. The IHS had overall higher rates of adherence to NCCN guidelines. Propensity score–matched Cox models showed an independent and protective association between care in the IHS and survival (hazard ratio [HR], 0.87; 95% CI, 0.85 to 0.90). This advantage persisted across stage groups. Black race was associated with increased hazard of mortality in all other settings (HR, 1.15; 95% CI, 1.04 to 1.27); however, there was no disparity within the IHS for any minority group (P > .11 for all groups) when compared with white race.

Conclusion: The IHS delivered higher rates of evidence-based care and was associated with lower 5-year mortality. Racial/ethnic disparities in survival were absent in the IHS. Integrated systems may serve as the cornerstone for developing accountable care organizations poised to improve cancer outcomes and eliminate disparities under health care reform.

Read or purchase the article here.

The Garifuna Exodus

Latino USA
2015-01-23

Maria Hinojosa, Executive Producer & Anchor

Marlon Bishop, Producer

For centuries, the Garifuna people — descendents of both Africans and indigenous Arawak people from the Caribbean — have lived peacefully in seaside towns on the North Coast of Honduras. There’s always been a trickle of migration from the community to the United States – especially the Bronx, where the largest Garifuna community outside of Central America lives.

But starting last spring, the trickle of migrants became a flood. Hundreds of Garifuna from each town left, thousands all together, embarking on the dangerous journey through Central America and Mexico to the U.S. border. It was mostly mothers with small children. They showed up in places like the Bronx, seeking refuge with family members, wearing GPS ankle monitors placed on them by U.S. immigration officers who detained them. They await court dates in limbo, unsure if they will be forced to go back to the homes they fled…

Read the entire introduction and listen to the story here.

The Life and Death of Davis Knight after State vs. Knight (1948)

Renegade South: Histories of Unconventional Southerners
2009-04-08

Victoria E. Bynum, Emeritus Professor of History
Texas State University, San Marcos

Davis Knight, the great-grandson of the infamous “Free State of Jones” guerrilla, Newt Knight, became the centerpiece of his own drama some 25 years after the death of his notorious ancestor. Although Davis was descended from Newt and his wife, Serena, both of whom were white, he was also the great-grandson of Rachel Knight, a former slave of Newt’s grandfather. And although Davis was white in appearance, because of his descent from Rachel, he was defined as black by his white neighbors. Some of those neighbors did not take kindly to Davis Knight’s marriage in 1946 to Junie Lee Spradley, a local white woman. In 1948, Davis ended up in court, accused of having married across the color line (a crime in several states until 1967). Despite a vigorous defense by Attorney Quitman Ross, a jury pronounced Davis guilty. Convicted of miscegenation, the Ellisville Court sentenced him to five years in Mississippi’s notorious Parchman prison.

Attorney Ross immediately appealed the decision on grounds the court had failed to prove that Davis had 1/8th or more African ancestry, and won his case. The Mississippi State Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s decision and remanded Davis’s case for retrial–a retrial that never took place. In legal terms, the High Court ruled in this important case, the “one drop rule” did not determine one’s racial identity, regardless of social custom. Davis Knight thus escaped going to prison and, for the rest of his life, lived as a white man…

Read the entire article here.

Penn PIK Professor Dorothy Roberts to Receive APA’s 2015 Fuller Award

Penn News
University of Pennsylvania
2015-01-23

Jacquie Posey, Media Contact
Telephone: 215-898-6460

The American Psychiatric Association has named University of Pennsylvania professor Dorothy Roberts recipient of the 2015 Solomon Carter Fuller Award in recognition of her demonstrated leadership and exceptional achievements.

The award honors “a Black citizen who has pioneered in an area which has significantly benefitted the quality of life for Black people.”

Roberts is an acclaimed scholar of race, gender and the law who joined the University in 2012 as its 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor. She is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology. Her appointment is shared between the School of Law and the departments of sociology and Africana studies in Penn Arts & Sciences. She is also the founding director of Penn’s Program on Race, Science and Society.

Roberts’ path-breaking work explains the mechanisms and consequences of racial inequities for women, children, families and communities and counters scientific misunderstandings about racial identity. Her research focuses on family, criminal and civil-rights law; bioethics; child welfare; feminist theory; reproductive justice; critical race theory;  and science and society.

Her major books include Fatal Intervention: How Science, Politics and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-first Century; Sex, Power and Taboo: Gender and HIV in the Caribbean and Beyond; Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare; and Killing The Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty…

Read the entire news release here.

Mixed Race People Are Changing The Face Of America

Huffington Post Live
2013-10-04

Hosted by: Ahmed Shihab-Eldin

Guests:

• Marvin Russell @marvinrussell (Chicago, IL) CEO of The Ocean Agency
• Sarah Willie-LeBreton (Swarthmore, PA) Professor of Sociology at Swarthmore College
• Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben (New York, NY) Author of “There’s an Easter Egg on Your Seder Plate”
• Veena Goel Crownholm @TiarastoBabies (San Francisco, CA) Freelance Multimedia Journalist ; Former Miss California

Since the U.S. Census Bureau started collecting data on mixed race people in 2000, the category has grown by 32 percent. How do multiracial Americans define themselves and how are they changing the face of the country?

For more information, click here.

U.S. to Collect Genetic Data to Hone Care

The New York Times
2015-01-30

Robert Pear, Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON — Saying that “the possibilities are boundless,” President Obama on Friday announced a major biomedical research initiative, including plans to collect genetic data on one million Americans so scientists could develop drugs and treatments tailored to the characteristics of individual patients.

Dr. Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, said the studies would help doctors decide which treatments would work best for which patients.

White House officials said the “precision medicine initiative” would begin with a down payment of $215 million in the president’s budget request for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.

Precision medicine, also known as personalized or individualized medicine, “gives us one of the greatest opportunities for new medical breakthroughs that we have ever seen,” Mr. Obama said at a White House event attended by patients’ advocates, researchers, and drug and biotechnology company executives.

Among those in the audience was Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the Senate health committee, who said he intended to work with the president on the issue.

Mr. Obama said the new initiative could save lives, create jobs, foster new industries and help people overcome “the accidents and circumstances of our birth.”

“If we’re born with a particular disease, or a particular genetic makeup that makes us more vulnerable to something, that’s not our destiny, that’s not our fate,” Mr. Obama said. “We can remake it. That’s who we are as Americans, and that’s the power of scientific discovery.”…

Read the entire article here.

Dear Hollywood: Let’s Stop Making Movies Like “Black or White”

Forbes
2015-01-30

Rebecca Theodore

Halfway through the family drama “Black Or White,” Jeremiah Jeffers (Anthony Mackie) an Ivy-League educated lawyer, chastises his drug addict nephew Reggie (Andre Holland) in the midst of helping him regain custody of his daughter by asking, “Why do you have to be such a stereotype?”

A question I repeatedly asked myself as I had to suffer through yet another one of Hollywood’s latest “White Is Right” films about racial relations. In “Black or White” Kevin Costner stars as Elliot Anderson, a successful lawyer who is left to raise his biracial granddaughter Eloise, when his wife dies unexpectedly. Elliot’s life becomes further complicated with an escalating drinking problem and a fight for Eloise from her absentee father and paternal grandmother (Octavia Spencer).

Black or White” is the Iggy Azalea of race films – it operates under the guise of being progressive and furthering the “conversation” about race, but only serves to exalt Whiteness by marginalizing Blackness. The movie is chock full of Black tropes and stereotypes; the overbearing matriarch who coddles and enables her son’s inexcusable behavior, the “Angry Black Man” (Mackie) and the “Magical Negro” with Duvan (Mpho Koaho), who starts off as a math tutor for Eloise, but soon finds himself dispensing wise advice and becoming a personal chauffeur to Elliot when he’s too drunk to drive.

You would think in 2015 Hollywood would have evolved from such reductive narratives about race, but according to Dr. Jason Johnson, a political analyst and a professor of political science at Hiram College, it’s business as usual. “It is part of a genre movie we have always had, that’s making a comeback which I like to call the “Reasonable White Man” movie,” Johnson explains. “They are films that are ostensibly about race but are extended polemics where so-called progressive Whites are saying ‘I’m the only one who has a reasonable perspective on this and Blacks are irrational and unreasonable.”…

Read the entire review here.