Mixed Race Studies

Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story

NewSouth Books (American Edition coming soon from Rutgers University Press)
July 2012
352 pages
234 x 153mm
Paperback ISBN: 9781742233314

Walter Hamilton, Journalist and Author

This is a beautifully written, deeply moving and well-researched account of the lives of mixed-race children of occupied Japan. The author artfully blends oral histories with an historical and political analysis of international race relations and immigration policy in North America and Australia, to highlight the little-known story of the thousands of children that resulted from the unions of Japanese women and Allied servicemen posted to Japan following WWII. It is a powerful narrative of loss, longing and reconnection, written by the ABC’s long-time Tokyo correspondent, Walter Hamilton.

Visit the website here.

Playing the Gene Card? A Report on Race and Human Biotechnology

Center for Genetics and Society
2009
95 pages

Osagie K. Obasogie, Associate Professor of Law
University of California, San Francisco
Also: Senior Fellow
Center for Genetics and Society

Preface by:

Dorothy Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology; Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights
University of Pennsylvania

Executive Summary

Race has become a prominent focus for human biotechnology. Despite often good intentions, genetic technologies are being applied in a manner that may provide new justification for thinking about racial difference and racial disparities in biological terms—as if social categories of race reflect natural or inherent group differences.

The Human Genome Project (HGP) and subsequent research showed that there is less than 1% genetic variation among all humans. Patterns of mating and geographic isolation over thousands of years have conferred genetic signatures to certain populations. Yet scientists have found little evidence to support lay understandings that social categories of race reflect discrete groups of human difference. While HGP findings initially led many to conclude that race (as it is commonly conceived and used) is not genetically significant, the hope that science would promote racial healing has largely not materialized.

In fact, trends in life science research have shifted the other way. There are increasing efforts to demonstrate the genetic relevance of race by mapping this less than 1% of variation onto social categories of race to find genetic explanations for racial disparities and differences.

From page 21

Figure 2: The essentialist and population concepts of race contrasted with the actual patterns of genetic variation (simplified to three geographic categories). Based on the work of Dr. Jeffrey Long at the University of Michigan and depictions created by the Race—Are We So Different? project of the American Anthropological Association.

A Essentialist concepts of race that were popular throughout the 19th and early 20th century held that the human species was divided into several mutually exclusive yet tangentially overlapping groups based largely upon physical features such as skin color and facial features.

B Population approaches treat race as clusters of local populations that differ genetically from one another, whereby each group is considered a race. As depicted, this concept suggests an outer periphery of unshared distinctiveness as well as substantial genetic similarity that is highlighted by the overlapping regions.

C Contemporary data on human diversity supports a “nested subset” approach to race. This reflects the fact that “people have lived in Africa far longer than anywhere else, which has allowed the population in Africa to accumulate more of the small mutations that make up [human] genetic variation. Because only a part of the African population migrated out of Africa, only part of Africa’s genetic variation moved with them. For this reason, most genetic variation found in people living outside Africa is a subset of that found among Africans.”

Many celebrate these developments as an opportunity to learn more about who we are and why certain groups are sicker than others. Yet some are struck by the extent to which these new conversations aimed at benefiting minority communities communities echo past discussions in which the science of biological difference was used to justify racial hierarchies.

Although this new research is rapidly evolving and is fraught with controversy, it is being used to develop several commercial and forensic applications that may give new credence to biological understandings of racial difference—often with more certainty than is supported by the available evidence. This unrestrained rush to market race-specific applications and to use DNA technologies in law enforcement can have significant implications for racial minorities:

• Race-based medicines have been promoted as a way to reduce inequities in healthcare and health outcomes. Yet the methodological assumptions behind them raise as many issues as the questionable market incentives leading to their development.
• Genetic ancestry tests rely on incomplete scientific methods that may lead to overstated claims. The companies that sell them often suggest that biotechnology can authoritatively tell us who we are and where we come from.
• DNA forensics have been used to exonerate those who have been wrongly convicted and can provide important tools for law enforcement. However, some forensic applications of genetic technologies might undermine civil rights—especially in minority communities.

While each of these applications has been examined individually, this report looks at them together to highlight a fundamental concern: that commercial incentives and other pressures may distort or oversimplify the complex and discordant relationship between race, population, and genes. Applications based on such distortions or oversimplifications may give undue legitimacy to the idea that social categories of race reflect discrete biological differences.

The concerns raised in this report should not be read as impugning all genetic research that implicates social categories of race. There is evidence that socially constructed notions of race may loosely reflect patterns of genetic variation created by evolutionary forces, and that knowledge about them may ultimately serve important social or medical goals. Yet, given our unfortunate history of linking biological understandings of racial difference to notions of racial superiority and inferiority, it would be unwise to ignore the possibility that 21st century technologies may be used to revive long discredited 19th century theories of race.

Advances in human biotechnology hold great promise. But if they are to benefit all of us, closer attention should be paid to the social risks they entail and their particular impacts on minority communities.

Contents

• Executive Summary
• About the Author
• Acknowledgments
• Preface by Dorothy Roberts, Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law, Northwestern Law School
• Race Cards and Gene Cards: A Note About the Report’s Title
• Introduction | Are 21st Century Technologies Reviving 19th Century
  • Theories of Race?
  • How Have New Genetic Theories of Racial Difference Developed?
  • Context: After the Human Genome Project
  • Key Concern: Will Commercial and Forensic Applications Revive Biological Theories of Race?
  • In This Report
  • Sidebar: What Does It Mean to Say that Race Is Not Biologically Significant or that It Is a Social Construction?
• Chapter 1 | Race-Based Medicine: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back?
  • Pharmacogenomics: The Concept Behind Race-Based Medicine
  • First on the Scene: BiDil
  • Concerns about BiDil
  • Addressing Disparities in Health Through Race-Specific Pharmaceuticals
  • Conclusion: Evaluating Race-Based Medicine
  • Recommendations
  • Sidebars: Major Projects on Human Genetic Variation
    • Why Genetic Variations Matter
    • Top-Down Marketing to the Black Community
    • Historical Theories of Race
    • Are More Race-Based Medicines Around the Corner?
    • The Slavery Hypothesis
• Chapter 2 | Ancestry Tests: Back to the Future?
  • African American Ancestry
  • Context: Population Genetics
  • From Groups and Populations to Individuals
  • Techniques Used by Ancestry Tests
  • Concerns about the Genetic Ancestry Industry
  • Conclusion: Resisting Racial Typologies
  • Recommendations 30
  • Sidebars: Native Americans and Ancestry Tests
    • Race, Intelligence, and James Watson
    • Bioprospecting and Biopiracy
    • From Race to Population and Back
    • The Business of DNA Ancestry Testing
    • Special Types of DNA
    • Human Genetic Variation—A Work in Progress
• Chapter 3 | Race and DNA Forensics in the Criminal Justice System
  • How Does It Work?
  • How Reliable Are DNA Forensic Technologies?
  • DNA Databases
  • Cold Hits and Partial Matches
  • Whose DNA Is in These Databases?
  • Sifting DNA Databases to Catch Family Members
  • Predicting Criminality
  • Using DNA to Build Racial Profiles
  • Conclusion: Effects on Minority Communities
  • Recommendations
  • Sidebars: DNA Entrapment?
    • The Scandal in Houston
    • The Innocence Project
    • “The Informer in Your Blood”
    • Juking Stats
    • “The Birthday Problem” and the Limits of Forensic Database Matches
    • Minority Communities and the War on Drugs
    • Civil Liberties and DNA Databases
    • Phrenology, a Classic Pseudo-Science
• Conclusion
  • Racial Categories in Human Biotechnology Research
  • Race Impact Assessments
  • Responsible Regulation
• Endnotes
• About the Center for Genetics and Society

Read the entire report here.

CUNY DSI Monograph Documents Dominican Heritage of First Settler

The City University of New York
City College
2012-10-04

Juan Rodríguez, native of Santo Domingo, comes to New York in 1613 and stays when his ship sails to Holland

The first non-native to live in what is now New York City was a black or mixed race Dominican, a new monograph produced by researchers at the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute (CUNY DSI) documents. Juan Rodríguez, who was born on the colony of La Española, now the Dominican Republic, came to the Big Apple in 1613 aboard a Dutch trading vessel en route from the Caribbean. He decided to stay and live among the natives when the ship returned to Holland.
 
“This is the kind of research that produces new academic knowledge and engages in a conversation with a scholarly community who studies New York City’s early history,” said Dr. Ramona Hernández, director of CUNY DSI. “This research also serves people from a practical point of view: A very early predecessor of the large Dominican population that thrives in New York City today, Juan Rodriguez’s story belongs to the history of all New Yorkers.
 
“As residents of a port city with a uniquely multiethnic population since its very beginnings next to the mighty Hudson River, New York has always been a community of interactions and intermingling amongst races and ethnicities.”
 
The monograph was commissioned by the American Chamber of Commerce of the Dominican Republic, which will receive the first copy at a luncheon meeting at City College Thursday, October 4. The following day, a two-hour colloquium with experts in translations and transcription will examine the challenges, excitement and insights of translating the documentation for the Juan Rodríguez story.
 
Earlier this week, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg named a stretch of Broadway between W. 159th Street and W. 218th Street for Mr. Rodríguez. The section of the famed roadway runs through Washington Heights, home of one of the largest concentrations of Dominicans living outside their homeland.
 
According to archival records reviewed by DSI researchers, Mr. Rodríguez, a black or mulatto free sailor born on La Española, arrived in an estuary of the Hudson River in the spring of 1613, aboard the “Jonge Tobias,” a Dutch ship captained by Thijs Mossel. After two months presumably spent trading with Native Americans, Captain Mossel decided to return to Holland, but Mr. Rodríguez refused to make the journey and was allowed to stay on shore…

Read the entire article here.

Race-Based Medicine: Déjà Vu All Over Again?

Biopolitical Times: The weblog of the Center for Genetics and Society
2012-09-18

Osagie K. Obasogie, Associate Professor of Law
University of California, San Francisco
Also: Senior Fellow
Center for Genetics and Society

Race-based medicine has been one of the more contentious issues in pharmaceutical research and development over the past few years. Some argue that drugs specifically labeled to treat particular racial groups offer an invaluable way to fight racial disparities in health by targeting at-risk populations. Others claim that race-based medicine inappropriately treats race as a biological cause of racial disparities when broader social and environmental factors may offer better explanations.

Much of this debate involves the FDA’s 2005 approval of BiDil, which became the first drug to be labeled for a specific racial group – African Americans with heart failure. The heat generated from this debate has largely faded due to BiDIl’s market failure.  But, it seems like a new drug may reignite a few flames.

Tradjenta was developed by Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly to treat Type 2 diabetes. But results from a Phase III clinical trial recently showed that Tradjenta was particularly beneficial for controlling African Americans’ blood sugar levels…

…Is another BiDil on the horizon? It’s important to acknowledge that Tradjenta had already received FDA approval to treat type 2 diabetes in the general population prior to the announcement of these race-specific results. This is different from BiDil, where investigators sought a race-specific indication from the FDA because they could not otherwise win regulatory approval as a race-neutral drug. Despite these differences, treating racial disparities in diabetes as a naturally observed group difference that can be at least partially resolved with a pill shares some similarities with the BiDil saga. In both cases, there is a tendency to naturalize racial disparities as a function of group difference rather than having a deeper engagement with the social determinants of health.

This leads to an important question: if Tradjenta already received approval for use in the general population, why would it not be effective in African Americans? Put differently, why go through the time and expense of conducting a clinical trial to demonstrate efficacy in a particular racial group when the drug has already been approved for everyone regardless of race?

It’s unclear how these recent clinical trial results might be used. Perhaps this is another example of using a clinical trial as a marketing device in the hopes of capturing a larger share of the market…

Read the entire article here.

Deep Roots and Tangled Branches

The Chronicle of Higher Education
2006-02-03

Troy Duster, Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology
University of California, Berkeley
Also Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge
New York University

People who know their biological parents and grandparents typically take the information for granted. Some have a difficult time empathizing with the passionate genealogical quests of adoptees and, increasingly, products of anonymous sperm banks and other new technologies where one or both genetic contributors are unknown. In recent years, new legislation has enabled people to search for information about genetic progenitors – even in cases where there had been a signed agreement of nondisclosure. The laserlike focus of that search can be as relentless as Ahab’s hunt for the white whale.

Mystery of lineage is the stuff of great literature. Mark Twain made use of it for biting social commentary in his Pudd’nhead Wilson, a story about the mix-up of babies born to a slave and a free person. Sophocles, Shakespeare, Molière, and Dickens built grand tragedy and enduring comedy on the theme. In England in 2002, a white Englishwoman gave birth to mixed-race twins after a mix-up at an in vitro fertilization clinic. Imagine what Shakespeare would have done with that!

If one person’s passions can be so riled by such a puzzle, imagine the emotions involved when the uncertainty applies to a whole group – say, of 12 million people. The middle passage did just that to Americans of recent African descent. Names were obliterated from record books, and slaves were typically anointed with a new single first name. Sometimes no names were recorded, just the slaves’ numbers, ages, and genders. Some African-Americans have deliberately and actively participated in the erasure, showing no desire to pursue a genealogical trail. For others, fragments of oral history generate a fierce longing to do the detective work.

That is the case among the prominent subjects featured in “African American Lives,” a two-night, four-part PBS series scheduled for February 1 and 8. The host and executive co-producer is Henry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of the department of African and African-American studies at Harvard. Gates has assembled eight notably successful African-Americans, among them the media entrepreneur Oprah Winfrey, the legendary music producer Quincy Jones, and the film star Whoopi Goldberg. Each participant, along with Gates, is the subject of some serious professional family-tree tracing. There are surprises for each of them, and the series has undeniable human-interest appeal…

Read the entire article here.

Racial Labels Have Limited Use In Personalizing Medicine

Shots: NPR’s Health Blog
2011-05-09

Eliza Barclay

For all the fanfare around personalized medicine, the idea has been fairly slow to take off.

Boosters have said if doctors had a patient’s DNA information it would be revolutionary: They could look for genetic risk of certain diseases or mutations that determine whether certain drugs are likely to work or not.

The cost of DNA sequencing keeps falling, yet genetic sequencing for medical use isn’t commonplace. In the meantime, doctors can, in theory, consider a patient’s race in anticipating health conditions that could pose a higher risk.
 
But a study published recently in PLoS One suggests that using race as a stand in for truly personalized genetic information may not work, especially in the most diverse cities (like New York and Los Angeles) that attract immigrants from around the world.

There’s a lot of genetic variability among races. And the genetic risk profiles for many people with mixed ancestry don’t fit neatly into any category…

Read the entire article here.

Slooooooow Sales for BiDil^®

Biopolitical Times: The weblog of the Center for Genetics and Society
2006-10-18

Osagie K. Obasogie, Associate Professor of Law
University of California, San Francisco
Also: Senior Fellow
Center for Genetics and Society

Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that sales for BiDil^®—the first drug to receive FDAapproval to treat a specific race—are unexpectedly slow. Marketed as treating heart failure in African-Americans, BiDil^® was expected to generate $130 million in sales this year; thus far, only a little over $5 million has come in. Estimates show that only 1% of the 750,000 Blacks suffering from heart failure are using it.

There’s no shortage of explanations for why Black people are about as unlikely to take BiDil^® as they are to name a newborn child Katrina…

…But, perhaps there’s another explanation that the Wall Street wing tips are missing: a sense of history.

During a conference I attended earlier this year on BiDil^® and race specific medicines, an older Black woman in the audience stood up and said “If I were sick and somebody told me that they had a drug just for Black people to help me, I’d say to them: give me what the white people are taking.”…

Read the entire article here.

Constitutionality Of Miscegenation Statutes: McLaughlin v. Florida

Maryland Law Review
Volume 25, Issue 1 (1965)
pages 41-48

Lee M. Miller

The appellants, a Negro man and a white woman, were convicted of violating a Florida statute which proscribed cohabitation between Negro and white persons who are not married to each other. The Florida Supreme Court upheld the conviction. On appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, the appellants claimed: (1) The statute was invalid as a denial of equal protection of the laws since it applied only to members of certain races, and (2) they were denied due process and equal protection of the laws because a Florida law prohibiting interracial marriage prevented them from establishing the defense of common law marriage. The appellants thus hoped to reach the issue of whether the state’s prohibition of interracial marriage contravened the fourteenth amendment. The Supreme Court, basing its decision on the single issue of equal protection (appellants’ first claim), set aside the conviction and invalidated the cohabitation statute. Finding this claim to be dispositive of the case, the Court refrained from expressing any view as to the constitutionality of the law prohibiting interracial marriages.

The provisions of state statutes banning interracial marriage, often called miscegenation statutes, vary considerably, but today all states which have such statutes ban Negro-white marriages, and all declare the proscribed interracial marriages void. Most statutes provide criminal penalties, thus making race an element of a crime. The Maryland statute, for example, proscribes Negro-white and Malay-white marriages and has a mandatory penitentiary sentence.

At one time or another, over half the states had miscegenation statutes. Although these statutes have been repealed by twenty state legislatures, they remain in effect in nineteen other states. Six states have included miscegenation prohibitions in their state constitutions. The highest courts of only two states have held their miscegenationn statutes unconstitutional. Alabama declared its statute unconstitutional in 1872 but reversed itself five years later; California declared its statute unconstitutional in 1948. State courts and lower federal courts have upheld the constitutionality of such statutes. The Supreme Court of the United States has never ruled on the issue. In two cases reaching that Court in recent years, certiorari was denied in one and the issue bypassed in the other.”…

Read the entire article here.

2nd Annual: What Are You?

Brooklyn Historical Society
Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations
2012-10-04, 19:00 EDT (Local Time)

Let’s talk about race and ethnicity, and where we’re from (or where we’re from from); how we express our own multicultural identities, and how others perceive us. Panelists will start the conversation and we hope you’ll join in. We’ll discuss big questions like: How does our cultural background shape us? Can we see race? Is identity fixed or fluid?  #CBBGwhatru

Featuring:

• Jen Chau, founder of Swirl
• Erica Chito Childs, author of Fade to Black and White: Interracial Images in Popular Culture
• Heidi Durrow, co-host of Mixed Chicks Chat and author of The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
• Ken Tanabe, founder of Loving Day
• Angela Tucker, director of Black Folk Don’t

Co-sponsored by Swirl, a multi-ethnic, anti-racist organization that promotes cross-cultural dialogue

For more information, click here.

Tufts Hapa reaches out to mixed-race students

The Tufts Daily: The Independent student newspaper of Tufts University
Medford, Massachusetts
2012-10-03

Alexandria Chu

Among the more than 300 student organizations at Tufts, there are many geared toward specific ethnicities and cultures. Tufts Hapa, a new group on campus, is working to become the only one intended to represent mixed race students.

In 2000, the United States Census was changed to allow citizens to check multiple boxes of racial identification, and the 2010 Census showed a 28 percent increase in interracial households. Tufts Hapa hopes to reflect these changes on campus.

Tufts Hapa aims to create a community of mixed race peoples of part Asian descent, according to President Joseph Wat, a senior. The club is currently in the process of receiving recognition by the Tufts Community Union (TCU) and has the support of the Asian American Center.

Tufts Hapa executive board member and senior Stephanie Howell explained that the start of her involvement in Tufts Hapa stemmed from the instability of past multiracial organizations on campus…

…Tufts Hapa’s faculty support, Assistant Professor of Economics Arthur Chiang, commented on the difficulty of achieving the balance between maintaining pride in ethnicity and solely defining oneself by it, which is particularly tricky for people of a mixed-race heritage.

“I think the basis of [your] social life shouldn’t be based on your race … It’s certainly a concern, everyone just fracturing into their own little [ethnic] groups. Of course, at the same time, no matter what background you have, you should feel some pride in your culture,” Chiang said. “It’s a little bit harder if you’re mixed, so I think a good thing for this club is the celebration of Hapa culture. It’s not an exclusionary thing, but more about learning about our experiences.”…

…Professor of History Gary Leupp notes a feeling of alienation throughout the history of people of mixed-race descent. He gives an example of an epitaph written in 1680 by Pieter Hartsinck, the son of a Dutch merchant and a Japanese woman.

According to Leupp, the epitaph is in St. Jakob’s Church in Osterode, Lower Saxony, Germany, detailing that Hartsinck and his mother were born in the East and his father in Europe.

Leupp quoted Hartsinck, “My destiny varied from the beginning … I left my homeland early in life to find my father’s country. But I could not find my true home.” Leupp explained that Hartsinck accomplished much in his life, even translating Descartes’ work into Latin from French, but his identity struggles are evident in his epitaph…

Read the entire article here.