Mixed Race Studies

Race In R.I.: The Invisible Natives

The Providence Journal
Providence, Rhode Island
2015-10-24

G. Wayne Miller, Journal Staff Writer

Their ancestors were the state’s original settlers, but today’s Indians say whites ‘don’t even see us’

First of two parts

EXETER – On this fine autumn morning, Paulla Dove Jennings welcomes a visitor into her home at the edge of woods with a handshake and a smile. She pours tea, sits at her kitchen table, and begins relating some of her life’s story, which in its essential elements mirrors that of her relatives and ancestors, Rhode Island’s Narragansett and Niantic peoples.

A tribal elder now at 75, Jennings has been a waitress, chef, clerk, author, historian, educator, museum curator, state Indian Affairs Commissioner, Narragansett leader and more. Gifted with words and possessing a keen memory, she is a celebrated storyteller — a woman who laughs easily, and who also feels anger and pain at how some whites have treated her people since the Great Swamp Massacre of 1675 nearly obliterated them. The Narragansett and Niantic are among the state’s original inhabitants, here for 30,000 or more years.

“Oppression” is one word Jennings sometimes uses to describe that centuries-long treatment.

“Racism” is another.

“Rhode Island has close to the same racism as in Mississippi, and I’ve lived in both places,” says Jennings, a direct descendant of the great 17th-century Niantic sachem Ninigret…

Read the entire article here.

Faculty Panel: Multiracialism Informing Academic Work

University of Michigan Hatcher Graduate Library
Gallery (Room 100)
913 S University Ave
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
2015-10-26, 16:00-18:00 CDT (Local Time)

Series: What Does it Mean to be Multiracial in a Monoracial World?

Join us for the first in a year-long series of events that explore what it means to be multiracial in a monoracial world. This faculty panel will include:

Martha Jones, Prof. of History and Afroamerican & African Studies, co-director of the Michigan Law Program in Race, Law & History. Dr. Jones’ scholarly interests include the history of race, citizenship, slavery, and the rights of women in the United States and the Atlantic world.

Edward West, Thurnau Prof. of Art and Design. Professor West’s photographs and writing examine the lives and experiences of multiracial people around the world. His recent exhibit and publication, So Called, drew from his travels around the world photographing multiracial people.

Mark Kamimura-Jimenez, Director, Graduate Student Success, Rackham Graduate School, Lecturer, Oakland University. Dr. Kamimura-Jimenez’s research examines the college experience for multiracial students.

For more information, click here.

309 | Passing in White America

Chicago Humanities Festival
Karla Scherer Endowed Lecture Series for the University of Chicago
Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts
Film Screening Room 201
915 E 60th Street
Chicago, Illinois 60637
Sunday, 2015-10-25; 17:30-18:30 CDT (Local Time)

Between the 18th and 20th centuries, countless African Americans passed as white, leaving behind families, friends, and community. It was, as Stanford historian Allyson Hobbs writes, a chosen exile, a separation from one racial identity and a leap into another. Her work explores the way this racial indeterminacy offered an escape from slavery in the antebellum South and helped defy Jim Crow. But in looking back at both American history and the story of her own family, Hobbs also uncovers the terrible grief, loneliness, and isolation of passing, and the ways it continues to influence our thinking about racial identity and politics.

Presenters:

Allyson Hobbs is Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University and the author of A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life. Allyson received a PhD with distinction from the University of Chicago. Allyson teaches courses on American identity, African American history, African American women’s history, and twentieth century American history. She has received numerous fellowships and teaching awards. She gave a TEDx talk at Stanford, she has appeared on C-Span and National Public Radio, and her work has been featured on cnn.com and slate.com.

For more information, click here.

Race, Class, and Gender in the United States: An Integrated Study

Macmillan
Ninth Edition
2014
732 pages
Paper Text ISBN-10: 1-4292-4217-5; ISBN-13: 978-1-4292-4217-2

Paula S. Rothenberg, Senior Fellow; The Murphy Institute, City University of New York
Professor Emerita; William Patterson University of New Jersey

Like no other text, this best-selling anthology effectively introduces students to the complexity of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the United States and illustrates how these categories operate and interact in society. The combination of thoughtfully selected readings, deftly written introductions, and careful organization make Race, Class, and Gender in the United States, Ninth Edition, the most engaging and balanced presentation of these issues available today.

In addition to including scholarly selections from authors like Beverly Tatum, Barbara Ehrenreich, Annette Lareau, and Jonathan Kozol, Rothenberg includes historical documents like the Three-Fifths Compromise, firsthand narrative accounts of how these issues have affected the lives of individuals, and popular press pieces reporting on discrimination in everyday life.

This edition includes 28 new selections considering such relevant topics as the citizenship and immigration, transgender identity, the 2010 census, multiracial identity, the 99% and the occupy movement, the tragic story of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, South Asian Identity post 9/11, multiracial identity, disability, sexual harassment in the teenage years, and much more.

Table of Contents ^*Articles new or revised for this edition

• Part I THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF DIFFERENCE: RACE, CLASS, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY
  • 1 Racial Formations / Michael Omi and Howard Winant
  • 2 The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch / Richard Wright
  • 3 Constructing Race, Creating White Privilege / Pem Davidson Buck
  • 4 How Jews Became White Folks / Karen Brodkin
  • 5 “Night to His Day”: The Social Construction of Gender / Judith Lorber
  • 6 The Social Construction of Sexuality / Ruth Hubbard
  • 7 The Invention of Heterosexuality / Jonathan Ned Katz
  • 8 Masculinity as Homophobia / Michael S. Kimmel
  • 9 Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History / Douglas C. Baynton
  • 10 Deconstructing the Underclass / Herbert Gans
  • 11 Domination and Subordination / Jean Baker Miller
  • Suggestions for Further Reading
• Part II UNDERSTANDING RACISM, SEXISM, HETEROSEXISM, AND CLASS PRIVILEGE
  • 1 Defining Racism: “Can We Talk?” / Beverly Daniel Tatum
  • 2 Color-Blind Racism / Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
  • 3 Smells Like Racism / Rita Chaudhry Sethi
  • 4 Oppression / Marilyn Frye
  • 5 Patriarchy / Allan G. Johnson
  • 6 Homophobia as a Weapon of Sexism / Suzanne Pharr
  • ^*7 The 10 Percent Problem / Kate Clinton
  • 8 White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack / Peggy McIntosh
  • ^*9 Unequal Childhoods: Race, Class, and Family Life / Annette Lareau
  • ^*10 Class in America—2012 / Gregory Mantsios
• Part III Complicating Questions of Identity: Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration
  • 1 A Nation of None and All of the Above / Sam Roberts
  • 2 A New Century: Immigration and the US / MPI Staff, updated by Kevin Jernegan
  • ^*3 Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of America / Mae Ngai
  • 4 Los Intersticios: Recasting Moving Selves / Evelyn Alsultany
  • ^*5 For many Latinos, Racial Identity Is More Culture than Color / Mireya Navarro
  • ^*6 Testimony / Sonny Singh
  • 7 Asian American? / Sonia Shah
  • 8 The Myth of the Model Minority / Noy Thrupkaew
  • 9 Personal Voices: Facing Up to Race / Carrie Ching
  • Suggestions for Further Readings
• Part IV DISCRIMINATION IN EVERYDAY LIFE
  • 1 The Problem: Discrimination / U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
  • 2 Abercrombie Settles Class-Action Suit
  • 3 Apparel Factory Workers Were Cheated, State Says / Steven Greenhouse
  • 4 Women in the State Police: Trouble in the Ranks / Jonathan Schuppe
  • ^*5 Why Transgender Identification Matters / Rebecca Juro
  • 6 Where “English Only” Falls Short / Stacy A. Teicher
  • 7 Blacks vs. Latinos at Work / Miriam Jordan
  • 8 Manhattan Store Owner Accused of Underpaying and Sexually Harassing Workers / Steven Greenhouse
  • 9 Muslim-American Running Back off the Team at New Mexico State / Matthew Rothschild
  • 10 Tennessee Judge Tells Immigrant Mothers: Learn English or Else / Ellen Barry
  • ^*11 Tucson’s Ousted Mexican-American Studies Director Speaks: The Fight’s Not Over / Julianne Hing
  • 12 My Black Skin Makes My White Coat Vanish / Mana Lumumba-Kasongo
  • 13 The Segregated Classrooms of a Proudly Diverse School / Jeffrey Gettleman
  • 14 Race and Family Income of Students Influence Guidance Counselors’ Advice, Study Finds / Eric Hoover
  • 15 College Choices Are Limited for Students from Needy Families, Report Says / Stephen Burd
  • 16 Wealthy Often Win the Race for Merit-Based College Aid / Jay Mathews
  • 17 On L.I., Raid Stirs Dispute over Influx of Immigrants / Bruce Lambert
  • 18 More Blacks Live with Pollution / Associated Press
  • ^*19 National Study Finds Widespread Sexual Harassment of Students in Grades 7-12 / Jenny Anderson
  • Suggestions for Further Reading
• Part V THE ECONOMICS OF RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER
  • ^*1 Imagine a Country—2012 / Holly Sklar
  • ^*2 Dr King Weeps from His Grave / Cornel West
  • ^*3 Rich People Create Jobs! And Five Other Myths That Must Die for our Economy to Live / Kevin Drum
  • ^*4 It’s Official: The Rich Got Richer: Top Earners Doubled Share of Nation’s Income, Study Finds / Robert Pear
  • ^*5 Study Finds Big Spike in the Poorest in the U.S. / Sabrina Tavernise
  • ^*6 The Making of the American 99% and the Collapse of the Middle Class / Barbara Ehrenreich and John Ehrenreich
  • ^*7 Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics Twenty-to-One: Executive Summary / Rakesh Kochhar, Richard Fry, and Paul Taylor
  • 8 The Economic Reality of Being Asian American / Meizhu Lui and others
  • 9 The Economic Reality of Being Latino/a in the U.S. / Meizhu Lui and others
  • ^*10 Hispanic Children in Poverty Exceed Whites / Sabrina Tavernise
  • ^*11 Gender Gap on Wages is Slow to Close / Motoko Rich
  • 12 Women Losing Ground / Ruth Conniff
  • 13 Lilly’s Big Day / Gail Collins
  • 14 “Savage Inequalities” Revisited / Bob Feldman
  • 15 Cause of Death: Inequality / Alejandro Reuss
  • ^*16 Undocumented Immigrants Find Paths to College, Careers / Gosnia Wozniacka
  • 17 Immigration’s Aftermath / Alejandro Portes
  • ^*18 Inequality Undermines Democracy / Eduardo Porter
  • Suggestions for Further Reading
• Part VI MANY VOICES, MANY LIVES: SOME CONSEQUENCES OF RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER INEQUALITY
  • 1 Civilize Them with a Stick / Mary Brave Bird (Crow Dog) with Richard Erdoes
  • 2 Then Came the War / Yuri Kochiyama
  • 3 Yellow / Frank Wu
  • 4 The Arab Woman and I / Mona Fayad
  • 5 Crossing the Border Without Losing Your Past / Oscar Casares
  • 6 The Event of Becoming / Jewelle L. Gomez
  • 7 This Person Doesn’t Sound White / Ziba Kashef
  • ^*8 In Strangers’ Glances at Family, Tensions Linger / Susan Saulny
  • 9 Family Ties and the Entanglements of Caste / Joseph Berger
  • 10 Pigskin, Patriarchy, and Pain / Don Sabo
  • 11 The Slave Side of Sunday / Dave Zirin
  • 12 He Defies You Still: The Memoirs of a Sissy / Tommi Avicolli
  • 13 Requiem for the Champ / June Jordan
  • ^*14 Against Bullying or On Loving Queer Kids / Richard Kim
  • 15 Before Spring Break, The Anorexic Challenge / Alex Williams
  • 16 The Case of Sharon Kowalski and Karen Thompson: Ableism, Heterosexism, and Sexism / Joan L. Griscom
  • ^*17 Misconceptions Regarding the Body / Jennifer Bartlett
  • 18 C. P. Ellis / Studs Terkel
  • Suggestions for Further Reading
• Part VII HOW IT HAPPENED: RACE AND GENDER ISSUES IN U.S. LAW
  • 1 Indian Tribes: A Continuing Quest for Survival /U.S. Commission on Human Rights
  • 2 An Act for the Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes and Slaves, South Carolina, 1712
  • 3 The “Three-Fifths Compromise”: The U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 2
  • 4 An Act Prohibiting the Teaching of Slaves to Read
  • 5 Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, Seneca Falls Convention, 1848
  • 6 The Antisuffragists: Selected Papers, 1852–1887
  • 7 People v. Hall, 1854
  • 8 Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1857
  • 9 The Emancipation Proclamation / Abraham Lincoln
  • 10 United States Constitution: Thirteenth (1865), Fourteenth (1868), and Fifteenth (1870) Amendments
  • 11 The Black Codes / W. E. B. Du Bois
  • 12 Bradwell v. Illinois, 1873
  • 13 Minor v. Happersett, 1875
  • 14 California Constitution, 1876
  • 15 Elk v. Wilkins, November 3, 1884
  • 16 Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896
  • 17 United States Constitution: Nineteenth Amendment (1920)
  • 18 Korematsu v. United States, 1944
  • 19 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954
  • 20 Roe v. Wade, 1973
  • 21 The Equal Rights Amendment (Defeated)
  • 22 Lawrence et al. v. Texas, 2003
  • ^*23 Equal Protection Indeed / The Economist
  • ^*24 Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution / Linda Hirshman
  • Suggestions for Further Reading
• Part VIII MAINTAINING RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER HIERARCHIES: REPRODUCING “REALITY”
  • 1 Self-Fulfilling Stereotypes / Mark Snyder
  • 2 Anti-Gay Stereotype / Richard D. Mohr
  • 3 White Lies / Maurice Berger
  • 4 Am I Thin Enough Yet? / Sharlene Hesse-Biber
  • 5 Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse / Sut Jhally
  • 6 The Plutocratic Culture: Institutions, Values, and Ideologies / Michael Parenti
  • 7 Media Magic: Making Class Invisible / Gregory Mantsios
  • 8 Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid / Jonathan Kozol
  • 9 Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex / Angela Davis
  • Suggestions for Further Reading
• Part IX SOCIAL CHANGE: REVISIONING THE FUTURE AND MAKING A DIFFERENCE
  • 1 Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference / Audre Lorde
  • 2 Feminism: A Transformational Politic / bell hooks
  • 3 A New Vision of Masculinity / Cooper Thompson
  • 4 Interrupting the Cycle of Oppression: The Role of Allies as Agents of Change / Andrea Ayvazian
  • 5 Rethinking Volunteerism in America / Gavin Leonard
  • ^*6 The Most Important Thing in the World / Naomi Klein
  • ^*7 Beyond Elections: People Power / Mark Bittman
  • ^*8 Demand the Impossible / Matthew Rothschild
  • Suggestions for Further Reading
• Index

A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life by Allyson Hobbs (review) [Cutter]

African American Review
Volume 48, Number 3, Fall 2015
pages 381-383

Martha J. Cutter, Professor of English and Africana Studies
University of Connecticut

Hobbs, Allyson, A Chosen Exile: History of Racial Passing in American Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014)

The historian Allyson Hobbs opens her book A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life with an anecdote about a young child living on Chicago’s South Side in the late 1930s who is light enough to pass for white. Her parents (who are also light enough to pass) make the heart-wrenching decision to send her to live as a white person in Los Angeles, without them. She cries, pleads, and begs to stay with her parents, but they are adamant. Many years later when the father is dying the mother calls home the daughter, now a young woman who has married a white man and has had white children, but she refuses to return. This incident—sourced as “one of my family’s stories” (4)—seems an unusual way to begin a book titled A Chosen Exile, for the young girl’s exile is not chosen by any means. It is also a curiously ambiguous story. We may wonder (for example) why the parents do not go with the child, whether she has relatives in California to whom she is sent, and what age she is when this event occurs. This tantalizing story leaves a reader with more questions than it answers, and it belies the richness of Hobbs’s work in the book as a whole. Hobbs does not use this anecdote to elucidate some of the mysteries around passing or the difficulty of excavating the history of the racial passer, who disappears into whiteness. Instead, the story is deployed in support of the central argument of her book—that “racial passing is an exile” (4) and “the core issue of passing is not becoming what you pass for, but losing what you pass away from” (18). But how can we know that passing is “losing what you pass away from” based on this anecdote? In Hobbs’s book, the young girl is never heard from again. Perhaps she found freedom in her whiteness, or perhaps not. She might have had a permanent sense of exile, but this is never elucidated.

The use of this anecdote reflects a systemic flaw in Hobbs’s otherwise powerful and eloquent book. Her source material often opens up in provocative ways the can of worms that is racial passing, but then she sometimes forces those messy, squiggly worms back into a single “can”—the frame of family loss and exile. Hobbs makes the dubious claim that “historians and literary scholars have paid far more attention to what was gained by passing as white rather than to what was lost by rejecting a black racial identity” (11). To counter this tendency, she mines historical sources on passing “to discover a coherent and enduring narrative of loss” (24). At various points, she does acknowledge the shifting meaning of racial passing; for example, she states that “to pass as white varied and cannot be collapsed into a singular narrative” (15) and that “passing was by no means a static practice” (25). By the end of the book, her argument evolves into a more nuanced one: “Loss was a prerequisite of passing. But the losses that passing demanded were not all the same for those who passed. … For some, [passing] was undoubtedly a bitter bargain. But for others, the connection with oneself and one’s past had been lost long ago” (230). Hobbs here articulates some of the plural possibilities of passing—the way it can come to mean both conscription to a certain racial ideology and liberation from this very same ideology at one and the same time.

Hobbs’s book might have put forward from its start, then, a slightly more nuanced overarching framework. But in many ways this book is a very valuable resource for scholars interested in the history of passing, as well as students who may need a broad overview of the phenomenon. It examines the more-than-250-year history of passing in the United States, reaching back to the time of the American Revolution and forward to our current so-called “mulatto millennium,” or “Generation E.A.”—“ethnically ambiguous” (276). Most unique about the book is the wealth of source materials (much of which is…

Read the entire article here.

Retracing Slavery’s Trail of Tears

Smithsonian Magazine
November 2015

Edward Ball, Lecturer in English
Yale University

A coffle of slaves being marched from Virginia west into Tennessee, c. 1850. (Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia)

Edward Ball is the author of five books of nonfiction and a lecturer in English at Yale University. His book, Slaves in the Family (1998) won the National Book Award and was a New York Times bestseller.

America’s forgotten migration – the journeys of a million African-Americans from the tobacco South to the cotton South

When Delores McQuinn was growing up, her father told her a story about a search for the family’s roots.

He said his own father knew the name of the people who had enslaved their family in Virginia, knew where they lived—in the same house and on the same land—in Hanover County, among the rumpled hills north of Richmond.

“My grandfather went to the folks who had owned our family and asked, ‘Do you have any documentation about our history during the slave days? We would like to see it, if possible.’ The man at the door, who I have to assume was from the slaveholding side, said, ‘Sure, we’ll give it to you.’

“The man went into his house and came back out with some papers in his hands. Now, whether the papers were trivial or actual plantation records, who knows? But he stood in the door, in front of my grandfather, and lit a match to the papers. ‘You want your history?’ he said. ‘Here it is.’ Watching the things burn. ‘Take the ashes and get off my land.’…

…New Orleans, the biggest slave market in the country, had about 50 people-selling companies in the 1840s. Some whites went to the slave auctions for entertainment. Especially for travelers, the markets were a rival to the French Opera House and the Théâtre d’Orléans.

Today in New Orleans, the number of monuments, markers and historic sites that refer in some way to the domestic slave trade is quite small. I make a first estimate: zero.

“No, that’s not true,” says Erin Greenwald, a curator at the Historic New Orleans Collection. “There is one marker on a wall outside a restaurant called Maspero’s. But what it says is wrong. The slave-trade site it mentions, Maspero’s Exchange, was diagonally across the street from the sandwich place.”…

…Developing the exhibit, Greenwald and her team created a database of names of the enslaved who were shipped from the Eastern states to New Orleans. William Waller and his gang, and other hundreds of thousands arriving by foot, did not leave traces in government records. But people who arrived by ship did.

“We studied hundreds of shipping manifests and compiled data on 70,000 individuals. Of course, that is only some.”

In 1820, the number of ships carrying slaves from Eastern ports into New Orleans was 604. In 1827, it was 1,359. In 1835, it was 4,723. Each carried 5 to 50 slaves.

The auction advertisements at the end of the Slave Trail always said, “Virginia and Maryland Negroes.”

“The words ‘Virginia Negroes’ signaled a kind of brand,” Greenwald says. “It meant compliant, gentle and not broken by overwork.

“One thing that is hard to document but impossible to ignore is the ‘fancy trade.’ New Orleans had a niche market. The ‘fancy trade’ meant women sold as forcible sex partners. They were women of mixed race, invariably. So-called mulatresses.”

Isaac Franklin was all over this market. In 1833, he wrote the office back in Virginia about “fancy girls” he had on hand, and about one in particular whom he wanted. “I sold your fancy girl Alice for $800,” Franklin wrote to Rice Ballard, a partner then in Richmond. “There is great demand for fancy maids, [but] I was disappointed in not finding your Charlottes­ville maid that you promised me.” Franklin told the Virginia office to send the “Charlottesville maid” right away by ship. “Will you send her out or shall I charge you $1,100 for her?”

To maximize her price, Franklin might have sold the “Charlottesville maid” at one of the public auctions in the city. “And the auction setting of choice was a place called the St. Louis Hotel,” Greenwald says, “a block from here.”…

Read the entire article here.

Brazil through French Eyes: A Nineteenth-Century Artist in the Tropics

University of New Mexico Press
October 2015
264 pages
59 halftones
6 x 9 in.
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8263-3745-0

Ana Lucia Araujo, Professor of History
Howard University, Washington, D.C.

In 1858 François-Auguste Biard, a well-known sixty-year-old French artist, arrived in Brazil to explore and depict its jungles and the people who lived there. What did he see and how did he see it? In this book historian Ana Lucia Araujo examines Biard’s Brazil with special attention to what she calls his “tropical romanticism”: a vision of the country with an emphasis on the exotic.

Biard was not only one of the first European artists to encounter and depict native Brazilians, but also one of the first travelers to photograph the rain forest and its inhabitants. His 1862 travelogue Deux années en Brésil includes 180 woodcuts that reveal Brazil’s reliance on slave labor as well as describe the landscape, flora, and fauna, with lively narratives of his adventures and misadventures in the rain forest. Thoroughly researched, Araujo places Biard’s work in the context of the European travel writing of the time and examines how representations of Brazil through French travelogues contributed and reinforced cultural stereotypes and ideas about race and race relations in Brazil. She further summarizes that similar representations continue and influence perspectives today.

Public Symposium — DNA and Indigeneity

Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage (IPinCH)
Simon Fraser University Harbour Centre
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
2015-10-22, 12:30-17:30 PDT (Local Time)

On October 22 at 12:30 pm, join us for the DNA and Indigeneity: The Changing Role of Genetics in Indigenous Rights, Tribal Belonging, and Repatriation conference in downtown Vancouver. This event will bring together an international and interdisciplinary group of archaeologists, anthropologists, bioethicists, geneticists, and representatives from Indigenous organizations to explore the promise and perils of using biological and genetic information to inform understandings of identity. Ultimately, this event will investigate the degree to which biology and genetics currently inform these areas, and—perhaps most importantly—identify the limitations of this approach.

The public symposium will be held at Simon Fraser University Harbour Centre in downtown Vancouver and is free for all to attend (make sure you RSVP). The symposium will include presentations that weave together perspectives from anthropology, bioethics, and genetics.

For more information, click here.

Human Variation: A Genetic Perspective on Diversity, Race, and Medicine

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
2014
131 pages
(21 4C, 5B&W), index
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-621820-90-1
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-936113-25-5

Edited by:

Aravinda Chakravarti, Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics, Molecular Biology & Genetics, and, Biostatistics
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Institute of Genetic Medicine

Since the appearance of modern humans in Africa around 200,000 years ago, we have migrated around the globe and accumulated genetic variations that affect various traits, including our appearance, skin color, food tolerance, and susceptibility to different diseases. Large-scale DNA sequencing is now allowing us to map the patterns of human genetic variation more accurately than ever before, trace our ancestries, and develop personalized therapies for particular diseases. It is also reinforcing the idea that human populations are far from homogeneous, are highly intermixed, and do not fall into distinct races or castes that can be defined genetically.

This book provides a state-of-the-art view of human genetic variation and what we can infer from it, surveying the genetic diversity seen in Africa, Europe, the Americas, and India. The contributors discuss what this can tell us about human history and how it can be used to improve human health. They also caution against assumptions that differences between individuals always stem from our DNA, stressing the importance of nongenetic forces and pointing out the limits of our knowledge. The book is thus essential reading for all human geneticists and anyone interested in how we differ and what this means.

Contents

• Preface
• Perspectives on Human Variation through the Lens of Diversity and Race / Aravinda Chakravarti
• What Type of Person Are You? Old-Fashioned Thinking Even in Modern Science / Kenneth M. Weiss and Brian W. Lambert
• Social Diversity in Humans: Implications and Hidden Consequences for Biological Research / Troy Duster
• Demographic Events and Evolutionary Forces Shaping European Genetic Diversity / Krishna R. Veeramah and John Novembre
• Genetic Variation and Adaptation in Africa: Implications for Human Evolution and Disease / Felicia Gomez, Jibril Hirbo and Sarah A. Tishkoff
• A Genomic View of Peopling and Population Structure of India / Partha P. Majumder and Analahba Basu
• How Genes Have Illuminated the History of Early Americans and Latino Americans / Andres Ruiz-Linares
• Can Genetics Help Us Understand Indian Social History? / Romila Thapar
• Race in Biological and Biomedical Research / Richard S. Cooper
• Personalized Medicine and Human Genetic Diversity / Yi-Fan Lu, David B. Goldstein, Misha Angrist, and Gianpiero Cavalleri
• Index

Do You Have a Cherokee in Your Family Tree?

History News Network
George Mason University
2015-10-18

Gregory D. Smithers, Associate Professor of History
Virginia Commonwealth University

Gregory D. Smithers is an Associate Professor of History at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author of The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous History of Migration, Resettlement, and Identity (Yale University Press, 2015).

Each fall I teach an undergraduate course titled “Native Americans in the South.” The class is designed for juniors and combines historical narrative with analysis of specific events and/or Native American people in the Southeast. On the first day of class I begin by asking students why they’re taking the course and inquire if any have Native American ancestors. This year proved typical: five of forty students claimed they are descended from a great-great Cherokee grandmother.

I’ve become so use to these declarations that I’ve long ceased questioning students about the specifics of their claims. Their imagined genealogies may simply be a product of family lore, or, as is occasionally the case, a genuine connection to a Cherokee family and community. All of these students – whether their claims are flights of fancy or grounded in written and oral evidence – are part of a growing number of Americans who insist they are descended from one or more Cherokee ancestor(s)…

According to the United States Census Bureau, the number of Americans who self-identify as Cherokee or mixed-race Cherokee has grown substantially over the past two decades. In 2000, the federal Census reported that 729,533 Americans self-identified as Cherokee. By 2010, that number increased, with the Census Bureau reporting that 819,105 Americans claiming at least one Cherokee ancestor. The Census Bureau’s decision to allow Americans to self-identify as belonging to one or more racial/ethnic group(s) has meant that “Cherokee” has become by far the most popular self-ascribed Native American identity. “Navajo” is a distant second…

Read the entire article here.