Don't 'Brown' the Hispanics
Consider the following headline: "Reading scores of blacks and Hispanics improve: Scores of whites show little change." Like many such news reports, this one is not only misleading, but also it's wrong because it does not account for the fact that roughly half of Hispanics in the United States are white.
Consider the following headline: "Reading scores of blacks and Hispanics improve: Scores of whites show little change." Like many such news reports, this one is not only misleading, but also it's wrong because it does not account for the fact that roughly half of Hispanics in the United States are white.
In the minds of millions of Americans, this kind of all-too-common wording shrinks the proportion of Americans who are white and inflates the proportion of people who aren't. Yet there is not an easy way to avoid this error, because most information available about Hispanics does not allow reporters to distinguish white Hispanics from others. Worse, the information there often transforms Hispanics into members of a distinct race; they become "brown" Americans. Various news media have approached this challenge in different ways, but each strategy comes with some surprising sociological implications.
In typical government reports, as well as other data-driven publications, information about racial and ethnic differences is published in two basic forms. One uses merely racial categories (such as black, white, Asian and so on). This practice makes Hispanics vanish, as they are incorporated into various racial categories, including the particularly uninformative one of "some other race." Data are also released in ways that compare Hispanics to various racial groups, but this is like comparing apples, oranges, pears and--cars, since racial categories and ethic groups are very different sociological creatures. As one observer puts it, "From a social science viewpoint, this [kind of comparison] makes no sense at all; but this is the way it has been established, this is the way it is done." Most responsible data providers do add a footnote stating that "Persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race," but this is about as helpful as saying, "Note: We just made meaningful comparisons impossible."
Race in the United States is largely in the eyes of the beholder. People are not boxed in according to their blood or any other physiological traits (which, by the way, would blur the racial lines in a jiffy)-but according to what they claim they are. When the U.S. Census Bureau reports that a given percentage of Americans are black or white, it basically relies on what Americans themselves mark on census forms. (Fearful that some blacks might identify themselves as white, which would result in smaller government allotments to boost affirmative action and less funding targeted toward minorities, the NAACP urged people with one white parent and one black parent to check only the black category during the 2000 census.) When those who identified themselves as Hispanic were asked during that census to what race they belong, 48 percent responded white, two percent selected black, 42 percent chose "some other race" (some analyses show that many of these wrote in Hispanic or Latino as an "other race") and six percent checked more than one race.
Differing responses among Hispanics bedevil comparisons with various racial groups. When attempts are made to compare aspects of Hispanics' life circumstances to those of whites, those who make such comparisons usually disregard the fact that about half of Hispanics are, in fact, white. And those who make such comparisons do not begin to know how to handle the race called "other." But perhaps the biggest fauxpas is that Hispanics are not a race, and this renders all such comparisons dubious from the start.
Why Words Matter
Journalists deal with this challenge in a variety of ways. Some reporters write about differences in behavior and attitudes in terms of non-Hispanic whites, Hispanics and blacks. For instance, from The Washington Post (June 2005) comes the phrase, "Hispanics are younger and poorer on average than non-Hispanic whites," and from a February story in The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, "Hispanics are twice as likely as non-Hispanic whites to fall prey to scams.. . ." Such wording has the merit of reminding the reader that some Hispanics are white, but learning that merely serves to remind us that
such comparisons make little sense for reasons already cited. It is also an awkward term that most headline writers and many reporters avoid, according to a survey of such usage that I conducted in 2005.'
It is much more common for journalists to implicitly refer to Hispanics as if they are members of a distinct race. This occurs when news stories place next to one another blacks, whites and Hispanics (or blacks, whites, Asians and Hispanics). This error seems particularly prevalent in coverage of the education achievement gap, as happened in a December 2005 article in The Hartford Courant when the following sentence appeared: "The proposal is especially relevant to the district's goal of closing the achievement gap among white, black, Hispanic and Asian students." Other examples include:
- In July 2005, Fox News reported that “Achievement gaps between white and black and Hispanic students remain."
- The New York Times used such a comparison in a March 2006 story about racial differences in computer usage: "The Internet was bypassing blacks and some Hispanics as whites and Asian Americans were rapidly increasing their use of it."
- In a story the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published in January 2006, similar inaccurate wording appeared: "The same number of African Americans, Hispanics and Asians are opposed to abortion as whites."
- A March 2006 article in The Economist read: "The obvious correlation is with economic status: Whites and Asians are at the top of the heap while Latinos and blacks struggle at the bottom."
This all-too-common formulation tends to make readers think they are dealing with racial comparisons, but actually references such as these involve two or more racial groups and-an ethnic one.
When Hispanics are explicitly treated as if they are a racial group, no room for doubt in readers' minds is left, as can be seen in the following article excerpts.
- "To ease racial tensions, black prisoners had been separated from Latinos. Inmates of both races complained that they had not been allowed to shower, phone home, or put on clean clothes," from the Los Angeles Times, February 2006.
- "Hispanic students were less likely than those from any other racial group to even take the SAT," from The New York Times, March 2006.
- "Blacks, Hispanics and other racial minorities accounted for more than 80 percent of population growth," from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 2006.
Sometimes the news media go a step further and refer to a "race" rarely mentioned-brown Americans.
- "Growing Up Brown in a Border Town" was the headline of a story on National Public Radio's show "All Things Considered" in May 2006.
- "Vaca appeared at California State University, Sacramento, earlier this month to discuss black-brown tensions," wrote The Sacramento Bee in April 2006.
-"Certainly, not all Mexicans see Memin as a goodhearted black kid whose ready wit and quick thinking get his brown and white schoolmates out of jams," wrote The Dallas Morning News in July 2005.
- The American Editor, published by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, advised in December 2005 that reporters "must now cover the future work force that will have a majority of black and brown faces – many of whom are less educated than the white workers they will replace."
These examples indicate that many news organizations do not appear to have explicit editorial policies concerning how and when to properly use the term "Hispanic." In my informal survey of articles, I found that the same publication, for example, used the term differently. At times, Hispanic appears as a race; sometimes it's an ethnicity. For example, on February 10,2005 the Los Angeles Times referred to Latino as a racial category in its description of the Michael Jackson jury: "The majority of the panelists were white, with about a third Latino and a half-dozen African Americans-roughly in line with the area's racial makeup." Yet on May 29, 2005, that newspaper ran a headline that referred to Latino as an ethnic group: "Latino Bloc Has Far to Go; For myriad reasons, L.A.'s largest ethnic group hasn't harnessed its full political power." When editors there were queried about their policy, they chose not to respond.
When there is a policy, it seems not to be enforced. For example, reporters with The Associated Press (AP) have not followed the dictates of the 2005 edition of "The Associated Press Stylebook" to treat Hispanics as an ethnic, not a racial, group. In February 2005, one AP national writer wrote, "Last year, telecommunications giant
Verizon used a fictional interracial family-white and Hispanic-in seven commercials pushing their communications products." Another AP story in 2005 contained these words: "Among the racial groups, most gaps in reading and math scores showed some narrowing. Black and Hispanic students scored higher in reading than in the 1970's, with 9-year-olds in both groups posting their best scores yet." Describing a jury pool in Milwaukee, a third AP reporter wrote in April 2006, "Races of people in the pool are 70 percent white; 19 percent black; 7.5 percent Hispanic; 3 percent Asian, and 0.5 percent American Indian."
Using Different Identities
There is good reason to sort this matter out. To characterize a group of people as a distinct race-and for them and others to start to regard themselves in this way-is to create a divide where there was once only a space. Race is a place you cannot leave, nor your children, nor theirs. Ethnic lines are muted and apt to blur in future generations. For those identified as being nonwhite in North America, they belong to a minority with a keen sense of separateness, if not discrimination and victimization often associated with such a label. In contrast, as members of an ethnic group, typically they feel that they are as American as apple pie, even if they prefer flan. After all, every American is a member of one ethnic group or another, so to draw racial lines where none exists is to divide Americans even more, which is detrimental to societal well-being.
Moreover, viewing Hispanics as members of a distinct race tends to detract attention from what is one of the most significant sociological changes in American society-the decline in the importance of race. For many decades, American society was divided into black and white, terms reflecting a shameful era in our nation's history. Racial conflicts and tensions have subsided in recent decades, but have far from disappeared. Like other minority groups, some Hispanics feel discriminated against, but as a group they do not share the same sense of alienation that many African Americans did and do. And as they become more socially and politically active, Hispanics are destined to soften lines that divide Americans-unless they are racially identified, unless they are browned.
There is an admittedly maverick way for journalists to deal with this identity dilemma. Drop racial categories all together and use instead the much less divisive ethnic categories based on country of origin. Terms such as European American, African American, Hispanic American (for those who come from South of the border) and Asian American (including those from Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia who are now categorized as white). One might wonder what term ought to be used to refer to Australian Americans,
New Zealand Americans, and the more numerous Canadian Americans. It would be a stretch to lump them with European Americans, although this approach might suffice.
For more detailed purposes, the use of regional terms such as Southeast Asian Americans, Middle Eastern Americans, and Caribbean Americans might work. If more detail is needed, follow the long-established practice of referring to Polish Americans, Irish Americans, Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, Haitian Americans, Iraqi Americans, and so on. Categorizing people in this way would recognize the empirical fact that countries of origin and ethnicity are often much more meaningful than "race." Thus the differences between Cambodian Americans and Vietnamese Americans on the one hand and Japanese Americans and Korean Americans on the other are substantially higher than the differences between these 'yelIow' Americans and some white groups. And the differences between Cuban Americans and Mexican Americans are larger on many dimensions than the differences between Cuban Americans and, for example, West Indian Americans. Thus, instead of turning an ethnic group into a race, we'd think about
races as if they were nothing more than ethnic groups.
By focusing on country of origin and using terms such as Mexican American or Japanese American, journalists could play an important role in reminding all Americans that while our forebears arrived in different boats, we now sail on the same ship. Identifications of
this sort would stress that differences among us, although far from trivial, are transitional. We are not different tribes that happen to reside next to one another on one piece of land, but one people.
1This survey was done with the use of Google, enabling the author to look at the first 100 mentions of Hispanics in news stories to determine how they were characterized. This method was repeated and the breakdowns reported in this article were found to be essentially the same.
This article has been published in the Nieman Reports Fall 2006 pp. 64-67. Another article on the same topic, “Leaving Race Behind” was published in The American Scholar Spring 2006 pp. 20-30.
Summary: if you are using 3 categories rather than 100, some information is lost. Duh.
Big categories are needed to conduct polls with realistic numbers of respondents (say, under 10,000) because small categories are subject to abysmal poling accuracy and thus not particularly useful. When the number from large categories are INTERPRETED, fine picture is useful.
And of course NO categorization will capture infinite variation that we actually observe. Say that a Polish citizen with Vietnamese-born parents immigrates -- does he become a Polish-American or Vietnamese-American, or a Thoroughly-Deracinated-American? (Or a Chinese-looking Polish citizen with grandparents from Mongolia, Russia and Poland, 75% Caucasian by blood?)
October 6, 2006 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Do you understand nothing?
When I asked my son if he would like to go to Finland with us where my mother's parents came from, he said he wasn't particularly interested because he was Irish. If his mother's touch of Cherokee blood was found to be something else - like for instance the vanishing slaves - then he would be an African-American instead. Nothing else counts you see.
It's so easy if you are logical about these things.
Best, Terry
October 6, 2006 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually I think identity is not determined by what you check on the census form but by what your enemies call you.
The Nazis made an arbitary rule about who was a Jew and then broke it when they need some important people to continue in their jobs. If you are walking down the street and people consider you "black" then you are black.
Fifty years ago Asians (orientals at the time) were not "white". Now they (almost) are. The same thing was true 100 years ago with the Irish and the Italians. Discrimination based upon skin color is still the biggest problem in the US, whether people are willing to admit it or not.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
October 6, 2006 1:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
No it isn't.
A Greek juror in the OJ civil trial was asked if the jury convicted OJ of murder - er, tort of causing the death of two people by sticking them with a sharp object because of the color of his skin. The lady sniffed that her skin was darker than OJ's. Sure looked like it.
People see what they want to see.
Care to define "white" for us? Apartheidists in South Africa had lots of trouble with that weighty matter. Experts differed plenty.
You might want to look into Gypsies for some understanding of matters. I recommend "Bury Me Standing" - [because I have spent my life on my knees].
Jews have been known to be discriminated against. See the Watergate tapes for accounts.
Hey, how about us Saami? Never heard of us? Now that really is discrimination.
BTW we are all mongrels.
Best, Terry
October 6, 2006 1:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm Macacan.
October 6, 2006 2:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
I guess I put you down in the "whether you believe it or not" category. Those subject to discrimination seem to feel differently, however.
Try this link to see what blacks think of the situation.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
October 6, 2006 3:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
rdf,
What's a "black?"
It is not an idle question. I tried to point out some problems to you but you weren't listening. Few do.
Look at this way:
- Is a sub-Saharan African a black? Would a Nigerian with black skin and even black pupils qualify as a black in your book?
- Would you find discrimination by African-Americans, some of whom have no identifiable African heritage in their DNA against such a person be offensive to you?
- Do you find it impossible to contemplate such a situation? You shouldn't. You see at least some African-Americans can tell you the Africans were not subjected to the hisory of slavery with their mothers violated by slave owners and -- Do you notice that the African-Americans are [gasp] part - umm, ahh - "white."
One very separate group in our midst with their own language and very distinct customs are Gypsies. One Gypsy complained to me that when a theft occurred people were always ready to accuse him though he had never stolen anything and tried to take precautions to prevent from being accused. Do you find it surprising? Would you be glad to hire a Gypsy? Would you like to have a Gypsy move into your neighborhood? It is not just a rhetorical question. By the way some Gypsies are very good at utilizing the situation to their benefit. This is a people that have astounding survival skills. :-)
The poorest of the poor in this country are Native Americans. Do you think that is because they are genetically inferior or is it something else you think? Could it possibly be that there is some discrimination against a conguered people once hunted like wild animals?
By the way the "illegal immigrants" have a considerable admixture of Native American.
When one patriot shot and killed a Sikh because he wore a turban after Timothy McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City and people were looking for Middle East terrorists, all involved were caucasians, including the Sikh. The patriotic murderer only looked at the turban and maybe the color of his skin. Again what's a "white?"
In truth, my friend, we are all mongrels. The artificial divisions of prejudice deny it and propose such things as skin color or shape of the eye or nose or accent or religion or God knows what all.
Are you certain it is all about the skin color of "blacks?" What's a "black?"
Best, Terry
October 6, 2006 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Whoops - now we are really screwed. Recent dna research has shown that the Brits are itinerate Spaniards.
Ananova: Brits 'descended from Spanish fishermen'
Neoboho
October 6, 2006 3:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'll bet Saami are at best tri-hybreds, a notch down from true mongrel.
Neoboho
October 6, 2006 3:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not only I never heard about "Saami" but I also suspect that you are a Lapp.
October 6, 2006 4:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'll try one last time. Being "black" or any other group is not a function of DNA, inheritance or any other objective criteria. It is in the eye (or mind) of the beholder, that is the person who discriminates.
So if people are discriminated against because others feel that they are "black" then for all intents and purposes they are. Discrimination isn't based upon logic, its is based upon prejudice and illogic.
I suggest you read some of the literature from the period when Jim Crow was just starting to see how it affected people who had grown up without such constraints. Two excellent writers are James Weldon Johnson and Charles Chesnutt. They both wrote about people who tried to "pass" as well as their own experiences.
As I said previously at one time Italians and Irish weren't considered "white" in this country. This is not DNA, it is a social phenomena. And it is still the most important unresolved issue in the country.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
October 6, 2006 5:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
terryhallinan said
In truth, my friend, we are all mongrels. The artificial divisions of prejudice deny it and propose such things as skin color or shape of the eye or nose or accent or religion or God knows what all.
Are you certain it is all about the skin color of "blacks?" What's a "black?"
I'm a little confused about what point you are trying to make. Are we all part of the same human race? Yes. Do some use skin color, accent or facial characteristics to categorize others as lesser beings? Yes. What does the comment about artificial divisions of prejudice mean? Does prejudice exist or does it not?
A WSJ article from 09/11/2006 entitled "Minorities Pay More For Loans" revealed that 55% of African-Americans, 46% of Hispanic Whites but 17% of non-Hispanic Whites pay high interest rates on mortage loans. The higher interest rates could merely reflect different income levels. Another possibility is that since loan officers have leeway in what types of loans they can direct people to apply for, could some racial bias or possible taking advantage of groups who are not experienced home buyers be playing a role? Should further study be done or should this observation be ignored because race is one possible part of the equation?
A WSJ article on 09/15/2006 entitled "Trouble In Paradise: Blacks Report Bias In Second-Home Areas: A Message Found on the Door" relates stories of refusing to close a home sale once the owner found that they couple he agreed to sell to was Black. Some country clubs were hostile to having Blacks on the premises. While having the cash to face bias in purchasing an upper-tier home or to purchase a country club membership may be nice, discrimination is not.
Is it possible that other members of society do not have your confusion in differentiating Black from White? Your color-blindness regarding race is admirable, but may keep you from recognizing problems in others that do impact Black lives.
Another aspect of race that is important concerns biologic variations affecting responses to drugs, for example. While we are all human, there are likely some enzymes that developed as part of the natural evolutionary process that enhanced survival in certain global regions, but were not as important in other regions. These enzymes may occur in a higher percentage in certain racial groups (for lack of a better term) than other groups. The response to certain drugs may differ in the different groups. A drug BiDil(hydralazine + isorbide dinitrate) was released by the FDA in June for treatment of heart failure in Blacks based on data that it was a more effective therapy in Blacks than Whites. Until we can do protein mapping in individual to help predict drug responses, should we not study differing pharmacology in different racial groups?
As I mentioned I was confused about your inability to define what is a "Black", especially since you added prejudice in your commentary. Is race off the table in all discussions for you?
October 6, 2006 7:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is your problem, not mine. There is no black race. There is no white race.
Exactly the problem.
You think apartheid medicine is a fine idea, particularly when it is flawed?
What would you think of a heart drug that seems efficacious for whites but not for blacks? There is such a drug by the way that is being developed after lengthy delay because of the problem of excluding minorities.
If you understand that it is not the color of the skin that determines efficacy but rather genes that can show ancestry, you are on your way to a solution and more appropriate medication. BiDil would then be seen to be more appropriately administered to those with requisite alleles rather than those who belong to an ethnic culture.
Racial prejudice needlessly muddies medicine just as it does other facets of life.
To give you an insight into what is involved, consider Herceptin, a very successful treatment for breast cancer but one that is successful only for those with a certain genetic endowment. The HER2 oncogene can cause a very aggressive inherited breast cancer.
That oncogene is much more prevalent in Ashkenazi Jews than others. If one had separately tested Jews and gentiles, then one might have found a treatment for Jews but not gentiles. Such a finding would have some utility but would obviously be flawed. Some would get the drug for whom it was worthless and others that might be helped would be excluded because they had the wrong religious beliefs. Bad idea don't you think?
Best, Terry
October 6, 2006 9:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
The pigmentation of your skin, the color of your eyes and other features are certainly determined by your genes. Why do you think they are not?
What is not determined by your genes is the prejudices that you and others carry. That is a function of misinformation that produces statements like the above.
I think Vonnegut called people with the same birthdate members of a kraal or some such. In his own peculiar way, Vonnegut pointed out the stupidity of grouping people in ways that had no particular meaning at all.
Rush Limbaugh and David Duke can point to all sorts of mythical qualities in imaginary racial groupings that are nonsensical in the first place. Why should any believe that sort of nonsense? Is it not hurtful to all?
That has nothing to do with remedying injustices that are a hangover from such prejudice. Understanding the superstition provides a much sounder basis for overcoming it don't you think?
Of course if you want to believe blondes are dumber than whale blubber, feel free. We all know that is true - even we blondes who are not female and uglier than sin. :-)
We still aren't by those who know a white race is a farce.
Best, Terry
October 6, 2006 9:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Aarg; it's just Prof. Etzioni, our resident conservative, doing his best to put a fork into identity politics. Any day now I expect to witness Dinesh D'Souza posting here, as well.
October 6, 2006 10:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
In my reply I stated that until pharmacogenetic testing is routine for a host of diseases, race could be used as a surrogate. In your HER2 example both Jew and gentile with the oncogene would be treated.
You are worried about medical apartheid. Are you aware that currently despite equivalent insurance programs, Blacks with coronary artery disease are less likely to receive agressive treatment when compared to Whites? Should there be no exploration of this because we're all the same race?
There was no comment on the examples of housing discrimination in my post. You seem to be fixated on living in your color-blind cocoon. Your statement that race is my problem and not yours is true to a larger extent then you seem to realize. I'm fine in my skin. Some in society are not happy with my skin. Not the majority, but some. Sometimes subtly, rarely overtly.
I guess what confuses me about your position is that on one hand you believe that we're all the same race, then I read "Racial prejudice needlessly muddies medicine just as it does other facets of life." You also worry about medical apartheid. I'm confused. All the same or separated by some by race. I know - not your problem. I don't mean to sound harsh I'm just not getting your point.
If someone comes into contact with a person who DOES see race and is prejudiced (which you seem to recognize does exist), is the idea to bury your head in the sand? What response do you suggest? I have a feeling that you may not have "a dog in the fight" concerning skin color or accent and thus may be unaware of what "racial" incidents others encounter or how they are manifest.
Finally, thanks for condescending to give me insight into the problem of racially based research. Of course, I would mention there are some young Black women who present with an aggressive form of breast cancer not related to oncogenes that have been well studied. Looking into the factors, be they environmental or genetic, causing this disorder would be a useful area of exploration and will likely be applicable to other groups with aggressive breast cancer not elated to currently identifiable factors.
October 6, 2006 11:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps not everyone is as aware as yourself that Ashkenazi Jewish women are particularly susceptible to inheritance of the HER2 oncogene.
May I uncondescendingly suggest that one can never be sure of the cause of cancer. Indeed epidemiological studies suggest environmental causes seem to be at the root of younger women having more breast cancer as well as more aggressive cancers.
More than that:
October 7, 2006 8:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
rmrd,
You are dead wrong about that.
We all do.
Best, Terry
October 7, 2006 8:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
You seem to be operating under the belief that people who see skin color, religous differences, and detect accents are condoning rascism. I am confused by this position. There is wonder in the phenotypic variation in the human presentation. Understanding how another's land of origin, religion, and yes skin color impact their interpretation of current events, history and society in general expands my worldview.
On one level an insistence that we are all the same is like the toddler who closes his eyes and believes that the situation he was confronted with when his eyes were open has gone away. The great prophet of the 20th and 21st century, Oprah Winfrey, has said if you don't see color then you don't see me :). Realizing that there are skin color differences is not a position that condones ill treatment of one group by another. In fact a person who recognizes phenotypic differences between himself and another and remains accepting has the expanded mindset.
I continue to be confused by your opinion. Do racial differences exist be it skin color, gene expression etc? Yes. Are we all human? Yes. Are these differences a wonder to behold? Yes. Does this position condone rascism? No.
You agree that rascism does exist, your solution is to point out that we are all the same and that rascism is should not exist. Wow! Rascism should not exist, deep insight-but having no influence in the real world and spoken from a position of safety, being above the fray.
Do you feel superior to those lesser homo sapiens who recognize differences in other homo sapiens. If you feel superior to other humans, by being "color-blind", what does that make you?
October 7, 2006 8:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
May I uncondescendingly suggest that one can never be sure of the cause of cancer. Indeed epidemiological studies suggest environmental causes seem to be at the root of younger women having more breast cancer as well as more aggressive cancers.
I thought I mentioned that in my post by stating
"Looking into the factors, be they environmental or genetic, causing this disorder would be a useful area of exploration and will likely be applicable to other groups with aggressive breast cancer not elated to currently identifiable factors." But thanks for uncondescendingly telling me about the environmental part.
Let me clarify I'm just trying to understand your point. When you say "Of course there are races. If one is even sentient it is not terribly difficult to tell whether one is in Tokyo or Stockholm or Lagos from the appearance of the people." you agree that race exists. If I classified the population of Stockholm as mostly White, of Tokyo as mostly Asian, and Lagos as mostly Black, is that rascist? If a hypertension medication given to the different populations and resulted in diffent levels of blood pressure control, would it be rascist to attempt to repeat the drug trial in the US with populations defined as White, Black and Asian? If no racial definition is allowed what type of drug trial would you propose?
To me the drug trial would make sense and might prevent using a drug with a lower likelihood of lowering BP as the first line agent in a member of a given racial group. If the results were duplicated and demonstrated a racial differential in the US( the US Whites Blacks and Asians which would differ from the Swedes, Japanese and Lagoians, but may maintain some genotypic features). Yes the drug might work in a given member of any the three groups, but given the expense of a drug, I might reserve it as a backup drug rather than a first line drug based on race if that group had a lower response rate to the drug. Is that not allowed?
October 7, 2006 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
A few things:
PARAGRAPHS PLEASE.
Okay, I'm a "brown" hispanic by skin color and I've never been quite able to figure out what is meant by white hispanic.
Do you mean the European looking people in Argentina/Brazil? Do you mean the "black" hispanics from the carribbean? Where are these non-brown Hispanics?
October 7, 2006 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
You touch upon a failing of a lot of well meaning and not so well meaning people. Folks, race matters! We can stick our heads in the sand and pretend otherwise (unfortunately, a lot of liberals fall into this trap), but race does matter in our society, and is the key determinant in lot of our interactions.
Of course, we KNOW that biologically speaking, there is no such thing as 'separate' races. But SOCIALLY speaking, you better believe there is, and it's foolish to think otherwise.
Why are there such disparties in wealth, health, quality of life, residental patterns and anything else you can think of? It sure isn't the color of a person's eyes...
October 7, 2006 8:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
When I read that I thought it may refer to Europeans who emigrated to South America and who's descendants eventually emigrated to the USA.
October 8, 2006 6:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
You raise an interesting question which is highlighted by some charts in today's NY Times Week in Review section.
One of them shows "hispanics" as now being about 20% of the population (as opposed to white, black, etc.). Now it seems to me that "hispanics" are of three primary origins: indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africans and Europeans. And of course by now many people are mixtures. So if a European-origin hispanic moves to the US then it is their choice whether to acknowledge their background or not - they could just as easily list themselves as "white" as would an Italian or Greek.
After a generation or so European hispanics can chose their identity, but this option will not be as available to African and Indian origin hispanics. So, it would seem that the "hispanic" category is not only misleading, but is probably being used to inflame racism.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
October 8, 2006 7:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Moreover, viewing Hispanics as members of a distinct race tends to detract attention from what is one of the most significant sociological changes in American society-the decline in the importance of race."
That's no doubt true, but in my view it is probably more accurate to say that the construction of race and ethnicity has changed in America rather than simply become less important. Whiteness has become monolithic, making little distinction between German-Americans and English blue bloods, Scots-Irish and Irish Catholics. Even Jews are now whites (aren't they?). Something similiar has happened to Hispanics and Asians, although clearly this hasn't worked to the advantage of either group in the same way it has for say Irish Catholics (it was generally the case among my father's New England kin in the second half of 19th and first half of the twentieth century that you married the Germans, did business with the Jews, pitied the "negro" and hated the "Irish" [which by that time no longer meant the Scots-Irish [who were of course never really Irish] but the Irish Catholics]). On the other hand, intermarriage (including between European whites and Hispanics) is accelerating, and today's categories will ultimately become irrelevant as well. My own feeling is that this may not happen for several centuries though. In some sense, the postmodern construction of race and ethnicity may persist until American civilization is transformed by the arrival of a new global faith and the end of this latest multicultural epoch (a similiar thing happened to race and ethnicity during the Roman Empire, and the coming of Christianity).
"Race is a place you cannot leave, nor your children, nor theirs."
Unless of course you intermarry, which has been more possible for some groups than others in this country. I'm a Mason-Dixon half-breed, 100% Northern on my father's side and 100% Southern on my mother's side. There are three lines of Cherokee indian on my mother's side, and in each case there was intermarriage with whites in the 18th and early 19th centuries (which doesn't mean an absence of discrimination). All of these people (or their immediate descendants) went into the mountains (that is southeast Kentucky), which was at that time full of bootleggers, fugitives, runaway slaves, Sephardic Jews, other melungeons. and people just generally wanting to escape the laws, taxation, and social strictures of the east; a greater tolerance flourished. Interestingly, some of the most successful people on my mother's side during the 19th century were part-indian (and almost certainly looked it). The first generation to show up in the records (along one of the three lines) was a half (or more) Cherokee prize fighter (of the same generation as Thomas Jefferson) who married an indian girl (that had been raised by whites, allegedly after being picked up by mistake during a rescue raid on a Cherokee camp [where several white kids were being held]). One of their grandsons was a man by the name of Hiram Begley. He was a prize fighter and politician in southeast Kentucky, a judge, high sheriff, and member of the Kentucky state legislature (in the years before the Civil War).
I'll finish this post in a moment...
Linus: rounder of numbers, baker of pies, scorner of mesh.
October 8, 2006 9:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
On other hand, I was raised (through no intentional deception of my father) to believe that my direct paternal ancestors were Germans. As a matter of fact, they were German Jews who converted to Christianity in the first half of the nineteenth century. I'm also 70-some percent English and Welsh, 80-some percent British, and 90-some percent Anglo-European Christian. My people haven't been practicing Jews for more than 150 years, and I don't look especially Jewish. Yet, a strangely large percentage of my friends growing up (and my father's friends, and his father's friends) were Jewish. My first crush was Jewish, and during adolescence I had a strange obsession with Judaism and Israel.
So much for converting...
Linus: rounder of numbers, baker of pies, scorner of mesh.
October 8, 2006 9:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Sunday Times - Britain
The Sunday Times October 08, 2006
Island DNA clue to serial rapist
POLICE are to launch a new appeal in the hunt for a serial sex attacker suspected of assaults on 32 elderly women, after DNA tests established his ancestors came from the Windward Islands in the Caribbean, writes Robert Booth.
The man, known as “the Night Stalker”, is thought to have been responsible for 98 offences — including burglary — against women aged between 68 and 93 in south London. He is said by police to be a light-skinned black man about 35 years old and is known as a “gerontophile” — someone who feels a sexual attraction to old people...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2393936,00.html
Superstitious prejudice against race is so powerful that a powerful forensic tool for identifying the racial admixture of perps and even sometimes victims from DNA is rarely utilized.
One serial killer, Derrick Todd Lee, was put out of business and eventually received a death sentence largely because of the software. Witnesses described a white man and profilers predicted a "white" man. The DNA told a different story the murderer was then quickly identified.
People would rather other Derrick Todd Lee's continue raping and murdering young women rather than touch on racial prejudices.
Of interest perhaps is that the geneticist largely responsible for development of the forensic software is married to one of those "no race" Hispanics, a Mexican, who was not identified as such early on because of a rather rare DNA profile. As you might guess, the "problem" has been corrected.
Might it not be obvious from discussion that skin pigmentation is not, not, not all there is to race.
Denial should be only a river in Egypt. Sadly it is all too human.
Best, Terry
October 8, 2006 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Terry
Let me try again. The point that I and, I believe, rdf want to make is that yes, we are all part of the human race. Does skin color make a difference in some interactions that occcur with some other human beings? Yes.
Let me ask directly if I may- Do you believe that some human beings living in the United States today who are dark-skinned do confront some barriers based on skin color? (See the WSJ article above citing the problems some found in purchasing homes in high income areas and utilizing country club access. Another source is Otis Graham a black-skinned lawyer who has written about such subtle events as seating arrangements in restaurants given to dark-skinned). A simple yes or no answer will suffice.
October 8, 2006 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
rmrd,
It might be helpful if you address what I write.
If you want to ask and answer your own questions, why bother trying to hold a discussion? What is the point of the obvious? You are obsessed with skin color to the exclusion of reasonable conversation.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes there is prejudice against people because of skin color - as well as all sorts of other things of no consequence.
I have made no claim that there is no prejudice that overrules reason and handicaps thought and social interaction. You are proof enough. You have made all sorts of accusations against me that have no basis whatever except your own prejudices.
I had a rather odd thing happen once. A customer in a flea market wanted to know if another dealer was around. He startled me when he asked about the "black guy." We had known Carl for years. I asked my wife if she thought of Carl as "black." She said no. Undoubtedly his skin was quite dark. We had just never thought about it one way or another. Do you think we should classify people as white and black? Are we bereft of appropriate sensitivity? I think it a very bad idea frankly to look at people in only black and white, especially since it not terribly meaningful unless they are victimized in some way by idiots who think it does matter.
Race does matter in ways that I have mentioned. It matters a great deal, for instance, in dealing with disease. And yet it is overruled by ethnicity.
Consider the "caucasian disease" - cystic fibrosis. The children of Allen's "macacas" are underdiagnosed with cystic fibrosis. Doctors look at skin color and decide the children are not caucasians.
You think macacas are "blacks?"
Do you see a problem?
By the way the brown and white hispanics are - hispanics.
Best, Terry
October 8, 2006 2:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes there is prejudice against people because of skin color - as well as all sorts of other things of no consequence.
I have made no claim that there is no prejudice that overrules reason and handicaps thought and social interaction. You are proof enough. You have made all sorts of accusations against me that have no basis whatever except your own prejudices.
Actually the only reason for posing the question was that I was merely trying to gain some insight into what your perspective was of how skin color could impact some day to day interactions. I started out saying that I admired your color-blind point of view, but I do feel that it does not reflect the reality that many face. In fact in your CF example, you point other that skin color may delay diagnosis.
My approach to this type of problem would be an educational message that people with darker skin tones should not have CF ruled out or (as I had mentioned earlier) be less likely to undergo aggressive therapy for CAD. In the educational message, if there is no mention of skin color, an important predictive factor in determining diagnosis or therapy may be lost.
This is where my confusion occurs, if some physicians rule out CF as a possible diagnosis based on skin color, how can they be re-educate these physicians if skin color is not mentioned?
If such an educational platform that mentions skin color would make me skin color obsessed, i plead guilty.
I am sorry if my questions upset you, I was merely trying to gain information on your position and clearing up my confusion. I'm sorry if my questions appeared ham-handed.
Finally, George Allen is a former frat boy, permanent idiot who gives a poor image of Virginia. He may be re-elected. a macaca is a species of monkey. Since it takes one to know one, if Allen wants to see a macaca, he just needs to look in the mirror. I do not consider you to be in Allen's category.
October 8, 2006 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe one could try to tell them that there are no white and black races. Possibly one or two would listen.
DNAWitness is a forensic program that provides hints as to the race of perpetraters of crimes from DNA that is not found in criminal data bases. Within the usual 95% confidence interval, it can provide racial admixtures and eye color.
The software is only seldom employed. Been a huge money loser. When it is employed, it tends to be both misunderstood and then abused.
While liberals tend to deny that such a capability exists with a categorical proclamation there is no such thing as race, cops tend to see things in - ummm - black and white.
An addition to the software printed out pictures of people with given racial admixtures. For all the good it did. The cops instead of utilizing the "fuzzy picture" as an investigative tool would start asking minorities for DNA samples with little regard to what they were given. You could see that happen in the referenced article from England.
A powerful tool lays waste because people cannot overcome their prejudices and see rather what they wish to see rather than what is in front of them.
It is not terribly different with the FDA roundfiling advice to utilize the same type of DNA tests in clinical trials.
The FDA can advise doctors that "Asians" are more susceptible to muscle-wasting disease from statins than other Americans but doesn't advise doctors on what an Asian might be. It might be helpful to know don't you think?
On a trip, I once met another Vietnam veteran and for the first and only time I went to a club for Vietnam veterans and had a drink with the fellow. We both had something in common besides Vietnam. Both of our fathers had come from Ireland. But because his mother was a Native American and mine was a Finn, it seemed he was a Native American while I was Irishman. Isn't there something wrong with the math there somehow? Aren't we both likely equally susceptible to the "Celtic Curse?" [No, not booze but hemochromatosis.]
Of course my one-time acquaintance had quite different lifetime experiences because he was lumped in with all Native Americans but that is a different tale altogether.
Best, Terry
October 8, 2006 5:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe one could try to tell them that there are no white and black races. Possibly one or two would listen.
With few responding to the message, from a public health standpoint, the overall impact would be nil.
Thanks for the exchanges
October 8, 2006 5:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
<>Hispanic is pretty clunky, but you've got to be careful when you find the Feds using these sorts of terms. For one thing, the Feds have to use political classes rather than racial or ethnic classes in order to avoid violating federal civil rights laws. The meaning of hispanic is clear, and at least originally it referred to people and their families who were historically "the people of the ceded territory..." in the Guadelupe Hildago and Gadsen treaties. It's because Hispanic was conceived as a political class that racial and ethnic contradictions appear. To the Feds, the term was never intended to refer to race, national origin, ethnicity etc. It was meant to refer to a group of people who are members of a protected political class who had historically suffered discrimination in the U.S.
I am curious about the term "white hispanic" - what Fed agency uses it? I think the Census does, but I'm not sure.
<><> NeobohoOctober 9, 2006 9:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
The topic of Hispanics and race is actually pretty simple since the words have nothing to do with one another. The word Hispanic by definition refers to national origin (just like the word Canadian or American). Therefore Hispanics can be of any race. Cameron Diaz, Emelio Estevez, Jimmy Smits, Sammy Sosa and Alberto Fujimori are all Hispanic but are not all members of the same race. Many millions of Hispanic Americans are descended from Spain and other European countries. Like their ancestors, these Hispanics are white. Unfortunately, these facts has been repeatedly overlooked out of ignorance, arrogance, and worst of all, convenience. There is much more information at whitehispanic.com.
October 9, 2006 9:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
A number of physicians believe that the hell of the slave ships caused genetic selection in, for human generations, an incredibly short time. It appears that genes that predispose to sodium retention (think salt) also conserve water. People who didn't have this genetic coding may have died of dehydration in the slave ships.
So, "blacks" that specifically have slaveship ancestry appear to respond best, as a first antihypertensive drug, to the class of thiazide diuretics -- which causes sodium or water retention.
In contrast, I have a number of friends who were born in Sierra Leone, and the cardiologist that sees the family will start a modern African immigrant on an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE)inhibitor or a beta blocker. Now, any one of these drugs is a reasonable first drug for hypertension, and people commonly wind up on two or more. My own hypertension regimen, which also has components for angina, uses eight drugs.
ACE inhibitors are a little more expensive than the other two, but they tend to have less side effects and also are protective against kidney disease.
A physician that is making a thoughtful first drug recommendations has a lot of things to consider. The choices are a little if the patient appears to be pre-diabetic. There are all sorts of other factors, such as beta blockers often prevent migraine.
The treatment of hypertension, especially resistant hypertension, is quite complex -- I developed an expert system for doing prescribing recommendations, which also considered things like tolerability and what the patient's insurance would cover -- IIRC, there were 15-20 pages of logic rules. This, incidentally, is infinitely less complex than current AIDS therapy.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
October 9, 2006 10:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the comments. Obviously there are factors such as presence of absence of liver disease, renal disease, coronary artery diseae etc that effects selection of a drug in a given patient. My questions were focused on whether skin color could be a factor in determining a drug treatment in some instances.
Geographic location also has an impact on disease incidence, for example, the incidence of coronary artery disease in a native Japanese is lower than a second generation Japanese in Hawaii, who has a lower incidence than a native born US citizen with Japanese heritage.
My comments were obviously focused the population you hone in on as having slaveship ancestry. Given the close quarters and sanitary conditions in slave ships and the psychological stresses that some studies have found in present day hypertensive US born Blacks, I'm not certain that the "slaveship dehydration" model is a full explanation for drug responses in US Blacks. As I stated above with the Japanese examples, I do agree that the similar racial can have different disease manifestations based on location. It is also true that every US born Black hypertensive in a particular physician's practice may have excellent responses to ACE/beta blocker therapy.
My questions were an attempt to understand one person's approach to the issue of race. I believe that Terry is a good person, who doesn't see race. There are others who do not share his point of view. Given the unseen baggage that some with darker skin carry and the studies that I mentioned relating stress as a factor in the incidence of hypertension, I really didn't see how skin color could be taken out of a discussion of health care at some level. I may have come across as skin color obsessed, but was trying to understand how to approach a problem that seemed skin color focused without mentioning skin color.
The other questions I raised dealt with the issues of discrimination based on skin color. By repeated questoning, it may have appeared that I was trying to beat up on a particular poster. I really was trying to understand a different point of view regarding the skin color issue. In today's climate it's sometimes easier to have such a discussion online than face to face.
October 10, 2006 6:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
My hope, for both philosophical and medical reasons, is that one philosophy of several medical journals is to regard "race" as a surrogate for socioeconomic status, but make treatment decisions on actual genetic coding. That, of course, has even more implications for profit-based health care coverage.
I'd go a bit farther and say that any person of any "race", with mild hypertension, has a good chance of response with any of the three starting groups, or perhaps two of them given together. There's no question that slaveship dehydration isn't a perfect explanation, but when you add in the high sodium of "soul food", a summary of recent studies (might take free registration) appeares not to have considered race, but did give additional data that thiazides and beta-blockers are higher-risk for triggering the appearance of clinical diabetes. ACE inhibitors and calcium channel blockers did not. Again, it's never a simple choice where to start, and it's likely that the regimen will need to be adjusted. From personal experience, I can't take beta-blockers of any type we tried, and not fall asleep.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
October 10, 2006 10:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed genetic testing will be of benefit from an investigational standpoint. It may eventually become cost effective clinically on a routine basis. Of course, it may also open another bag of worms if genetic markers are present that should determine a drug response or predict a higher incidence of possible future disease, but the end products proteins that would give rise to the drug response or disease are never produced because of interference RNAs.
But that's a story for another day.
October 10, 2006 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
We are already seeing some clinical applications, as for prophylactic mastectomy in women with the BRCA2 gene and a strong family history of breast cancer. There are quite a number of genetic tests that are diagnostic -- unfortunately, many of them being positive prove that a not especially treatable disease is present. Still, given that diagnostics are not always benign, even that information can be useful.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
October 10, 2006 12:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Comment moved to Impeachment Watch.
January 7, 2007 4:49 PM | Reply | Permalink