Civil Wrongs

This could be a good thing for the multiracial community. The Department of Education now refuses to address the civil rights of multiracial students unless they identify as only one race. They also advise schools to reassign "Hispanic" to any child who checks Hispanic and a race. We'll be watching.

 

Head of Education Dept.'s Civil Rights Office to Step Down

By Lesli A. Maxwell 

Russlynn Ali, the hard-charging head of the U.S. Department of Education's office for civil rights, is stepping down from the post. Her last day is tomorrow.

Ali shared news of her departure during a conference call yesterday with folks in the civil rights community, the same day the Education Department released a four-year review of the work of OCR, which was nicely detailed by Nirvi Shah over at the Rules for Engagement blog.

Nothing official on her departure—or her replacement—has come from the Ed. Dept. yet.
The big question now is whether the very aggressive stance of OCR will stay intact or wane some after Ali is gone.

Ali, who headed Education Trust West in California where she championed causes such as requiring a college-level curriculum for all high school students in Los Angeles Unified, ramped up OCR's work on school discipline, harassment, and bullying, and opened up new areas of inquiry into students' access to charter schools and graduation rates at community colleges.

Instructional programs for English-language learners received lots of scrutiny under Ali, who partnered frequently with U.S. Department of Justice civil rights officials to bring even more pressure for change in school districts. OCR forced a number of changes for ELLs in Los Angeles, New York City, Boston, and the state of Arizona. OCR has also stepped up its reviews of practices in districts where civil rights advocates have complained that ELLs and their non-English-speaking parents are not providing adequate communications.

Over at Schooled in Sports, Bryan Toporek breaks down OCR's work on Title IX under Ali's leadership.
For folks in districts, an inquiry from OCR is a dreaded occurrence, and, in the view of some, it became even more so in the nearly four years Ali has been in charge. To counter those fears, Ali told me in a conversation late last year, she'd made providing technical assistance to districts more of a priority of OCR than it had been in previous administrations.Now it will be interesting to see who will be her successor.

Photo: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, left, and Russlynn Ali, head of the Department of Education's office for civil rights, attend a board meeting of the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2011. (Reed Saxon/AP-File)
Source: Education Week

Census Bureau Loses Multiracial Population--Again!

Census Bureau Alert-Current Population Survey: 2011 — The tables include detailed statistics about five-year age groups by sex, the 55-and-older population, the Hispanic population, the black population and the Asian population. The tables provide a wide range of social, economic and housing characteristics, such as marital status, educational attainment, nativity, employment status, occupation, poverty and housing tenure. The Current Population Survey, which has been conducted since 1940, is sponsored jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is the primary source of the nation's labor force statistics and provides understanding of labor market conditions.

Race and Ancestry Important in Medicine

We agree that ancestry and racial information are BOTH important to the personal medical history, especially for the multiracial population.

Ancestry, not just race, is important to personal medical history

Doctors often ask patients to list their race -- white, Latino, African American, Asian, Native American -- to help them provide better healthcare. They do this because loads of medical research shows that the incidence of certain diseases and treatment success can vary somewhat from race to race.
But the more important question may be: What is your genetic ancestry?

A study released Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine examined the accuracy of a lung function test and how race and ancestry played a role in the test's accuracy. A lung function test measures damage to the lungs caused by asthma or other disease. However, the definition of "normal" lung function is known to vary substantially by race. For example, doctors have long known that vital lung capacity (the maximum amount of air that can be expelled after maximum inhalation) is 6% to 12% lower in blacks compared with whites and Native Americans.

Researchers looked at data from more than 3,000 patients that included their lung function test results, standard information on race and additional information on genetic ancestry that was obtained through genotyping. The study found that standard race categories don't capture the extent of ancestral diversity and, thus, may limit the amount of information available to a doctor in making a diagnosis or ordering treatment. Instead, many people have a rich and diverse genetic background that does not lend itself to a simple classification, such as "white" or "Asian."

For example, when using genetic ancestry data, the study showed a strong link between African ancestry and lung function measurement in both men and women. According to the findings, for 6.4% of people in the United States who identify themselves as African American, the actual percentage of African ancestry would be 15% higher or lower than average -- a difference that would result in an incorrect estimation of lung function test, and possibly, mistakes about the severity of lung disease. About 2.1 million self-identified African Americans have asthma. But based on the study conclusions, the severity of the asthma would be misclassified in about 4% of those patients.

"When we force patients into an individual box, such as 'African American' or 'Caucasian,' we're missing a lot of genetic information," senior author of the study Dr. Esteban G. Burchard, of UC San Francisco, said in a news release. "This study provides new evidence that genetic ancestry correlates to physiological measures. With it, we're one step closer to personalized medicine."

On a more practical level, the study points to the need for improvements in measuring lung function in some people. In an editorial accompanying the paper, authors noted: "Refinements are needed for poorly represented or misrepresented populations and for persons of mixed ancestry, who represent an increasing proportion of the U.S. population."
-- Shari Roan
SOURCE: LA Times July 7, 2010

Births from multiracial families jump

By Kim Tae-jong

Births from multiracial marriages sharply increased last year at a far higher level than among Koreans, figures showed Wednesday.

According to Statistics Korea, 22,014 babies were born to such families last year, up 1,702 or 8.4 percent from the previous year. The rate is much higher than the 0.2 percent increase for Korean couples.

But their contribution may shrink in the future as divorces for this demographic have continuously risen and there has been a relatively big decline in interracial marriages.

Statistics Korea said 14,450 mixed marriage couples split up last year, a rise of 0.9 percent from the previous year, accounting for 12.6 percent of all marriage breakups in Korea.

The average married life before divorce stood at 4.9 years, much shorter than divorces between Korean couples, which occurred after 14.4 years.

The increase in the number of divorces is largely attributed to the fact that many married migrants, the majority of them Asian women, frequently struggle to adjust to the differences in language and way of living as well as fighting social prejudice against them.

The jump has been also coupled with a decline in interracial marriages.

Marriages of such couples decreased to 30,695 in 2011, down 12 percent from the previous year. They stood at 35,098 in 2010, 33,862 in 2009 and 36,629 in 2008.

Officials attributed the decline to stronger restrictions imposed on commercial marriage brokers in countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines and Cambodia.

As a result, the ratio of interracial marriage to all unions decreased to 9.3 percent, compared to 10.8 percent in 2010, 10.9 percent in 2009 and 11.2 percent in 2008.

According to the survey, Chinese women accounted for the largest portion of such marriages at 30.3 percent, followed by Vietnamese at 25.2 percent and Korean women married to foreign men at 20.9 percent.

Among males, Korean men married to foreign women accounted for 72.9 percent, followed by Chinese men at 8.5 percent and Japanese men at 5.6 percent.

By region, Gyeonggi Province and Seoul had the largest number of interracial marriages last year, which stood at 7,329 and 6,644.

The average age of men at their first marriage stood at 36.1 while that of women was 26.6. The age difference decreased to 9.5 last year, from 10.3 from the previous year.
Source: Korea Times/koreatimes.co.kr

Leighton Woodhouse
Finally, a journalist who gets it! -Susan

American Voters Are Getting All Mixed up

As anybody with a TV, radio or newspaper subscription can affirm, the big story coming out of the 2012 election is the long feared/eagerly awaited arrival of the Latino vote as a national political force capable of deciding a presidential contest. Latinos accounted for a record ten percent of the electorate this year, and something north of 70 percent of them cast their ballots for Obama. Meanwhile, fewer Latinos than ever before voted for the Republican candidate.

With the Latino segment of the electorate poised to continue expanding for many election cycles to come, leaders of both parties are tripping over each other to position themselves on immigration reform, and even in blood red states like Texas, GOP strategists are warning of imminent doom for their party if Republicans fail to break their cycle of addiction to racism, xenophobia and pandering to border-guarding lunatics.

The story is both accurate to a point and incomplete, as conventional wisdom is wont to be. Tavis Smiley, for instance, has highlighted the grating irony of black voters being left out of the punditocracy's post-election anointing of the "new governing coalition," following the second presidential election in a row in which African Americans broke records turning out to support Barack Obama. And when it comes to speculating about long-term electoral prospects, there's another demographic category of Americans that's getting glossed over in this mechanical extrapolation of the present into the future. Interestingly, it's the one that Obama himself belongs to: multiracial Americans.

That's not to say that mixed-race voters were a big electoral force in this election or any other national election in history. Nor is "mixed race" really much of a coherent ethnic identity in the first place (then again, neither arguably is "Latino" or "Asian"). As a demographic category, however, it's going to be a significant factor for both parties to grapple with in future elections. It's simply inevitable: About fifteen percent of new marriages nationally in 2010 were interracial, according to a Pew study published earlier this year. That's more than double the proportion of the 1980s.

Those couples are having kids, and those kids are growing up to become voters. Moreover, according to the study, quaint taboos against interracial coupling are pretty close to completely breaking down, with nearly two-thirds of Americans fine with the idea, so we can expect the phenomenon to continue and accelerate going forward: more multiracial couples, more mixed race kids. And in politics, as they say, demography is destiny.

Among the states in which interracial marriages are above twenty percent are, not surprisingly, deep blue states like California and Hawaii. But some of the most conservative states in the country are also on the 20 percent-plus list, including Alaska, Arizona and Oklahoma. Texas and Kansas aren't far behind. Also above average are new and perennial swing states like Colorado, Virgina and Florida. The highest rates of interracial marriage skew west, where three of the four states with the fastest-growing populations in the country are located (or four of the four, depending on whether you consider Texas a Western or a Southern state).

The bottom line is that mixed-race matrimony is a national phenomenon that cuts across the red-blue divide. As the children of those couples come into voting age, there will be more and more Americans in every part of the country who don't fit into the tidy racial boxes that form the basis of the long-term electoral prognostications being offered up by the dozens in the aftermath of Obama's re-election.

Will mixed race voters help the Republicans or the Democrats? That's a murkier question than you might assume, since Pew's data shows sharper differences in terms of income and education between various mixed-marriage demographic sub-groups (the parents of those voters-to-be) than between mixed couples and non-mixed couples as a whole; there's little in the way of a uniform set of characteristics of interracial households to grasp onto.

But it's also the wrong question. The political effect of mixed race voters on future elections will probably be one of obfuscation rather than of party advantage, comparable to the effect of the growing prevalence of independent voters on partisan contests. Multiracial Americans will make simple questions about single issues more complicated, and facile assumptions about voter sympathies more tenuous. Where does a half-Mexican, half-black woman from Texas come down on immigration reform? What does a quarter Chinese, quarter Filipino, half-Jewish male from Florida think about affirmative action? What does either voter think about expanding charter schools, gay marriage, abortion rights, cutting Medicare, or raising taxes on the rich? These questions are difficult enough today, as racial sub-groups become more diversified by class. As the mixed race population of Americans expands and renders ethnic identities less categorical, more subjective, and more abstract, those once-easy categories will lose even more of their value as predictors of political behavior. They may even start to lose some of their personal relevance in the lives of multiracial Americans themselves.

My girlfriend and I are both of mixed racial heritage. I'm half Japanese and half Anglo. She's half Salvadoran and half Jewish. If and when we have children, they'll be a quarter Asian, a quarter Latino and half white, with the white side split WASP/Jewish. When our kids become 18 and fill out their first voter registration forms, the only ethnic category that will make any sense for them to check off is "Multiracial." Today, checking off that box feels pretty close to checking off "Other" or "None of the above" on a questionnaire on any given topic; it's a throwaway category for misfits that has little if any analytical value to the researchers who review the data, but that has to be in there to get the respondent to the next section. When enough Americans start checking off that box, however, it's going to be impossible to ignore -- and difficult to integrate into existing statistical models. Like "Other," "Multiracial" isn't an actual, distinctive population with a common culture and history that you can add into the mix as another subgroup to track; it's just a heuristic catch-all term for everyone who doesn't fit into the conventional taxonomy. Once it becomes statistically meaningful -- perhaps meaningful enough to impact election forecasts -- pollsters and demographers will have to scrap the mechanical models they're working with and start devising more fluid and subjective analytical approaches that reflect the fluidity and subjectivity of increasingly porous ethnic and racial categories.

That's not to suggest that the age of the generation that follows the Millenials will be some sort of post-racial paradise. Countries like Brazil have had broad racially mixed populations for generations; that hasn't lessened their citizens' propensity for bigotry (though it has shaped their racism differently than that of Americans).

However, it is to suggest that the crude schematics political analysts use to lump voters together, make
educated guesses at their preferences, and forecast their behavior will start to butt up against the complicated reality of race in 21st-century American society, and those analysts will have to adapt their models to better fit the lived experience of voters. That might not change the electoral fortunes of either major party, but maybe it will help force our dumbed-down political process to live up to the nuance and complexity of a changing American electorate.

Follow Leighton Woodhouse on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lwoodhouse 
SOURCE: Huff Post

Project RACE Grandparents!

We are delighted to introduce our membership to Freda Brown, President of our newest division, Project RACE Grandparents! “I am excited to become a part of the great work that Project RACE is doing on behalf of multiracial people,” Freda said.  “I am richly blessed to have three very talented, beautiful and kind multiracial grandchildren and am proud of their heritage and thankful for their individuality.” 

Freda lives in New Hope, Minnesota and actually enjoys the cold weather there. In addition to multiracial advocacy, her interests include arts and crafts, reading, and nature walks. She also loves playing computer games, which helps make her a pretty fun Grandma. But her favorite pastime is visiting her grandkids… naturally!

Ethnic Studies Could Return

Ethnic Studies Could Return to Tucson in Desegregation Plan

Mexican-American studies is poised for a comeback in Tucson. After a years-long, tumultuous fight that came to a head earlier this year when local school officials pulled the plug on the program, a leading civil rights group today announced that the ethnic studies courses will not only return to the school district, but could be expanded.

This turn of events stems from a much broader plan to settle a nearly four-decades-old desegregation lawsuit against Tucson Unified that must still be approved by the federal judge overseeing the case. The lawsuit involves both plaintiffs who are Latino and African American. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF, which represents Latino students, along with representatives of African-American students who are also plaintiffs in the suit, joined the Tucson school district and the U.S. Department of Justice in filing the desegregation plan.

A court-appointed special master, Willis Hawley, oversaw the plan's development. This is the second time in the lawsuit's history that a final settlement has been attempted. An earlier effort was appealed by the plaintiffs.

The new plan—intended to bring "unitary status" to Tucson Unified—involves numerous, highly prescribed components related to student assignment, transportation, enhancing the racial and ethnic diversity of its workforce, access to rigorous curriculum and programs, family and community engagement, dropout prevention, and discipline practices.

In a call with reporters on Monday, MALDEF lawyer Nancy Ramirez particularly highlighted the plan's restoration of the popular, yet politically charged Mexican-American studies program. In the draft settlement, the district would not only bring the program back to its high schools, but it would have to expand the course offerings to middle schools by 2014 and propose plans to bring "culturally relevant curricula" to students in the earlier grades.

"This is a critical strategy for closing the achievement gap for Latino students," Ms. Ramirez said.

It was not even a year ago that the Tucson school board shuttered the popular Mexican-American studies program because they argued it was their only choice to avoid losing nearly $15 million in state funding for the 60,000-student district. Arizona's state schools chief, John Huppenthal, had threatened to withhold the funds because he said the courses violated a new state law that prohibits public schools from offering courses that are designed for a particular ethnic group, advocate ethnic solidarity, or promote resentment toward a race or group of people.

Tom Horne, the Arizona attorney general—a former state schools chief and one of the most vocal opponents to Tucson's Mexican-American studies program—has until later this month to formally object to the plan.

Also Monday, researchers at the University of Arizona released a new study that found a "consistent and positive" relationship between students' participation in the Mexican-American studies program and his or her academic performance. The study was done at the request of the court's special master.
By Lesli A. Maxwell for Education Week

America's First Multiracial President

Barack Obama: Let’s not forget that he’s America’s first bi-racial president

Clinton Yates, The Washington Post

If I'm lucky enough to have children, I won't tell them that Barack Obama was America’s first black president. As a black man who plans to eventually start a family with my white girlfriend, I'm going to tell them that Obama was the first man of color in the White House and that America’s 44th president was biracial.

With Tuesday night's election results, we can see that America's non whites came out in largely historic numbers to support the president, according to exit polls. And while Obama's popularity in the black community is undeniable, his mixed-race lineage is a reality that we can’t ignore.
Don't get me wrong. With the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and the “one-drop rule,” I clearly understand why Obama is regarded as black. But that doesn’t mean I have to repeat that incomplete narrative to the next generation.

The reason I don't plan to single out President Obama’s African heritage alone is because I don't plan to do that with my own children. What would I look like telling my kids that a man with a black father and a white mother is “black” just because society wants him to be?

The evidence of change to a world where inclusion is the mainstream is happening right before our eyes. By the time that my age bracket has kids that grow up, more people than ever will be claiming multiple races on their census forms. I hope my kids will be able to embrace that.
It would be naive to suggest that race is going to disappear anytime soon as a major factor in American social politics. But if we're going to draw lines and stand back from them, any progress made in electing a non-white to the Oval Office is moot.

Maybe part of this comes from the fact that I didn’t grow up thinking that I'd never see a black president. The movements made before I was born didn’t ingrain me with a sense that such a thing couldn’t happen. For me, the novelty of Obama being in office was always rooted in his overall cultural upbringing. Not just his so-called blackness.

And by no means is the word “black” an automatic slur as much as it will probably be an unnecessarily basic and dated naming concept for biracial people in the next decade. In short, if there are that many biracial babies being born, they’ll soon self-identify as they choose. Why force them into a box based on an admittedly flawed classification system before they have a chance to pick?

Indeed, bi-raciality has moved to the forefront of consciousness over the years, mainly through celebrities embracing their cultures the same way other “races” do. Be it Derek Jeter or Rashida Jones, pride in not being solely one thing seems to be a high point, which is a good thing. Diversity within us, never mind among us, doesn’t hurt.

As we learn to come together in society, the labels we apply to each other will fade away for the better. They’ll always be there, because everyone is different, but they won't be treated as if they have the mark of the beast.

Until that day comes though, I'll probably continue to sing Young Jeezy’s “My President Is Black” with no issue. The song is tight, and I understand the context. But when I'm an old guy on the porch, I hope my kids' mindset will reflect more what Jay-Z said in his epic remix of that song: “My president is black -- in fact, he's half white. So even in a racist mind, he's half right.”
Yates is a columnist for The RootDC

Racial link to high-risk breast cancer

African Ancestry Linked to High-Risk Breast Cancer, Study Finds

A new study finds that African ancestry is linked to triple-negative breast cancer, a more aggressive type of cancer that has fewer treatment options.

---

Researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center found that, among women with breast cancer, 82 percent of African women were triple negative, 26 percent of African-Americans were and 16 percent of white Americans were.

Triple negative breast cancer is negative for three specific markers that are used to determine treatment: the estrogen receptor, the progesterone receptor and HER-2/neu.

"The most significant recent advances in breast cancer treatment have involved targeting these three receptors. But these treatments do not help women with triple-negative breast cancer.

Outcome disparities are therefore likely to increase, because fewer African-American women are candidates for these newer treatments," says study author Lisa A. Newman, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Breast Care Center at the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The study, published online in the journal Cancer, looked at 581 African American women and 1,008 white women diagnosed with breast cancer at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, plus 75 African women diagnosed at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Ghana.

Researchers found that Ghanaian women were diagnosed at a younger age than American women, and with larger tumors and more advanced cancer. In addition, the Ghanaian women were more likely to test negative for each of the three markers.

Prior studies have shown that while African-American women are less likely than white women to develop breast cancer, those who are diagnosed are usually younger and are more likely to die from the disease. These characteristics, including the triple negative disease, are also more common among women with a known hereditary predisposition for breast cancer related to BRCA1 gene mutations. Other studies have also shown a hereditary breast cancer risk associated with racial-ethnic identity -- most commonly among Ashkenazi Jewish women.

"African ancestry might be associated with other links to hereditary predisposition for particular patterns of breast cancer. We hope that by studying breast cancer in African and African-American women we can identify biomarkers that might be useful for assessing risk or treating triple-negative breast cancer," says Newman, professor of surgery at the U-M Medical School.
Breast cancer statistics: 194,280 Americans will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year and 40,610 will die from the disease, according to the American Cancer Society

Additional authors: From U-M: Celina Kleer, M.D.; Valerie Takyi, M.D.; Maria Braman, M.D.; and Max Wicha, M.D.; from Henry Ford Health System: Azadeh Stark, Ph.D.; and Richard Zarbo, M.D., D.M.D.; from University of Illinois: Iman Martin, M.P.H.; from Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital: Baffour Awuah, M.D.; Anthony Nsiah-Asare, M.D.; and Solomon E. Quayson, FWACP

---

Story Source: Science Daily

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Michigan Health System.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Stark et al. African ancestry and higher prevalence of triple-negative breast cancer. Cancer, 2010; DOI: 10.1002/cncr.25276

Global Genome Effort and Ethnic Groups

Global Genome Effort Seeks Genetic Roots of Disease

enlarge

By decoding the genomes of more than 1,000 people whose homelands stretch from Africa and Asia to Europe and the Americas, scientists have compiled the largest and most detailed catalog yet of human genetic variation. The massive resource will help medical researchers find the genetic roots of rare and common diseases in populations worldwide. (Credit: National Human Genome Research Institute)

ScienceDaily  — By decoding the genomes of more than 1,000 people whose homelands stretch from Africa and Asia to Europe and the Americas, scientists have compiled the largest and most detailed catalog yet of human genetic variation. The massive resource will help medical researchers find the genetic roots of rare and common diseases in populations worldwide.

The 1000 Genomes Project involved some 200 scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and other institutions. Results detailing the DNA variations of individuals from 14 ethnic groups are published Oct. 31 in the journal Nature. Eventually, the initiative will involve 2,500 individuals from 26 populations.

"With this resource, researchers have a roadmap to search for the genetic origins of diseases in populations around the globe," says one of the study's co-principal investigators, Elaine Mardis, PhD, co-director of The Genome Institute at Washington University. "We estimate that each person carries up to several hundred rare DNA variants that could potentially contribute to disease. Now, scientists can investigate how detrimental particular rare variants are in different ethnic groups."

At the genetic level, any two people are more than 99 percent alike. But rare variants -- those that occur with a frequency of 1 percent or less in a population -- are thought to contribute to rare diseases as well as common conditions like cancer, heart disease and diabetes. Rare variants may also explain why some medications are not effective in certain people or cause side effects such as nausea, vomiting, insomnia and sometimes even heart problems or death.

Identifying rare variants across different populations is a major goal of the project. During the pilot phase of the effort, the researchers found that most rare variants differed from one population to another, and that they developed recently in human evolutionary history, after populations in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas diverged from a single group. The current study bears this out.

"This information is crucial and will improve our interpretation of individual genomes," says another of the study's co-principal investigators, Richard K. Wilson, PhD, director of The Genome Institute and a pioneer in cancer genome sequencing. "Now, if we want to study cancer in Mexican Americans or Japanese Americans, for example, we can do so in the context of their diverse geographic or ancestry-based genetic backgrounds."

Results of the new study are based on DNA sequencing of the following populations: Yoruba in Nigeria; Han Chinese in Beijing; Japanese in Tokyo; Utah residents with ancestry from northern and western Europe; Luhya in Kenya; people of African ancestry in the southwestern United States; Toscani in Italy; people of Mexican ancestry in Los Angeles; Southern Han Chinese in China; Iberian from Spain; British in England and Scotland; Finnish from Finland; Colombians in Columbia; and Puerto Rican in Puerto Rico.

All study participants submitted anonymous DNA samples and agreed to have their genetic data included in an online database. To catalog the variants, the researchers first sequenced the entire genome -- all the DNA -- of each individual in the study about five times. Surveying the genome in this way finds common DNA changes but misses many rare variants.
Then, to find rare variants, they repeatedly sequenced the small portion of the genome that contains genes -- about 80 times for each participant to ensure accuracy -- and they looked closely for single letter changes in the DNA sequence called SNPs (for single-nucleotide polymorphisms).

Using special tools developed to analyze and integrate the data, the researchers discovered a total of 38 million SNPs, including more than 99 percent of the variants with at frequency of at least one percent in the participants' DNA samples. They also found numerous structural variations, including 1.4 million short stretches of insertions or deletions and 14,000 large DNA deletions.

SNPs and structural variants can help explain an individual's susceptibility to disease, response to drugs or reaction to environmental factors such as air pollution or stress. Other studies have found an association between small insertions and deletions and diseases such as autism and schizophrenia.

The 1000 Genomes Project has generated massive amounts of genomic data. Simply recording the raw information took up some 180 terabytes of hard-drive space, enough to fill more than 40,000 DVDs. All of the information is freely available on the Internet through public databases.

"This tremendous resource builds on the knowledge of the Human Genome Project," says co-author George Weinstock, PhD, associate director of The Genome Institute. "Scientists and, ultimately, patients worldwide will benefit from the extensive effort to understand the shared features and geographic diversity of the human genome."

In addition to The Genome Institute, other research centers involved in the project include: the Human Genome Sequencing Center at the Baylor College of Medicine, Houston; The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in England; BGI Shenzhen in China; the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin; and Illumina, Inc., in San Diego.

The research is supported, in part, by a grant (U54HG3079) from the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to The Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis. Other funding sources include: the Wellcome Trust; Medial Research Council; British Heart Foundation; National Basic Research Program of China; the National Natural Science Foundation of China; the Max Planck Society; Swiss National Science Foundation.
The 1000 Genomes Project Consortium. An integrated map of genetic variation from 1,092 human genomes. Nature. Oct. 31, 2012
Source: Science Daily and Nature

                                          CONGRATULATIONS!!

                        TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

                                              FIRST TWO-TERM 
                MULTIRACIAL PRESIDENT

                 OF THE UNITED STATES!

Scientific Roots of Disease

Global Genome Effort Seeks Genetic Roots of Disease

By decoding the genomes of more than 1,000 people whose homelands stretch from Africa and Asia to Europe and the Americas, scientists have compiled the largest and most detailed catalog yet of human genetic variation. The massive resource will help medical researchers find the genetic roots of rare and common diseases in populations worldwide. (Credit: National Human Genome Research Institute)

ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2012) — By decoding the genomes of more than 1,000 people whose homelands stretch from Africa and Asia to Europe and the Americas, scientists have compiled the largest and most detailed catalog yet of human genetic variation. The massive resource will help medical researchers find the genetic roots of rare and common diseases in populations worldwide.

---

The 1000 Genomes Project involved some 200 scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and other institutions. Results detailing the DNA variations of individuals from 14 ethnic groups are published Oct. 31 in the journal Nature. Eventually, the initiative will involve 2,500 individuals from 26 populations.

"With this resource, researchers have a roadmap to search for the genetic origins of diseases in populations around the globe," says one of the study's co-principal investigators, Elaine Mardis, PhD, co-director of The Genome Institute at Washington University. "We estimate that each person carries up to several hundred rare DNA variants that could potentially contribute to disease. Now, scientists can investigate how detrimental particular rare variants are in different ethnic groups."

At the genetic level, any two people are more than 99 percent alike. But rare variants -- those that occur with a frequency of 1 percent or less in a population -- are thought to contribute to rare diseases as well as common conditions like cancer, heart disease and diabetes. Rare variants may also explain why some medications are not effective in certain people or cause side effects such as nausea, vomiting, insomnia and sometimes even heart problems or death.
Identifying rare variants across different populations is a major goal of the project.

During the pilot phase of the effort, the researchers found that most rare variants differed from one population to another, and that they developed recently in human evolutionary history, after populations in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas diverged from a single group. The current study bears this out.

"This information is crucial and will improve our interpretation of individual genomes," says another of the study's co-principal investigators, Richard K. Wilson, PhD, director of The Genome Institute and a pioneer in cancer genome sequencing. "Now, if we want to study cancer in Mexican Americans or Japanese Americans, for example, we can do so in the context of their diverse geographic or ancestry-based genetic backgrounds."

Results of the new study are based on DNA sequencing of the following populations: Yoruba in Nigeria; Han Chinese in Beijing; Japanese in Tokyo; Utah residents with ancestry from northern and western Europe; Luhya in Kenya; people of African ancestry in the southwestern United States; Toscani in Italy; people of Mexican ancestry in Los Angeles; Southern Han Chinese in China; Iberian from Spain; British in England and Scotland; Finnish from Finland; Colombians in Columbia; and Puerto Rican in Puerto Rico.

All study participants submitted anonymous DNA samples and agreed to have their genetic data included in an online database. To catalog the variants, the researchers first sequenced the entire genome -- all the DNA -- of each individual in the study about five times. Surveying the genome in this way finds common DNA changes but misses many rare variants.

Then, to find rare variants, they repeatedly sequenced the small portion of the genome that contains genes -- about 80 times for each participant to ensure accuracy -- and they looked closely for single letter changes in the DNA sequence called SNPs (for single-nucleotide polymorphisms).

Using special tools developed to analyze and integrate the data, the researchers discovered a total of 38 million SNPs, including more than 99 percent of the variants with at frequency of at least one percent in the participants' DNA samples. They also found numerous structural variations, including 1.4 million short stretches of insertions or deletions and 14,000 large DNA deletions.

SNPs and structural variants can help explain an individual's susceptibility to disease, response to drugs or reaction to environmental factors such as air pollution or stress. Other studies have found an association between small insertions and deletions and diseases such as autism and schizophrenia.

The 1000 Genomes Project has generated massive amounts of genomic data. Simply recording the raw information took up some 180 terabytes of hard-drive space, enough to fill more than 40,000 DVDs. All of the information is freely available on the Internet through public databases.

"This tremendous resource builds on the knowledge of the Human Genome Project," says co-author George Weinstock, PhD, associate director of The Genome Institute. "Scientists and, ultimately, patients worldwide will benefit from the extensive effort to understand the shared features and geographic diversity of the human genome."

In addition to The Genome Institute, other research centers involved in the project include: the Human Genome Sequencing Center at the Baylor College of Medicine, Houston; The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in England; BGI Shenzhen in China; the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin; and Illumina, Inc., in San Diego.

The research is supported, in part, by a grant (U54HG3079) from the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to The Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis. Other funding sources include: the Wellcome Trust; Medial Research Council; British Heart Foundation; National Basic Research Program of China; the National Natural Science Foundation of China; the Max Planck Society; Swiss National Science Foundation.

The 1000 Genomes Project Consortium. An integrated map of genetic variation from 1,092 human genomes. Nature. Oct. 31, 2012.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Washington University in St. Louisvia Newswise.

Racism in Hollywood

Yellowface In 'Cloud Atlas' Continues Hollywood Tradition of Racism

As the big budget film adaptation of David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas opened in Canada and U.S. over the weekend, it joins the ranks as one of the most epic displays of "yellowface" in film in a decade.

Directed by Tom Twyker and Lana and Andy Wachowski, the film's trailers, television ads and web banners not only place heavy-hitters Tom Hanks and Halle Berry in the film, but showcase creepy images of non-Asian actors wearing "slanty eyes." If you felt weirded out or was reminded of the times you may have heard someone yell, "Hey, chinky eyes!" from across the street -- you are not alone.

The film opened to mixed reviews -- some called it ambitious, others described it as muddled -- as it attempts to knit the storylines of six reincarnated souls who traverse countries, generations and ethnicities. One of the stories is set in Neo Seoul in the year 2144, where Jim Sturgess and Keith David wear makeup and eye-enhancements to appear ethnically Asian.

This is nothing short of arrogant, bringing a whole new meaning to the term "Asian fail."
Reading about this first on Racebending.com in August, it felt like being personally and professionally spit in the face. As an advocate for diversity, particularly in the representation of diversity in television and film, it was painful to see the trailers on TV and online. Not only are the images unconvincing, they are dismissive. They announce to the world, "We don't care what you think."

The film signals to viewers that if enough money is thrown at it, and enough celebrity worked in, it can't be wrong -- and anyway, there's nothing you can do about it. Accept it. It's Hollywood. All fiction films require some pretending, but this one wants you to believe that with a little adjustment to his eyes, Jim Sturgess is now a Korean character, as though there was nothing more to being Korean-looking.
There is a long history of this practice in Hollywood and it has always been racist.
Jim Sturgess in "Cloud Atlas"
The arrogance inherent to this practice speaks of privilege. You know the kind. It's the same privilege that suggested American viewers weren't ready to watch Bruce Lee or any other Asian-looking man as the lead character in "Kung Fu, The Legend" that David Carradine was sufficiently Asian to play Kwai Chang Caine.

It's also the same privilege that allowed Canadians to pretend the forced detainment and exile of Canadian-born Japanese during the 1940s was acceptable.

I am still sore over the failure to cast an Asian actor for the obvious role of Caine. Adding salt to the wound, the series came back as a spinoff in the 1990s, and yes, it too failed to cast an Asian actor for Caine, and instead added another white male lead!

"Cloud Atlas" reopens this wound with precision and malice.

Considering that the North American TV and film industry has failed to demonstrate any real concern for depicting Asian American/Canadian men in meaning ways, should it care now? Perhaps.

Canadian-born East and South Asians have the highest median incomes among all other ethnic groups in Canada. They are the economic mainstream in Canada, even if they are not seen as the cultural mainstream. Persist with this inequity at your own peril.
Andy Wachowski told HuffPost Entertainment, "But our intention is the antithesis of that idea. The intention is to talk about things that are beyond race." Film school is full of student projects made with good intent. Are they graded on the intent? Of course not!

Imagine your mayor showing up at a Halloween Party dressed in yellowface, as Warner Oland's infamous racist caricature Fu Manchu or Charlie Chan. Would attending celebrities make this any more acceptable? Absolutely not. It would likely be the end of a political career. It's unacceptable in the public space. It's unacceptable in any space where the details matter.
What if Sonny Chiba had not played Hattori Hanzo in Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill." Or if veteran Chinese actor Gordon Liu, who played Pai Mei, had been replaced by some actor in yellowface. He wasn't, because the details count when you want to make an epic film.
My pain over this failed detail in "Cloud Atlas" stems not just from the 100-year-old racist history of yellowface, or not being able getting over the personal injustice suffered by Bruce Lee, but from having met so many unmistakably Asian-looking (and even ambiguously Asian-looking) American and Canadian actors who could have played this role.

The saddest thing is that most, if not all, are not in a position of privilege to say anything (especially on Twitter). Instead, they have to bite down and just take it. "Cloud Atlas "is like a punch in the ribs, even to those actors who have already moved to Asia to stay working.
It hurts too much to sit back and passively watch them get spit on by a big budget bully. So I am officially making "Cloud Atlas" the film I never saw. Yes, an old school boycott. I'm going to stand up for the sacrifice these actors make to fight the good fight for meaningful roles. Even it means being unpopular, and taking a few punches to the face or a kick in the ribs. Bring it.
I'm taking the money I'll save to frame the cover of November's issue of GQ.
Source: Schema Magazine

Follow Alden Habacon on Twitter: www.twitter.com/aldenhabacon

Multiracial Category Gains Popularity

 Interesting story on www.bizjournals.com.

http://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/on-numbers/scott-thomas/2012/11/multiracial-category-gains-popularity.html

 

 

Project RACE commented on bizjournals.com.

The Census Bureau did not just decide to allow people to check more than one race. It took YEARS of advocacy to get them to recognize the multiracial population. Also, Hispanic is not a racial group, it is still an ethnic group. The Bureau will probably change Hispanic to a race for the 2020 Census. You may find our website www.projectrace.com and our <blog projectrace.blogspot.com> of interest.

Multiracial category gains popularity as racial distinctions melt - The Business Journals

www.bizjournals.com

The multiracial population of the nation's 979 major counties increased by 3.1 percent between July 1, 2010, and the same date in 2011, according to an On Numbers anal

Fatal INTERPRETATION Part IV

Fatal Interpretation Part IV: The New Biopolitics of Race and Conclusion

We have come so far in the book Fatal Invention by Dorothy Roberts that we are getting to the end—I promise. We are now at Chapter 11, “Genetic Surveillance.” Did you know the government is going to want your genetic fingerprints or does that sound a bit paranoid? Ask Dorothy Roberts who goes from violent felons to sex offenders to getting a traffic ticket. Yes, some of that is worrisome, but DNA can also be helpful. It certainly is in paternity tests on Jerry Springer’s show. Again, we are talking about policy issues, not whether race is a social construct. Unfortunately, we can’t have it both ways; use our DNA freely and totally protect our DNA.

Uh oh. Roberts says DNA is not infallible. She states, “The genetic material in government databanks has to be retrieved, transferred, transported, identified, labeled, analyzed, and stored by human hands, and there is opportunity at every stage.” I think of DNA as closely related to fingerprints and nothing horrible has happened with those. I’m not sure yet what point Roberts is trying to make. Are DNA samples better than race or what? She attacks law enforcement for being racially biased, but that’s because racism exists. Once again, another old problem with no answers or even suggestions from the author, and once again I see it as policy issues.

The last chapter is “Biological Race in a ‘Postracial’ America.” I think—finally—Roberts and I agree that the United States is not postracial at all. With arguments she makes from conservative color blindness to liberal views, she gets bogged down in her own perspective by writing things like “When racial justice advocates refer to the political meaning of race, however, it is interpreted as an expression of racism orally equivalent to forms of overt white supremacy.” Really? Or maybe we just hang out with different advocates. It takes an entire chapter to say racism is alive and thriving and to think otherwise is just ignorant, but we can’t make race go away no matter what we call it.

Roberts tries to show us ignorant people that government is evil, privatization isn’t the answer, and then she goes into a rant about the prison system, all really to no avail. She does not suggest any ways to make the system different. Anyone can complain; few do anything about it.

FINALLY, the last part of this book on page 309 is “Conclusion: The Crossroads.” Wow. Now I get it completely! Roberts contends she has proven that race is not a biological construct, and it’s not a social construct, it’s a political construct and she lights up the world with this thought. First, it’s nothing new, and has been suggested by many over the years. Second, she hasn’t proven anything. The book is disjointed and is mostly just quotes from other academics (the endnotes of quotation sources is over 50 pages long) with the author trying to tie things together while pandering to her own personal political agenda. The things she decrees…well…you just have to read them for yourselves.

My intuition and over 20 years of advocacy lead me to believe that I don’t know if there is any biological basis for race. Just when I think we really are all the same, something comes up like these:

·        Bone marrow matching is closest with someone of the same race, ethnicity, or whatever you want to call it. So, how can biology not matter?

·        The incidence of high blood pressure is higher in blacks than in any other race. So, how can biology not matter?

·        Deaths from breast cancer are highest in black women. So, how can biology not matter?

·        Asian lung cancer patients have different medical responses to tyrosine kinase inhibitors than white patients. So, how can biology not matter?

·        Diabetes is less prevalent in whites than blacks. So, how can biology not matter?

·        If you are African-American, your eGFR on lab work must be calculated differently because of a difference in muscle mass. So, how can biology not matter?

·        Asthma and bronchodilator drugs response has been shown to vary widely among racial and ethnic groups. So, how can biology not matter?

Roberts doesn’t even mention these things in her book because they don’t fit into her agenda. The danger is that some people believe what Roberts has implied, for example that there is no reason for racially/genetically bone marrow donors for multiracial people. She has not said that, but is guilty by implication and omission and has caused more people than she knows to state that “Dorothy Roberts has found that multiracial people do not have to enlarge the bone marrow donor pool.” It’s just not true. Please read this book carefully and do your own research into what other top medical specialists, think. Look at the clinical studies and research.

The truth is closer to this: we do not know with absolute certainty if race has any biological basis. It really doesn’t matter what kind of construct race is or what we call it, it’s still here, it’s still a problem, and no one knows how to fix it. Roberts rehashing of old problems is not going to help. She is a civil rights professor, and she could really be useful in helping with answers to things like why we’ve been told that multiracial people have no legal standing because they are not a protected group under the law. She would know what to tell the multiracial engineer who was hired as black and fired as white.

I think Dorothy Roberts set out to write an academic tome attacking the pharmaceutical industry, specifically BiDil. However, she never does reveal the other side of the story, and she succeeded best in that. The bigger problem is that certain people began misinterpreting the book, raving that this book solves all the racial problems and must be read because the author proves—finally!—that race does not exist or if it does, it’s not biological at all. The problem is bigger because if we drop “race” out of things like clinical trials and medical testing, people could be hurt and possibly even die.

Race has bred racism; I think we can all agree on that. Rather than spending time on what word(s) to change “race” to, such as “political construct,” can’t we work on educating policy makers? It’s going to take academics like Roberts and advocates like me and the members of Project RACE to make certain that those who make the policies know and understand what’s at stake and how people are similar and different. Isn’t that what diversity is about? We have tackled important issues with policymakers like the need for self-identification, for multiracial people to have a choice, and that no one should be invisible in the healthcare system of this country.

That 0.1 percent difference is actually huge. I think race-based medicine is definitely a dilemma and certainly one I can’t solve, neither can Roberts. Truly personalized medicine could happen with the help of The Human Genome and DNA; wouldn’t it be a tragedy if we never get there because we stop potential medical progress because we are afraid of what we might find out along the way? It could indeed be a fatal invention.