The Supreme Court Decision on Affirmative Action-Fewer Black Physicians and More Health Disparities for Minoritized Groups

This Viewpoint discusses the US Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling on affirmative action and its repercussions for Black physicians and health equity for racial and ethnic minority groups.

Race Differences in Patterns of Risky Behavior and Associated Risk Factors in Adolescence

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), this study expands on previous research by (a) examining differences across race in patterns or "subgroups" of adolescents based on nine self-reported behaviors (e.g., delinquency, substance use, risky sexual practices) and (b) comparing the risk factors (e.g., peer association, parenting, neighborhood cohesion), both within and across the race-specific subgroups, related to membership into the identified latent classes. The data used in this study include respondents aged 13 to 17 who participated in Waves 1 and 2 of the Add Health in-home interview. Latent class analysis (LCA) identified key differences in the number and characteristics of the latent classes across the racial subgroups. In addition, both similarities and differences in the risk factors for membership into the latent classes were identified across and within the race-specific subgroups. Implications for understanding risky behavior in adolescence, as well as directions for future research, are discussed.

Genomic sovereignty and the African promise: mining the African genome for the benefit of Africa

Scientific interest in genomics in Africa is on the rise with a number of funding initiatives aimed specifically at supporting research in this area. Genomics research on material of African origin raises a number of important ethical issues. A prominent concern relates to sample export, which is increasingly seen by researchers and ethics committees across the continent as being problematic. The concept of genomic sovereignty proposes that unique patterns of genomic variation can be found in human populations, and that these are commercially, scientifically or symbolically valuable and in need of protection against exploitation. Although it is appealing as a response to increasing concerns regarding sample export, there are a number of important conceptual problems relating to the term. It is not clear, for instance, whether it is appropriate that ownership over human genomic samples should rest with national governments. Furthermore, ethnic groups in Africa are frequently spread across multiple nation states, and protection offered in one state may not prevent researchers from accessing the same group elsewhere. Lastly, scientific evidence suggests that the assumption that genomic data is unique for population groups is false. Although the frequency with which particular variants are found can differ between groups, such genes or variants per se are not unique to any population group. In this paper, the authors describe these concerns in detail and argue that the concept of genomic sovereignty alone may not be adequate to protect the genetic resources of people of African descent.

Memories in photography and rebirth: toward a psychosocial therapy of the metaphysics of reincarnation among traditional Esan people of Southern Nigeria

The aim of this article is to show that beyond the need for the justification of the belief in reincarnation, beyond the quest for evidences to prove its reality or otherwise, the idea of rebirth has a pragmatic role in the cultures where it is held. Using the theorization of rebirth among the Esan people of southern Nigeria as a pilot, it asserts that the idea of rebirth plays a psychosocial, therapeutic function of comfort and healing for those traumatized by the death of a loved one. This, it shall be seen, is similar to, even more reliable than, the role of photography in preserving cherished memories. The article does not, therefore, mean to join issues in the myth-reality or truth-falsehood debate on rebirth among scholars but attempts to establish the role of reincarnation, like photography, in bringing the past into the present.

Whores, men, and other misfits: undoing ‘feminization’ in the armed forces in the DRC

The global attention focused on sexual violence in the DRC has not only contributed to an image of the Congolese army as a vestige of pre-modern barbarism, populated by rapists, and bearing no resemblance to the world of modern armies; it has also shaped gender and defence reform initiatives. These initiatives have become synonymous with combating sexual violence, reflecting an assumption that the gendered dynamics of the army are already known. Crucial questions such as the ‘feminization’ of the armed forces are consequently neglected. Based on in-depth interviews with soldiers in the Congolese armed forces, this article analyses the discursive strategies male soldiers employ in relation to the feminization of the army. In the light of the need to reform the military and military masculinities, the article discusses how globalized discourses and practices render the Congolese military a highly globalized sphere. It also highlights the particular and local ways in which military identities are produced through gender, and concludes that a simple inclusion of women in the armed forces in order to render men less violent might not have the pacifying effect intended.

Toward a Caribbean psychology: an African-centered approach

Although the Americas and Caribbean region are purported to comprise different ethnic groups, this article’s focus is on people of African descent, who represent the largest ethnic group in many countries. The emphasis on people of African descent is related to their family structure, ethnic identity, cultural, psychohistorical, and contemporary psychosocial realities. This article discusses the limitations of Western psychology for theory, research, and applied work on people of African descent in the Americas and Caribbean region. In view of the adaptations that some people of African descent have made to slavery, colonialism, and more contemporary forms of cultural intrusions, it is argued that when necessary, notwithstanding Western psychology’s limitations, Caribbean psychologists should reconstruct mainstream psychology to address the psychological needs of these Caribbean people. The relationship between theory and psychological interventions for the optimal development of people of African descent is emphasized throughout this article. In this regard, the African-centered and constructionist viewpoint is argued to be of utility in addressing the psychological growth and development of people of African descent living in the Americas and Caribbean region.

"Mulata, Hija de Negro y India": Afro-Indigenous Mulatos in early colonial Mexico

Since the fifteenth century, the term "mulato" has been used to describe individuals of mixed African and European ancestry. Through an examination of mulatos from sixteenth century New Spain this piece complicates our understanding of the usage and implication of this socio-racial ascription. Both demographic and anecdotal evidence suggests that in the early colonial period mulato frequently described individuals of mixed African-indigenous ancestry. Moreover, these individuals may have represented the majority of individuals so named. Additionally this piece uses several case studies to demonstrate that Afro-indigenous mulatos formed frequent and long-term connections to indigenous society and culture. Through acculturation and familial ties, early mulatos helped to encourage interethnic unions and may have played a key role in the growth of a highly varied, multi-ethnic colonial population in Mexico. By highlighting these important trends, this study challenges our traditional assumptions concerning the category of mulato and suggests that we must avoid the homogenizing tendency inherent in such terminology.

¿Qué es racismo?: awareness of racism and discrimination in Ecuador

In the national consciousness, Ecuador is a mestizo nation. However, it is also an ethnically diverse nation with sizable minorities of indigenous and Afrodescended peoples. In national surveys, there is also a considerable minority who self-identify as blanco (white). Although there is strong evidence of continuing discrimination and prejudice toward both indigenous and Afro-descended peoples, there is little public discussion or political action addressing such issues. The emergence of a powerful and resilient indigenous movement in the late 1980s gained international interest and acclaim in the 1990s, in part because of the peaceful mobilization efforts and effective bargaining tactics of the movement. However, indigenous leaders usually have not engaged in a discourse of racismo and/or discriminación. There has been much less social movement solidarity and activism among Afro-Ecuadorians, but their leaders commonly employ a discourse of racismo and discriminación. In August and September 2004, a survey of more than eight thousand adult Ecuadorians was conducted in regard to racism and related topics. In this research, we use several measures from this survey that focus on awareness of and sensitivity to issues of racism, prejudice, and discrimination. Self-identification of respondents enables us to contrast the responses of whites, mestizos, Indians, and Afro-Ecuadorians to the measures. Other independent variables of interest are level of education, the region in which the respondent resides, and whether the respondent lives in an urban or rural area. Regression results show differences among the ethnic groups in levels of awareness of racism, but more powerful predictors are level of education and rural residence.

The satisfaction of doing national work, the delight of change and a good salary: the health of British colonial nurses going to work in the concentration camps of the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902)

During the South African/Anglo-Boer War(1899-1902), the British established concentration camps in retaliation to Boer guerilla fighters. Thousands of Boer women and children and thousands of blacks and "coloured" people were interned within these camps. The conditions in the camps were unsanitary and led to the death by disease,mostly respiratory illnesses, of many of the inmates. There were outcries in Britain over the camps among Liberal members of Parliament and social reformers such as Emily Hobhouse. In response to this, the Secretary of War sent an all ladies commission to South Africa. Their final report cited unsanitary conditions and insufficient camp administration as contributing factors to the high death rates.Among their recommendations was to increase the nursing staff. The Colonial Nursing Association provided nurses for these jobs. This article uses a previously unused archival source, the case notes of the medical advisor to the Colonial Office. In 1901-1902, he examined a group of nurses going out to work in the concentration camps of South Africa. This article presents the results of the examinations of 89 nurses, three of whom were rejected, and places them in the context of medical concerns at the time.

Sufis on parade: the performance of Black, African, and Muslim identities

For over twenty years, West African Muslims from the Murid Sufi Brotherhood have organized the annual Cheikh Amadou Bamba Day parade in New York City. It is a major site where they redefine the boundaries of their African identities, cope with the stigma of blackness, and counteract an anti-Muslim backlash. Rather than viewing religion as a subset of ethnicity, this study shows how African Murids interrogate the meanings of religion, race and ethnicity as intersecting constructs. National flags from Senegal, Islamic chants, and banners advocating Black solidarity all indicate a negotiation of terms. Clothes worn during the parade act as symbols and afford them another opportunity to work out these borderlands, especially in contradistinction to African American converts who follow a slightly different course. This article examines how their religious procession creates a Murid cosmopolitanism, allowing them a space in which to reconcile multiple belongings.

Autopsy findings in Witwatersrand gold miners, 1907-1913

This article reports autopsy findings in black Witwatersrand gold miners who originated mainly from Portuguese East Africa. These men died at the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association compound in Johannesburg between 1907 and 1913, just over 20 years after the discovery of gold in South Africa. At that time there were shockingly high levels of death and disease on the mines. The main causes of death were pneumonia, meningitis, tuberculosis and dysentery. Pneumonia and meningitis were the principle causes of death in new recruits arriving from Portuguese East Africa and tuberculosis the main cause of mortality in referrals from the mines.

The role of engagement with services in compulsory admission of African/Caribbean patients

BACKGROUND

High rates of compulsory admission of African/Caribbean patients have been reported. Several factors have been associated with this finding. The roles of some factors related to engagement with services have not been empirically evaluated.

AIMS

The aim of this study was to assess the role of engagement factors in compulsory admission of African/Caribbean patients.

METHOD

A systematic case-note review was made of the admission process of 100 compulsorily and 100 voluntarily admitted patients; each group containing 50 randomly selected African/Caribbean and White British patients. Information about socio-demographic and engagement factors was collected and the findings compared.

RESULTS

Compulsorily admitted African/Caribbean patients had more factors indicative of poor engagement with services than patients in the other groups. Prior to admission, they were less likely to keep their appointments, comply with their medication, contact their GPs and were more likely to present late. Furthermore, they had more history of multiple compulsory admissions. The compulsorily admitted patients, irrespective of ethnicity, also engaged poorly with services.

CONCLUSIONS

Poor engagement with primary care and secondary mental health services of African/Caribbean patients appears to be contributing to their high rates of compulsory admission. This aspect of ethnic factors and compulsory admission requires further studies.

Intractable Self-Fulfilling Prophecies Fifty Years After Brown v. Board of Education

The civil rights struggle for equal educational opportunity has yet to be achieved at the start of the 21st century. Inequality persists but problem and remedy are refrained from integrating schools, to ensuring equal access in resegregated settings, to closing the performance gap. As seen through ecological theory (R. S. Weinstein, 2002b), complex, multilayered, and interactive negative self-fulfilling prophecies create or perpetuate educational inequities and unequal outcomes. Society has failed to grapple with its entrenched roots in the achievement culture of schools. If this insidious dynamic is to be changed, an educational system that sorts for differentiated pathways must be replaced with one that develops the talents of all. Psychology has a critical role to play in promoting a new understanding of malleable human capabilities and optimal conditions for their nurturance in schooling.

The Power of the Brown v. Board of Education Decision: Theorizing Threats to Sustainability

Interviews with African American and White American elders capture the immediate power of the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision and the biography of its impact over time. This article reviews the lived experience of the decision and theorizes 3 threats to sustainability that ruthlessly undermined the decision over time: (a) the unacknowledged and enormous sacrifice endured by the African American community in the name of desegregation; b) the violent and relentless resistance to the decision by government officials, educators, and many White community members; and (c) the dramatic shrinkage of the vision of Brown from the dismantling of White supremacy to a technical matter of busing. Implications are drawn for the study of desegregation and for the study of sustainability of social justice more broadly.

Increasing the Number of African American PhDs in the Sciences and Engineering A Strengths-Based Approach

Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, the percentage of African American students who receive PhDs in natural science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) fields remains disappointingly low. A multifaceted, strengths-based approach to intervention and research that holds great promise for increasing the number of African American students who achieve at the highest levels academically is described. This work began in 1988 with the development of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program for undergraduate minority STEM majors at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). If current PhD receipt rates of program graduates continue, UMBC will in all likelihood become the leading predominantly White baccalaureate-origin university for Black STEM PhDs in the nation. The program is described and outcome and process findings from its ongoing evaluation are highlighted. The parenting practices that helped these youths to overcome the odds and achieve at the highest levels prior to coming to college are also examined.

Resisting a genetic identity: the black Seminoles and genetic tests of ancestry

In July 2000, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma passed a resolution that would effectively expel a significant portion of its tribal members. The resolution amended the Nation's constitution by changing its membership criteria. Previously, potential members needed to show descent from an enrollee of the 1906 Dawes Rolls, the official American Indian tribal rolls established by the Dawes Commission to facilitate the allotment of reservation land. The amended constitution requires possession of one-eighth Seminole Indian blood, a requirement that a significant portion of the tribe's membership cannot fulfill. The members of the Nation who fail to meet this new membership criterion all have one thing in common: they are black.

Descendents of former slaves who came to live among the Seminole Indians of Florida in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the black Seminoles have been officially recognized by the U.S. government as members of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma since 1866.

Vanishing Indians: the social construction of race in colonial Sao Paulo

Much has been written about race and race stereotyping in Brazil in relation to African-Brazilians and their mixed African-European descendants. The situation of Indians and their mixed-blood descendants has been studied much less. In fact, the word mestizo as it is used in Spanish America does not translate well into Portuguese, for in Portuguese a mestiço can be any mixture. In the case of Brazil, it can mean either a descendant of Indian-European parents or of African-European parents.

This paper studies racial classifications in seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth-century São Paulo. São Paulo was a unique region in colonial Brazil and, because of its unique history, these findings cannot be automatically extrapolated to all other parts of Brazil. São Paul was very poor, especially if compared to the northeast, and later to Minas Gerais, the center of the gold and diamond mining region. Though the town was founded in 1554, it lacked exportable natural resources until the late eighteenth century, so that the economy was partly based on the raising of a few cattle and crops for subsistence or for sale locally or to other regions of Brazil. The labor needs of Paulistas (inhabitants of São Paulo) were met through exploratory and slaving expeditions called bandeiras that replenished their Indian labor force or else provided captives to be sold to other parts of Brazil. Though there were a few African slaves in São Paulo in the seventeenth century, the settlers could not afford them in substantial numbers until the second half of the eighteenth century.

"The abandoned mother": ageing, old age and missionaries in early and mid nineteenth-century South-east Africa

This essay examines issues of ageing and old age in Xhosa-speaking communities to c. 1860. Drawing primarily on records of the Wesleyan Methodist and London Missionary societies, the article examines the construction of Xhosa ageing, old age and death in missionary writings. The primary medium of missionary reflection was the figure of the ‘Abandoned Mother’, modelled on contemporary British metaphors, that represented yet another atrocity story for legitimating the mission enterprise and the emerging colonial regime. It also argues that there were fundamental contrasts in the images of ageing and dying between those of the Xhosa and those of the missionaries. Though older persons found certain themes in the Christian message attractive, they preferred the local cultural model of ageing, old age and death.

Does decline make sense? The West Indian economy and the abolition of the British slave trade

Most historians describe the moral distaste for slavery as the sole reason for the cessation of the British slave trade. Data from the Caribbean, however, along with contemporary commentary, show that an economic crisis faced by sugar planters was critical to the timing of abolition in 1807.

"Velddrift": the making of a South African company town

Recent reviews of South African urban history have highlighted its neglect of rural urbanization and the role of the state and capital in urban development. Natural resource frontiers offer a uniquely unobstructed view of rural urbanization under the aegis of capital and the state. The process has been well documented for South Africa's mineral revolution, but other resource frontiers have been completely ignored. The latter developed in the long shadow cast by mining and the urban metropoles, with their centripetal pull on labour and the state, making the company town an archetypal urban form on the rural periphery.