Mixed Race Studies

Between black and miscegenated population groups: sickle cell anemia and sickle cell trait in Brazil in the 1930s and 1940s

História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos
Volume 18, Number 2 (April/June 2011)
29 pages
DOI: 10.1590/S0104-59702011000200007

Juliana Manzoni Cavalcanti, PhD candidate
Graduate Program on History of the Sciences and Health
Casa de Oswaldo Cruz/Fundação Oswaldo Cruz

Marcos Chor Maio, Senior Researcher and Professor
Graduate Program on History of the Sciences and Health
Fiocruz – Casa de Oswaldo Cruz

Translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty

The article examines medical and scientific studies of sickle cell anemia published in Brazil in the 1930s and 1940s, when the vast majority of physicians and scientists believed that miscegenation played a significant role in the epidemiology of the disease in the country. Special focus is placed on hematologist Ernani Martins da Silva, of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute, who conducted blood analyses around the interior of Brazil with the purpose of classifying miscegenated and allegedly pure population groups based on the presence of sickle cells and the racial distribution of blood groups. The article explores the ambivalences stemming from associations between sickle cell anemia and the ‘black race’ during this period.

The term sickle cell disease (SCD) is applied to disorders caused by a specific change in the hemoglobin molecule, an oxygen-carrying molecule that is one of the most abundant within red blood cells. Genetic alteration causes one amino acid to be replaced with another in the protein chains that make up hemoglobin (with ß6 glutamic acid replaced by valine – Hb S), thereby altering the molecule’s structure. This change lowers the affinity between the oxygen molecule and hemoglobin, prompting the formation of long hemoglobin chains that clump into intracellular bundles concentrated at the ends of the red blood cell and thus distort the cell into the crescent shape from which it gains its name (Andreoli et al., 1997, p.371)…

Read the entire article here.

(1)ne Drop: 2012 Tour

(1)ne Drop
National Campus Tour
Fall 2011

In an effort to provide audiences the opportunity to more deeply engage the issues raised by the project, the (1)ne Drop project is going on tour. The producers invite colleges and universities across the country to host a (1)ne Drop exhibit. Each exhibition will be accompanied by a multi-media lecture on skin color politics and Black racial identity by Dr. Yaba Blay, (1)ne Drop Author and Producer…

Topics include:

• “One-Drop: Fact? Fiction? or Fate?”
• “Not Black Enough: The “Other” African American Experience”
• “¿Black?: The Latin American and Caribbean Experience”
• “Light Skin + Long Hair: Challenges to Sistahood”

For more information, click here.

First Annual Convention Report: Black German Cultural Society NJ

Black German Cultural Society of New Jersey
German Historical Institute
Washington, D.C.
2011-08-19 through 2011-08-21
14 pages

By Priscilla Layne and S. Marina Jones

The First Annual Black German Cultural Society, NJ Convention was an important opportunity for scholars, students, and individuals personally affected by Afrogerman history and culture, from both sides of the Atlantic, to come together. Participants included numerous members of the Afrogerman community many of whom are themselves scholars, authors, filmmakers, and activists…

Read the entire report here.

The Stain of White: Liaisons, Memories, and White Men as Relatives

Men and Masculinities
Volume 9, Number 2 (October 2006)
pages 131-151
DOI: 10.1177/1097184X06287764

Janaki Abraham, Assistant Professor Women Studies
Jawaharlal Neru University

During British colonial rule some matrilineal Thiyya women in North Kerala, India, had liaisons with British men. While the response of the caste (here, a Backward caste) to these liaisons shifted over time, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century many women who had liaisons and their families were excommunicated. A “white connection” became a stain and kinship with the white man was denied or shrouded. This article looks at the ways in which both the liaisons and the denial of the white man as father or relative were located within practices of matrilineal kinship. Furthermore, this article seeks to understand how these liaisons are remembered today and how the presence of the white man as a relative is layered over by processes of forgetting and remembering.

Read or purchase the article here.