We Need To Stop Leaving Mixed-Race People Out Of The Race Conversation

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

Another example of the challenges associated with the use of population descriptors can be found in the frequent use of the terms European, African, and Asian. These continental terms are tremendously broad in scope. At the Tokyo meeting, for example, it was noted that even among the Japanese researchers, there was no unitary understanding of what populations should be considered “Asian.”

More importantly, these terms can, in some contexts, be interpreted as referring to white, black, and Asian, the three classic, and socially constructed “races.” There continues to be a great deal of academic work that highlights the degree to which these broad “racial” categories are, in reality, social constructs. Although we should not overlook the correlation between “race” and socio-economic inequality involving factors such as health care and medical care, such discussion has usually arisen within the context of some North American and European societies. However, outside of these societies, the divergence between samples and population descriptors is also problematic. When the actual samples in the name of “European”, “African”, and “Asian” are taken from certain limited groups, without taking into account significant diversity within each region, it is unlikely that such broad terms have any scientific meaning, at least from the perspective of genetics on the global level. Moreover, the research results may be taken as supporting the classic “racial” categories, with any discovered “differences” misinterpreted as genetically determined “racial differences.”

The importance of the distinction between race and ethnicity cannot be overemphasized as the latter pays close attention to (presumably) shared cultural factors such as language, diet, and religion. When considering the contribution of environmental as well as genetic factors to diversity within each continental region, the scientific validity of the use of such broad terms to describe samples becomes even more questionable.

Yasuko Takezawa, et. al., “Human genetic research, race, ethnicity and the labeling of populations: recommendations based on an interdisciplinary workshop in Japan,” BMC Medical Ethics, (Volume 15, Issue 1, December 2014). p2-3. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6939-15-33.

We Need To Stop Leaving Mixed-Race People Out Of The Race Conversation

We Need To Stop Leaving Mixed-Race People Out Of The Race Conversation

Words of Integrity: Celebrating positivity and embracing the peaks and falls of life.
2021-11-25

Daniella Brookes

Someone said to me recently that if you don’t tell your story, then who will? This is a topic I’ve held back on speaking about because of the colourism that is still so prevalent in the UK; but we can’t speak about race without bringing awareness to all issues associated with it. I’m a mixed-race woman, born to a Jamaican father and a white English mother. I understand my light skinned privileges. I understand that I would never have the same lived experiences as dark-skinned women living in the UK, however being mixed-race (in this instance I use the term mixed-race to refer to those who have one black parent and one white parent) presents its own distressing experiences and I think it’s time we start speaking about them…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Daniella Brookes, Words of Integrity, Words of Integrity: Celebrating positivity and embracing the peaks and falls of life.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 28th, 2021 at 02:18Z and is filed under Articles, Media Archive, Social Justice, United Kingdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Mixed Race Studies

We Need To Stop Leaving Mixed-Race People Out Of The Race Conversation

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