Genes, Race, and Causation: US Public Perspectives About Racial Difference.

Concerns have been raised that the increase in popular interest in genetics may herald a new era within which racial inequities are seen as 'natural' or immutable. In the following study, we provide data from a nationally representative survey on how the US population perceives general ability, athleticism, and intellect being determined by race and/or genetics and whether they believe racial health inequities to be primarily the product of genetic or social factors. We find that self-described race is of primary importance in attributing general ability to race, increasing age is a significant factor in attributing athleticism and intellect to genes and race, and education is a significant factor in decreasing such racially and genetically deterministic views . Beliefs about the meaning of race are statistically significantly associated with respect to the perception of athletic abilities and marginally associated with the perception of racial health inequalities being either socially or genetically derived. Race, education, socioeconomic status, and concepts of race were frequently found to be multiplicative in their statistical effects. The persistent acceptance of a genetically and racially deterministic view of athleticism among the White and older population group is discussed in respect to its social impact, as is the high level of agreement that general abilities are determined by race among non-White respondents and those of lower socioeconomic status. We argue that these findings highlight that both biological and non-biological forms of understanding race continue to play a role into the politics of race and social difference within contemporary US society.

Racial disparities in diabetes a century ago: evidence from the pension files of US Civil War veterans.

Using a comprehensive database constructed from the pension files of US Civil War veterans, we explore characteristics and occurrence of type 2 diabetes among older black and white males, living circa 1900. We find that rates of diagnosed diabetes were much lower among males in this period than a century later. In contrast to the late 20th Century, the rates of diagnosed diabetes were lower among black than among white males, suggesting that the reverse pattern is of relatively recent origin. Two-thirds of both white and black veterans had body-mass indexes (BMIs) in the currently recommended weight range, a far higher proportion than documented by recent surveys. Longevity among persons with diabetes was not reduced among Civil War veterans, and those with diabetes suffered comparatively few sequelae of the condition. Over 90% of black veterans engaged in low paying, high-physical effort jobs, as compared to about half of white veterans. High rates of work-related physical activity may provide a partial explanation of low rates of diagnosed diabetes among blacks. We found no evidence of discrimination in testing by race, as indicated by rates of examinations in which a urinalysis was performed. This dataset is valuable for providing a national benchmark against which to compare modern diabetes prevalence patterns.