Dr. Janet E. Helms: Envisioning and creating a more humane psychological science, theory, and practice.

Dr. Janet E. Helms's use of psychological science to engage the field of psychology in radical progressive debates about race and identity is unprecedented. Her scholarship transformed prevailing paradigms in identity development theory and cognitive ability testing in psychology, to name a few. However, mainstream psychology often ignores, dismisses, and minimizes the importance of Dr. Helms's scientific contributions. Despite the numerous systemic barriers she encounters as a Black woman in psychology, Dr. Helms has persisted and made immeasurable contributions to the field and society. The intellectual gifts she has provided have shaped psychology for decades and will undoubtedly continue to do so for centuries to come. This article aims to provide an overview of Dr. Helms's lifetime contributions to psychology and the social sciences. To achieve this goal, we provide a brief narrative of Dr. Helms's life as a prelude to describing her foundational contributions to psychological science and practice in four domains, including (a) racial identity theories, (b) racially conscious and culturally responsive praxis, (c) womanist identity, and (d) racial biases in cognitive ability tests and measurement. The article concludes with a summary of Dr. Helms's legacy as an exceptional psychologist who offers the quintessential blueprint for envisioning and creating a more humane psychological science, theory, and practice anchored in liberation for all. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Robust genome-wide ancestry inference for heterogeneous datasets: illustrated using the 1,000 genome project with 3D facial images.

Estimates of individual-level genomic ancestry are routinely used in human genetics, and related fields. The analysis of population structure and genomic ancestry can yield insights in terms of modern and ancient populations, allowing us to address questions regarding admixture, and the numbers and identities of the parental source populations. Unrecognized population structure is also an important confounder to correct for in genome-wide association studies. However, it remains challenging to work with heterogeneous datasets from multiple studies collected by different laboratories with diverse genotyping and imputation protocols. This work presents a new approach and an accompanying open-source toolbox that facilitates a robust integrative analysis for population structure and genomic ancestry estimates for heterogeneous datasets. We show robustness against individual outliers and different protocols for the projection of new samples into a reference ancestry space, and the ability to reveal and adjust for population structure in a simulated case-control admixed population. Given that visually evident and easily recognizable patterns of human facial characteristics co-vary with genomic ancestry, and based on the integration of three different sources of genome data, we generate average 3D faces to illustrate genomic ancestry variations within the 1,000 Genome project and for eight ancient-DNA profiles, respectively.

Paleolithic to Bronze Age Siberians Reveal Connections with First Americans and across Eurasia.

Modern humans have inhabited the Lake Baikal region since the Upper Paleolithic, though the precise history of its peoples over this long time span is still largely unknown. Here, we report genome-wide data from 19 Upper Paleolithic to Early Bronze Age individuals from this Siberian region. An Upper Paleolithic genome shows a direct link with the First Americans by sharing the admixed ancestry that gave rise to all non-Arctic Native Americans. We also demonstrate the formation of Early Neolithic and Bronze Age Baikal populations as the result of prolonged admixture throughout the eighth to sixth millennium BP. Moreover, we detect genetic interactions with western Eurasian steppe populations and reconstruct Yersinia pestis genomes from two Early Bronze Age individuals without western Eurasian ancestry. Overall, our study demonstrates the most deeply divergent connection between Upper Paleolithic Siberians and the First Americans and reveals human and pathogen mobility across Eurasia during the Bronze Age.

"A Widespread Superstition": The Purported Invulnerability of Workers of Color to Occupational Heat Stress.

This study explores the history of the denial of the vulnerability of non-White workers to risks of heat illness. Defenders of chattel slavery argued for the capacity of workers of African descent to tolerate extreme environmental temperatures. In Hawai'i, advocates of racial segregation emphasized the perils to Whites of strenuous work in tropical climates and the advantages of using Chinese immigrants. Growing reliance on Mexican immigrants in agriculture and other outdoor employment in the early 20th century brought forth claims of their natural suitability for unhealthful working conditions. These efforts to naturalize racial hierarchy fell apart after 1930. The Great Depression subverted the notion that people of European descent could not endure hot work. More rigorous investigation refuted contentions of racial difference in heat tolerance.

A Cohort Perspective on the Demography of Grandparenthood: Past, Present, and Future Changes in Race and Sex Disparities in the United States.

How has the demography of grandparenthood changed over the last century? How have racial inequalities in grandparenthood changed, and how are they expected to change in the future? Massive improvements in mortality, increasing childlessness, and fertility postponement have profoundly altered the likelihood that people become grandparents as well as the timing and length of grandparenthood for those that do. The demography of grandparenthood is important to understand for those taking a multigenerational perspective of stratification and racial inequality because these processes define the onset and duration of intergenerational relationships in ways that constrain the forms and levels of intergenerational transfers that can occur within them. In this article, we discuss four measures of the demography of grandparenthood and use simulated data to estimate the broad contours of historical changes in the demography of grandparenthood in the United States for the 1880-1960 birth cohorts. Then we examine race and sex differences in grandparenthood in the past and present, which reveal declining inequality in the demography of grandparenthood and a projection of increasing group convergence in the coming decades.

Racial degeneration, mental hygiene, and the beginning of Peruvian psychiatry, 1922-1934.

Between 1922 and 1934, three pamphlets and a series of articles on mental hygiene were published in important newspapers in Lima, Peru. Their authors were Hermilio Valdizán and Honorio Delgado, two members of the first generation of psychiatrists in the country. These mass publications aimed to educate the population on what mental illness was, as well as its causes and symptoms. In addition, they sought to promote the figure of the psychiatrist as a specialist in "madness" whose recommendations should be heeded in family life. To that end, these publications contained true cases, related in melodramatic language, in order to reach a broader audience. Beyond their educative intention, these publications used ideas that Peruvian elites held about racial differentiation, because they were aimed at White and mestizo readers and had the express intention of preventing racial "degeneration." The analysis of this primary source material is complemented with other texts by Valdizán that sought to comprehend the manifestations of insanity among Native Peruvians, for which he used degeneration theory to explain the degree of "backwardness" observed among the races that were considered inferior. This article seeks to analyze the viewpoints held on racial differences by the most significant members of Peru's first generation of psychiatrists, in which degeneration theory was key in explaining the differences between human groups and in justifying the superiority of Whites and Western culture in the Peruvian state's mestizo identity initiative. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The Human Wallace Line: Racial Science and Political Afterlife.

This paper examines racial science and its political uses in Southeast Asia. It follows several anthropologists who travelled to east Nusa Tenggara (the Timor Archipelago, including the islands of Timor, Flores and Sumba), where Alfred Russel Wallace had drawn a dividing line between the races of the east and the west of the archipelago. These medically trained anthropologists aimed to find out if the Wallace Line could be more precisely defined with measurements of the human body. The paper shows how anthropologists failed to find definite markers to quantify the difference between Malay and Papuan/Melanesian. This, however, did not diminish the conceptual power of the Wallace Line, as the idea of a boundary between Malays and Papuans was taken up in the political arena during the West New Guinea dispute and was employed as a political tool by all parties involved. It shows how colonial and racial concepts can be appropriated by local actors and dismissed or emphasised depending on political perspectives.

Testing the Truth of Phrenology: Knowledge Experiments in Antebellum American Cultures of Science and Health.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, many Americans visited phrenological practitioners. Some clients were true believers, who consulted phrenology to choose an occupation, select a marriage partner and raise children. But, as this article demonstrates, many others consumed phrenology as an 'experiment', testing its validity as they engaged its practice. Consumers of 'practical phrenology' subjected themselves to examinations often to test the phrenologist and his practice against their own knowledge of themselves. They also tested whether phrenology was true, according to their own beliefs about race and gender. While historians have examined phrenology as a theory of the mind, we know less about its 'users' and how gender, race and class structured their engagement. Based on extensive archival research with letters and diaries, memoirs and marginalia, as well as phrenological readings, this study reveals how a continuum of belief existed around phrenology, from total advocacy to absolute denunciation, with lots of room for acceptance and rejection in between. Phrenologists' notebooks and tools of salesmanship also show how an experimental environment emerged where phrenologists themselves embraced a culture of testing. In an era of what Katherine Pandora has described as 'epistemological contests', audiences confronted new museums, performances and theatres of natural knowledge and judged their validity. This was also true for phrenology, which benefited from a culture of contested authority. As this article reveals, curiosity, experimentation and even scepticism among users actually helped keep phrenology alive for decades.

Analysis of biogeographic ancestry reveals complex genetic histories for indigenous communities of St. Vincent and Trinidad.

OBJECTIVES: From a genetic perspective, relatively little is known about how mass emigrations of African, European, and Asian peoples beginning in the 16th century affected Indigenous Caribbean populations. Therefore, we explored the impact of serial colonization on the genetic variation of the first Caribbean islanders. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Sixty-four members of St. Vincent's Garifuna Community and 36 members of Trinidad's Santa Rosa First People's Community (FPC) of Arima were characterized for mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome diversity via direct sequencing and targeted SNP and STR genotyping. A subset of 32 Garifuna and 18 FPC participants were genotyped using the GenoChip 2.0 microarray. The resulting data were used to examine genetic diversity, admixture, and sex biased gene flow in the study communities. RESULTS: The Garifuna were most genetically comparable to African descendant populations, whereas the FPC were more similar to admixed American groups. Both communities also exhibited moderate frequencies of Indigenous American matrilines and patrilines. Autosomal SNP analysis indicated modest Indigenous American ancestry in these populations, while both showed varying degrees of African, European, South Asian, and East Asian ancestry, with patterns of sex-biased gene flow differing between the island communities. DISCUSSION: These patterns of genetic variation are consistent with historical records of migration, forced, or voluntary, and suggest that different migration events shaped the genetic make-up of each island community. This genomic study is the highest resolution analysis yet conducted with these communities, and provides a fuller understanding of the complex bio-histories of Indigenous Caribbean peoples in the Lesser Antilles.

Late 19th, early 20th century US, foreign-born body mass index values in the United States.

Little work exists that compares the BMIs of 19th century foreign-born and US-born natives. Russian, Italian, German, and French BMIs were 5.1, 3.9, 2.9, and 1.8 percent higher than that of North Americans; Asians were nearly 4.2 percent lower. African-Americans and multiracial/multiethnic individual BMIs were 4.9 and 3.8 percent greater than fairer complexioned whites, indicating there was no multiracial/multiethnic BMI advantage. Farm laborers and ranchers had BMIs that were 2.9 percent and 2.2 percent greater, respectively, than that of workers with no occupations.

[Degeneration and improvement of the race: social higiene or eugenics? Colombia, 1920-1930]. / Degeneración y mejoramiento de la raza: ¿higiene social o eugenesia? Colombia, 1920-1930.

This article discusses the similarities between certain knowledges and practices focused on "improving the race" in Colombia from 1920-1930, showing how they can be located within a framework defined by historiography as the "Latin American eugenic movement." The term "social hygiene" appears in some Colombian medical texts during this period to describe the improvement of a fraction of the population defined as "degenerate." This study contributes to discussion of the need to rethink "racial improvement" strategies as local, heterogeneous, diverse problems.

Este artículo pretende discutir de qué manera ciertos saberes y prácticas orientados al "mejoramiento de la raza" colombiana entre 1920 y 1930 son similares o pueden localizarse en el marco de lo que ha sido definido por la historiografía como "movimiento eugenésico latinoamericano". El término de "higiene social" aparece en algunos textos médicos colombianos durante ese período para hablar del mejoramiento de una fracción de la población que se definía como "degenerada". Se trata de contribuir a la reflexión sobre la necesidad de repensar las estrategias del "mejoramiento de la raza" como problemas locales, heterogéneos y diversos.

Degeneración y mejoramiento de la raza: ¿higiene social o eugenesia? Colombia, 1920-1930 / Degeneration and improvement of the race: social higiene or eugenics? Colombia, 1920-1930

Resumen Este artículo pretende discutir de qué manera ciertos saberes y prácticas orientados al "mejoramiento de la raza" colombiana entre 1920 y 1930 son similares o pueden localizarse en el marco de lo que ha sido definido por la historiografía como "movimiento eugenésico latinoamericano". El término de "higiene social" aparece en algunos textos médicos colombianos durante ese período para hablar del mejoramiento de una fracción de la población que se definía como "degenerada". Se trata de contribuir a la reflexión sobre la necesidad de repensar las estrategias del "mejoramiento de la raza" como problemas locales, heterogéneos y diversos.

Abstract This article discusses the similarities between certain knowledges and practices focused on "improving the race" in Colombia from 1920-1930, showing how they can be located within a framework defined by historiography as the "Latin American eugenic movement." The term "social hygiene" appears in some Colombian medical texts during this period to describe the improvement of a fraction of the population defined as "degenerate." This study contributes to discussion of the need to rethink "racial improvement" strategies as local, heterogeneous, diverse problems.

Japanese-American confinement and scientific democracy: Colonialism, social engineering, and government administration.

During World War II, the U.S. Indian Service conducted social science experiments regarding governance among Japanese Americans imprisoned at the Poston, Arizona, camp. Researchers used an array of techniques culled from anthropological culture and personality studies, psychiatry, psychology, medicine, and public opinion research to probe how the personality traits of the confined Japanese-Americans and camp leaders affected the social interactions within each group and between them. The research drew on prior studies of Indian personality in the US Southwest, Mexico's Native policies, and indirect colonial rule. Researchers asked how democracy functioned in contexts marked by hierarchy and difference. Their goal was to guide future policies toward US "minorities" and foreign races in post-war occupied territories. We show how researchers deployed ideas about race, cultural, and difference across a variety of cases to create a universal, predictive social science, which they combined with a prewar romanticism and cultural relativism. These researchers made ethnic, racial, and cultural difference compatible with predictive laws of science based on notions of fundamental human similarities.

Overcoming the Racial Hierarchy: the History and Medical Consequences of "Caucasian".

The term Caucasian is ubiquitous in the medical field. It is used without a significant consideration of its history or medical necessity. First, the term Caucasian has racist historical origins in a beauty-based hierarchy with implied superiority. It is derived from a 1700's historical scheme which places Caucasians above the other, degenerated racial groups. Second, the pseudo-scientific justification for this hierarchy has been co-opted to legally justify discrimination against minority groups in the USA. Third, the unnecessary and incorrect application of antiquated racial identifiers negatively impacts patient care. Disentangling real, clinically meaningful genetic differences from superficial racial determinations remains an ongoing challenge. Framing patient care through Caucasian or white lens leads to the unequal care and the otherization of minority groups. Fourth, we must develop a more appropriate, racially sensitive system for patient identification in clinical practice and research. This demands intentionality, precision, and consistency.