East is east or is it? Racialization of Asian, Middle Eastern, and Pacific Islander persons.

The conventional use of racial categories in health research naturalizes "race" in problematic ways that ignore how racial categories function in service of a White-dominated racial hierarchy. In many respects, racial labels are based on geographic designations. For instance, "Asians" are from Asia. Yet, this is not always a tenable proposition. For example, Afghanistan resides in South Asia, and shares a border with China and Pakistan. Yet, people from Afghanistan are not considered Asian, but Middle Eastern, by the US Census. Furthermore, people on the west side of the Island of New Guinea are considered Asian, whereas those on the eastern side are considered Pacific Islander. In this article, we discuss the complexity of the racial labels related to people originating from Oceania and Asia, and, more specifically, those groups commonly referred to as Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, and Asian. We begin with considerations of the aggregation fallacy. Just as the ecological fallacy refers to erroneous inferences about individuals from group data, the aggregation fallacy refers to erroneous inferences about subgroups (eg, Hmong) from group data (ie, all Asian Americans), and how these inferences can contribute to stereotypes such as the "model minority." We also examine how group averages can be influenced merely by the composition of the subgroups, and how these, in turn, can be influenced by social policies. We provide a historical overview of some of the issues facing Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, and Asian communities, and conclude with directions for future research.

Children's cross-cultural categorizations of racially ambiguous faces in Taiwan and the U.S.

OBJECTIVES: Racially ambiguous face categorization research is growing in prominence, and yet the majority of this work has focused on White and Western samples and has primarily used biracial Black/White stimuli. Past findings suggest that biracial Black/White faces are more often seen as Black than White, but without testing these perceptions with other groups, generalizability cannot be guaranteed. METHODS: We tested 3-7-year-old Asian children living in Taiwan-an Eastern cultural context (N = 74)-and Asian children living in the U.S.-a Western cultural context (N = 65) to explore the role that cultural group membership may play in biracial perceptions. Children categorized 12 racially ambiguous biracial Black/White faces and 12 biracial Asian/White faces in a dichotomous forced-choice task and completed a racial constancy measurement. RESULTS: Regarding biracial Black/White faces, Taiwanese and Asian American children both categorized the faces as White significantly more often compared to chance levels, regardless of racial constancy beliefs. For biracial Asian/White faces, Taiwanese children with racial constancy beliefs categorized the faces significantly more often as White, whereas Taiwanese children without racial constancy beliefs categorized the faces significantly more often as Asian. However, Asian American children did not show a bias in categorizing biracial Asian/White faces. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that hyperdescent over hypodescent for more commonly studied biracial Black/White faces generalizes in both cultural contexts. However, biracial Asian/White stimuli may be perceived in more fixed-like patterns in predominately Asian contexts, since only Taiwanese children showed increased outgroup categorizations once racial constancy beliefs were endorsed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Race, eugenics, and the canceling of great scientists.

Special Issue: Race reconciled II: Interpreting and communicating biological variation and race in 2021 Francis Galton and Karl Pearson.

Skin color and race.

Skin color is the primary physical criterion by which people have been classified into groups in the Western scientific tradition. From the earliest classifications of Linnaeus, skin color labels were not neutral descriptors, but connoted meanings that influenced the perceptions of described groups. In this article, the history of the use of skin color is reviewed to show how the imprint of history in connection with a single trait influenced subsequent thinking about human diversity. Skin color was the keystone trait to which other physical, behavioral, and culture characteristics were linked. To most naturalists and philosophers of the European Enlightenment, skin color was influenced by the external environment and expressed an inner state of being. It was both the effect and the cause. Early investigations of skin color and human diversity focused on understanding the central polarity between "white" Europeans and nonwhite others, with most attention devoted to explaining the origin and meaning of the blackness of Africans. Consistently negative associations with black and darkness influenced philosophers David Hume and Immanuel Kant to consider Africans as less than fully human and lacking in personal agency. Hume and Kant's views on skin color, the integrity of separate races, and the lower status of Africans provided support to diverse political, economic, and religious constituencies in Europe and the Americas interested in maintaining the transatlantic slave trade and upholding chattel slavery. The mental constructs and stereotypes of color-based races remained, more strongly in some places than others, after the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery. The concept of color-based hierarchies of people arranged from the superior light-colored people to inferior dark-colored ones hardened during the late seventeenth century and have been reinforced by diverse forces ever since. These ideas manifest themselves as racism, colorism, and in the development of implicit bias. Current knowledge of the evolution of skin color and of the historical development of color-based race concepts should inform all levels of formal and informal education. Awareness of the influence of color memes and race ideation in general on human behavior and the conduct of science is important.

Examining "race" in physiology.

Racial disparities in cardiovascular and cerebrovascular health outcomes are well described, and recent research has shed light on the mechanistic underpinnings of those disparities. However, "race" is a social construct that is poorly defined and continually evolving and is historically based on faulty premises. The continued categorization by race in physiological research suggests that there are inherent differences between races, rather than addressing the specific underlying factors that result in health disparities between groups. The purpose of this Perspectives article is to provide a brief history of the genesis of categorization by race, why such categorization should be reconsidered in physiology research, and offer recommendations to more directly investigate the underlying factors that result in group disparities in cardiovascular and cerebrovascular health.

A small NGS-SNP panel of ancestry inference designed to distinguish African, European, East, and South Asian populations.

In this study, a small set of ancestry informative SNPs was selected to differentiate African, European, East and South Asian samples, which was detected by the next-generation sequencing technology. A total of 127 Chinese Shaanxi Han individuals were collected as test samples. No statistically significant linkage disequilibrium of any pair of loci or departure from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium of each locus was observed in the test population. To evaluate the performance of ancestry assignment using this panel, admixture analysis, principal component analysis, and likelihood ratio calculations were conducted based on the 1000 genome data and test samples. All populations were clustered into four groups, African, European, South and East Asian populations, which were consistent with their geographical origins. The pairwise fixation index (FST ) between populations from different continental groups ranged from 0.140 to 0.621 with average 0.415, and the pairwise FST between populations from the same continent ranged from 0.000 to 0.056 with average 0.012. The likelihood ratio results of 125 test individuals indicated that their ancestry components were highly possible from East Asia. In conclusion, this small set of ancestry informative SNPs can be used as a reliable tool to identify and quantify ancestry components of unknown samples.

A Comparison of Methods for Classifying and Modeling Respondents Who Endorse Multiple Racial/Ethnic Categories: A Health Care Experience Application.

BACKGROUND: Race/ethnicity information is vital for measuring disparities across groups, and self-report is the gold standard. Many surveys assign simplified race/ethnicity based on responses to separate questions about Hispanic ethnicity and race and instruct respondents to "check all that apply." When multiple races are endorsed, standard classification methods either create a single heterogenous multiracial group, or attempt to impute the single choice that would have been selected had only one choice been allowed. OBJECTIVES: To compare 3 options for classifying race/ethnicity: (a) hierarchical, classifying Hispanics as such regardless of racial identification, and grouping together all non-Hispanic multiracial individuals; (b) a newly proposed additive model, retaining all original endorsements plus a multiracial indicator; (c) an all-combinations approach, separately categorizing every observed combination of endorsements. RESEARCH DESIGN: Cross-sectional comparison of racial/ethnic distributions of patient experience scores; using weighted linear regression, we model patient experience by race/ethnicity using 3 classification systems. SUBJECTS: In total, 259,763 Medicare beneficiaries age 65+ who responded to the 2017 Medicare Consumer Assessments of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey and reported race/ethnicity. MEASURES: Self-reported race/ethnicity, 4 patient experience measures. RESULTS: Additive and hierarchical models produce similar classifications for non-Hispanic single-race respondents, but differ for Hispanic and multiracial respondents. Relative to the gold standard of the all-combinations model, the additive model better captures ratings of health care experiences and response tendencies that differ by race/ethnicity than does the hierarchical model. Differences between models are smaller with more specific measures. CONCLUSIONS: Additive models of race/ethnicity may afford more useful measures of disparities in health care and other domains. Our results have particular relevance for populations with a higher prevalence of multiracial identification.

Narrowed reference intervals for complete blood count in a multiethnic population.

Background Biological variation studies have shown that the complete blood count (CBC) has narrow within-individual variation and wide group variation, indicating that the use of reference intervals (RIs) is challenging. The aim of this study was to examine differences in CBC RIs according to race/ethnicity in a multiethnic population at a hospital in San Francisco in hopes of improving the medical utility of CBC testing. Methods Subject data were obtained by screening CBC results from the medical records of outpatients meeting certain criteria who visited Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital from April 2017 to January 2018. From these records, sex- and race/ethnicity-specific CBC RIs were calculated as the 2.5th to 97.5th percentiles. Results From a total of 552 subjects, 47.9% were male (65 White, 50 Black, 71 Hispanic and 54 Asian) and 52.1% were female (51 White, 39 Black, 122 Hispanic and 72 Asian). The RIs of neutrophil, lymphocyte and eosinophil counts; and hemoglobin, mean corpuscular volume (MCV), mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH) and mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC) showed significant differences (p<0.05) among the four racial/ethnic groups: neutrophil, lymphocyte and eosinophil counts; and MCHC in males, and hemoglobin, MCV, MCH and MCHC in females. Conclusions Race/ethnicity-specific CBC RIs should be taken into consideration in a multiethnic population to better interpret patient status and make progress toward precision medicine.

Endotypes of Chronic Rhinosinusitis Across Ancestry and Geographic Regions.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Preliminary studies have suggested differences in endotypes of chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) across ancestry/ethnic groups. Eosinophilic CRS (ECRS) is the predominant subtype for Western/European ancestry CRS patients and non-eosinophilic CRS (nECRS) for Asian patients. This review aims to re-analyze CRS endotypes across ancestry populations using one consistent criteria to existing data. RECENT FINDINGS: Although tissue eosinophilia is the most commonly used criterion for ECRS, various cut-off points are suggested. Surrogate markers have been extensively studied. Sixty-six cohorts with study criteria were included with a total of 8557 patients. Raw data from 11 studies 544 patients were re-analyzed using number of tissue eosinophils. At lower cut-off values of ≥ 5 and ≥ 10 cells/HPF, most patients of Asian and Western/European ancestry were classified as ECRS without difference. In contrast, at cut-off points of ≥ 70 and ≥ 120 cells/HPF, the majority of both groups became reclassified as nECRS. After applying one consistent criteria to existing data, differences across ancestry and geographic populations in endotypes of CRS were no longer evident.

Conceptualizing ethnicity in alcohol and drug research: Epidemiology meets social theory.

Since the 1990s, social scientists have rejected notions of ethnicity as something static and discrete, instead highlighting the context-dependent and fluid nature of multiple identities. In spite of these developments, researchers within the substance use fields continue to assess ethnic group categories in ways that suggest little critical reflection in terms of the validity of the measurements themselves, nor the social, bureaucratic, and political decisions shaping standard measures of ethnicity. This paper highlights these considerations, while also acknowledging the role of socially-delineated ethnic categorizations in documenting health inequities and social injustices. We call on researchers in alcohol and drugs research to critically appraise their use of ethnic categorizations, querying how to best measure ethnicity within their own studies in ways that are justified beyond simplified explanations of social convention and that "do no harm" in terms of perpetuating racism and obscuring the roots causes of social and health problems related to alcohol and drugs.

Morphological variation among late holocene Mexicans: Implications for discussions about the human occupation of the Americas.

OBJECTIVES: Cranial morphology has previously been used to estimate phylogenetic relationships among populations, and has been an important tool in the reconstruction of ancient human dispersals across the planet. In the Americas, previous morphological studies support a scenario of people entering the Americas and dispersing from North America into South America through Meso America, making the Mexican territory the natural funnel through which biological diversity entered South America. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We explore the cranial morphological affinities of three late Holocene Mexican series, in relation to ancient and modern crania from North and South America, Australo-Melanesia, and East Asia. Morphological affinities were assessed through Mahalanobis Distances, and represented via Multidimensional Scaling and Ward's Linkage Cluster analysis. Minimum FST values were also calculated for each series. RESULTS: Our results show Mexican groups share morphological affinities with the Native American series, but do not cluster together as would be expected. The minimum FST estimates show between-group variation in the Americas is higher than the Asian or Australo-Melanesian populations, and that Mexican series have high between-group variance (FST = 0.124), compared to the geographically larger South America (FST = 0.116) and North America (FST = 0.076). DISCUSSION: These results show that the Mexican series share morphological affinities with the East Asian series, but maintains high levels of between-group variation, similar to South America. This supports the suggestion that the high phenotypic variation seen the Americas is not a result of its size, as it can be found in more constricted areas, such as the Mexican territory.

Race Differentiation by Raman Spectroscopy of a Bloodstain for Forensic Purposes.

Bearing in mind forensic purposes, a nondestructive and rapid method was developed for race differentiation of peripheral blood donors. Blood is an extremely valuable form of evidence in forensic investigations so proper analysis is critical. Because potentially miniscule amounts of blood traces can be found at a crime scene, having a method that is nondestructive, and provides a substantial amount of information about the sample, is ideal. In this study Raman spectroscopy was applied with advanced statistical analysis to discriminate between Caucasian (CA) and African American (AA) donors based on dried peripheral blood traces. Spectra were collected from 20 donors varying in gender and age. Support vector machines-discriminant analysis (SVM-DA) was used for differentiation of the two races. An outer loop subject-wise cross-validation (CV) method evaluated the performance of the SVM classifier for each individual donor from the training data set. The performance of SVM-DA, evaluated by the area under the curve (AUC) metric, showed 83% probability of correct classification for both races, and a specificity and sensitivity of 80%. This preliminary study shows promise for distinguishing between different races of human blood. The method has great potential for real crime scene investigation, providing rapid and reliable results, with no sample preparation, destruction, or consumption.

Joining, Leaving, and Staying in the American Indian/Alaska Native Race Category Between 2000 and 2010.

Conceptualizing and operationalizing American Indian populations is challenging. Each census for decades has seen the American Indian population increase substantially more than expected, with indirect and qualitative evidence that this is due to changes in individuals' race responses. We apply uniquely suited (but not nationally representative) linked data from the 2000 and 2010 decennial censuses (N = 3.1 million) and the 2006-2010 American Community Survey (N = 188,131) to address three research questions. First, to what extent do American Indian people have different race responses across data sources? We find considerable race response change, especially among multiple-race and/or Hispanic American Indians. Second, how are people who change responses different from or similar to those who do not? We find three sets of American Indians: those who (1) had the same race and Hispanic responses in 2000 and 2010, (2) moved between single-race and multiple-race American Indian responses, and (3) added or dropped the American Indian response, thus joining or leaving the enumerated American Indian population. People in groups (1) and (2) were relatively likely to report a tribe, live in an American Indian area, report American Indian ancestry, and live in the West. Third, how are people who join a group different from or similar to those who leave it? Multivariate models show general similarity between joiners and leavers in group (1) and in group (2). Population turnover is hidden in cross-sectional comparisons; people joining each subpopulation of American Indians are similar in number and characteristics to those who leave it.

Light and shadows: An analysis of racial differences between siblings in Brazil.

Using data from the 2010 Census of Brazil, this article quantitatively examines the phenomenon of sibling differences in racial classification. In sum, the findings demonstrate that within-sibling racial heterogeneity occurs in 17-19% of families. The strongest predictor of racial discordance between siblings is racial discordance between parents. Furthermore, within-sibling regression models establish that race exhibits a modest but statistically significant association with some education and labor market outcomes. Most outcomes are not associated with race for siblings aged 15-19, although in families with both sexes, darker females have more favorable educational outcomes, while darker males have less favorable outcomes. In contrast, darker siblings aged 20-25 are less advantaged than their lighter brothers and sisters along a number of dimensions. They have significantly lower education, lower personal income, lower formal employment, and lower occupational status. It is argued that patterns for siblings aged 20-25 may be indicative of individual racial discrimination.

Genetics against race: Science, politics and affirmative action in Brazil.

This article analyses interrelations between genetic ancestry research, political conflict and social identity. It focuses on the debate on race-based affirmative action policies, which have been implemented in Brazil since the turn of the century. Genetic evidence of high levels of admixture in the Brazilian population has become a key element of arguments that question the validity of the category of race for the development of public policies. In response, members of Brazil's black movement have dismissed the relevance of genetics by arguing, first, that in Brazil race functions as a social--rather than a biological--category, and, second, that racial classification and discrimination in this country are based on appearance, rather than on genotype. This article highlights the importance of power relations and political interests in shaping public engagements with genetic research and their social consequences.

Category-specific face prototypes are emerging, but not yet mature, in 5-year-old children.

Adults' expertise in face recognition has been attributed to norm-based coding. Moreover, adults possess separable norms for a variety of face categories (e.g., race, sex, age) that appear to enhance recognition by reducing redundancy in the information shared by faces and ensuring that only relevant dimensions are used to encode faces from a given category. Although 5-year-old children process own-race faces using norm-based coding, little is known about the organization and refinement of their face space. The current study investigated whether 5-year-olds rely on category-specific norms and whether experience facilitates the development of dissociable face prototypes. In Experiment 1, we examined whether Chinese 5-year-olds show race-contingent opposing aftereffects and the extent to which aftereffects transfer across face race among Caucasian and Chinese 5-year-olds. Both participant races showed partial transfer of aftereffects across face race; however, there was no evidence for race-contingent opposing aftereffects. To examine whether experience facilitates the development of category-specific prototypes, we investigated whether race-contingent aftereffects are present among Caucasian 5-year-olds with abundant exposure to Chinese faces (Experiment 2) and then tested separate groups of 5-year-olds with two other categories with which they have considerable experience: sex (male/female faces) and age (adult/child faces) (Experiment 3). Across all three categories, 5-year-olds showed no category-contingent opposing aftereffects. These results demonstrate that 5 years of age is a stage characterized by minimal separation in the norms and associated coding dimensions used for faces from different categories and suggest that refinement of the mechanisms that underlie expert face processing occurs throughout childhood.

Children's classification and lexicalization of attractiveness, gender, and race: differential displays of these concepts and relatedness to bias and flexibility.

Minimal research has examined children's functional use of attractiveness to classify and label others, an important step in the development of children's biases. This study compared 3- to 11-year-olds' classification, sorting, and labeling of others and themselves based on attractiveness, gender, and race and also investigated whether these abilities and other characteristics predicted children's bias and flexibility. Relative to gender and race, children rarely used attractiveness to spontaneously classify people and were less accurate at sorting and labeling others and themselves by attractiveness, suggesting that they have a less explicit concept of attractiveness. Predictors of bias differed depending on domain and assessment method (forced choice or non-forced choice), showing that children's bias is affected by both individual differences and task characteristics. Predictors of flexibility differed based on whether children were assigning positive or negative traits to target children, demonstrating that the valence of attributes is an important consideration when conceptualizing children's flexibility.

Minorities are less likely to receive autologous blood transfusion for major elective orthopaedic surgery.

BACKGROUND: Surgeons commonly arrange for patients to perform autologous blood donation before elective orthopaedic surgery. Understanding sociodemographic patterns of use of autologous blood transfusion can help improve quality of care and cost containment. QUESTIONS/PURPOSES: We sought to determine whether there were (1) racial disparities, (2) insurance-based disparities, or (3) income-based disparities in autologous blood use. Additionally, we evaluated the combined effect of (4) race and insurance and (5) race and income on autologous blood use, and we compared ratios of autologous with allogeneic blood use. METHODS: Of the more than 3,500,000 patients undergoing major elective orthopaedic surgery identified in the Nationwide Inpatient Sample between 2008 and 2011, 2.4% received autologous blood transfusion and 12% received allogeneic blood transfusion. Multivariable logistic regression was performed to determine the influence of race, insurance status, and income on autologous blood use. RESULTS: Compared with white patients, Hispanic patients had lower odds of autologous blood use for elective hip (odds ratio [OR], 0.75; 95% CI, 0.69-0.82) and knee arthroplasties (OR, 0.71; 95% CI, 0.67-0.75). Black patients had lower odds of receiving autologous blood transfusion for hip arthroplasty (OR, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.74-0.83). Compared with the privately insured, uninsured and publicly insured patients were less likely to receive autologous blood for total joint arthroplasty and spinal fusion. Patients with low and medium income were less likely to have autologous blood transfusion for total joint arthroplasty and spinal fusion compared with high-level income earners. Even at comparable income and insurance levels with whites, Hispanic and black patients tended to be less likely to receive autologous blood transfusion. Ratios of autologous to allogeneic blood use were lower among minority patients. CONCLUSIONS: Historically disadvantaged populations receive fewer autologous blood transfusions for elective orthopaedic surgery. Whether the differential use is attributable to patient preference or unequal access to this practice should be investigated further. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level II, prognostic study. See the Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.

Categorizing a Face and Facing a Category: The Constructive Impacts of Ambiguity and Uncertainty in Racial Categorization.

The past generation has seen a dramatic rise in multiracial populations and a consequent increase in exposure to individuals who challenge monolithic racial categories. We examine and compare two potential outcomes of the multiracial population growth that may impact people's racial categorization experience: (a) exposure to racially ambiguous faces that visually challenge the existing categories, and (b) a category that conceptually challenges existing categories (including "biracial" as an option in addition to the monolithic "Black" and "White" categories). Across four studies (N = 1,810), we found that multiple exposures to faces that are racially ambiguous directly lower essentialist views of race. Moreover, we found that when people consider a category that blurs the line between racial categories (i.e., "biracial"), they become less certain in their racial categorization, which is associated with less race essentialism, as well. Importantly, we found that these two effects happen independently from one another and represent two distinct cognitive processes.