Sickle cell has nothing to do with race. It is a genetic condition that affects peoples whose ancestors lived in regions of high-incidence of malaria. There are people (nice “Caucasian” types) living in Greece, Italy, and Jordan who are susceptible to sickle-cell and people in Southern Africa (nice “Negroid” types) who can never get it. It appears to be a “racial” disease in the U.S. because the overwhelming number of slaves imported to the U.S. came from locations with high rates of sickle-cell while relatively few European immigrants originated in the malarial regions of the Mediterranean. (There is also a mutation of the alleles giving rise to sickle-cell that causes the same effective diseease to carry another name from the Middle East through India.)
I won’t dismiss this out of hand, but I have to be an ass and ask for a cite. For over 20 years I’ve seen sickle-cell used in even paternity suits. The point was, it’s genetic, and I never heard of Greeks, et al being afflicted. maybe you can set me straight
If you care to, you can go here to see the 2000 census form. In the race question, there is a check box labeled “Black, African Am., or Negro”. So it seems that it would be easy enough to pick a spot for Sammy Sosa.
Likewise, if you were totally hung up on declaring yourself as a “European-american” (haw haw), there’s also a check box for you to indicate “Some other race” and put in whatever your heart desires. I would think a harried census volunteer might either just check off “White” for you or enter your pedantism in the “Other” line. So I’m led to believe that either your story is BS or you dealt with moronic volunteers and a moronic supervisor. I guess it could be either.
While I agree the notion of a racially determined award is kind of creepy and very patronizing, let’s be absolutely clear; the students were being, in SDMB parlance, jerks.
The notion that “African-American” means “Anyone from Africa” is simply a lie. That term, in the United States, means “black.” It may be a stupid term - well, actually, it IS a stupid term - but I know what it means, they knew what it means, you all know what it means, everyone knows what it means. It was quite literally CREATED to take the place of the words “black” and “Negro.” Pretending you don’t know that is bullshit. They were being jerks.
Sometimes being jerks in the defense of what’s right is the right thing to do, but if you’re legitimately convinced of it, part of that is accepting the punishment as part of your protest, a la Gandhi. Take your stupid two day suspension and serve it gladly as a sign you’re willing to accept consequences for your actions.
I was thinking about this along similar lines and was wondering if I would accept it if it were given to me (and if I were Black). I’m assuming I wouldn’t, but not being Black, it’s hard to know for sure. It sure does seem anachronistic, to put it politely.
Maybe it should be renamed “The Good Negro Award”. That would take care of the Arfican-American issue, and make the school adminstrators be too embarrassed to hand it out…
And that the award was really based on skin color, and that teachers and administrators get really cheesed off when you point this out.
I have a friend, also a white imported South African, who always checks the “African American” box on race classification forms. When I pointed out that what they really meant was people with black African ancestors, she responded that everyone has black African ancestors, since mankind evolved in Africa.
What was wrong with Negro? Shorter and more accurate than any of the alternatives.
emulsified, point taken. Like I said, I was hungover and they knocked on my door earning the money I paid in taxes. Next time they can count on me to fill the form or leave me alone. Considering some posts here under the “First Amendment I can say what I want”-vein, I have no guilt over having some fun. At least I do it to an actual person without the protection of an ISP. FWIW.
Just stepping in to say that I read and sympathize completely with edwino’s post. From CNN’s article, “56 Of Westside’s 1,632 students are black.” Don’t you imagine those students have enough hardships without seeing some white kid plastered all over their school up for their award?
I certainly don’t care that a disenfranchised minority gets an award that I don’t. I certainly don’t feel entitled to a European-American award. I already have that–A mostly white government, mostly white television, and economic and social privilege.
Christ, in Charlotte, NC, there’s a reason we have a (challenged, but not completely gone) law requiring 50/50 race diffusion in every single public school. So neither group feels overwhelmed or isolated. So each group gets a shot at rich schools and poor schools, at good teacher and bad.
56 out of 1,632? Holy fuck. I’m sure those kids were just being silly and messing with the system (I doubt they were able to analyze as liberated sociologists the delicacies of the patriarchal hierarchy and the hypocrisy inherant), and they got a slap on the wrist for their trouble. 2 days suspension? Heaven. Appropriate punishment for an appropriate misdemeanor foopah.
But I’m thinking of the anger and shame of those 56 students, outnumbered nearly 30 to 1, walking to school and seeing a lame poster.
I don’t think that asking for a citation for this makes one an ass. It’s a perfectly valid question given the prevalence of the common misconceptions on the issue.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that sickle cell anemia was confined to “Blacks”. How would that determine the race of a person unless all Blacks had the disease (or carried the recessive allele). They don’t.
There are actually genetic markers that can determine your geographic ancestry, but that isn’t one of them. And they are only statistical in nature, and don’t work in populations with people of mixed geographic ancestry. If you define race as “geographic ancestry”, then you might have a legitimate claim. Just be aware that “Africa” is not a unified geography for that purpose, any more than “Asia” is.
BTW, I’ve always heard that S-C also occured in Southern European and Middle Eastern populations as well (though at a lower occurance), although I don’t have a cite. I’d be interested in seeing the cite, too, as there are a few diseases that are similar to S-C but are not actually the same.
Yes, you are right. The recessive sickling gene is an adaptive mutation for people who live in regions with high incidence of malaria. Two such genes, however, lead to sickle cell disease and that’s obvioulsy maladaptive.
So, two black people who want to have children should get themselves tested for the sickle cell gene before doing the dirty deed. In this sense, race is a constructive concept, i.e., people with black skin are wise to be tested for the sickle cell gene. So should anyone with ancestors in the area of the Mediterranean Sea.
tomndebb never said it wasn’t genetic; he said it wasn’t a racial marker. Sickle Cell Disease is caused by a sickling mutation in the hemoglobin B locus. This is often a change of just one amino acid in the gene. Heterozygotes show malaria resistance, homozygotes show sickle cell disease.
Since heterozygotes often show phenotypes, it has been easy to identify mutations in this locus. Here is a reasonable list of them: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Omim/dispmim?141900#VariantList
Many are named after the location of first discovery. You will notice that many of these are from malaria-prone locations and were detected by the presence of sickled or malformed red blood cells. Many of them presumably also confer some malarial resistance. This is certainly true of the beta-thalassemias, which are prevalent around the Mediterranean. The presence of mutations in this gene which lead to malarial resistance is correlated only with descent from a region in which malaria is endemic. HbS, the traditional African sickling mutation, is just one of these.
If you click on the HbS entry, you will notice that even this allele is not entirely localized to Africa. First, the same mutation arose up to 5 times in Africa. This gives an idea of how evolutionary advantageous it must be to carry this mutation (although homozygotes die relatively quickly, they only diminish the fitness of the allele by a fraction). You will also notice that it arose once in Saudi Arabia and India. You will also notice that one of the African haplotypes is found in Sicily and Italy. Even the exact point mutation which has originated in Africa is found in several populations. It is completely possible to be a non-black and still carry this mutation, which nullifies its usefulness as an absolute genetic marker of race.
Did anyone else think it was in rather poor taste for them to plaster those posters all over school on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a day when people remember the blacks’ struggle for civil rights in the United States. With that taken into account, I’m not that surprised that many students were offended.
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In this sense, race is a constructive concept, i.e., people with black skin are wise to be tested for the sickle cell gene.
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But then, the claim that “race” is constructive suffers from this:
It is true that in the U.S., where the overwhelming majority of people imported as slaves were brought from a region with a high incidence on malaria and sickle-cell, a person who is “black” would be wise to be tested for Hb S. However, a person “with black skin” who comes from one of the regions of Africa where sickle-cell is not known has no need to be tested. Similarly, while people with “ancestors in the area of the Mediterranean” might want to be tested, that would not be a function of race, but of geography–just as those with African ancestors from different parts of Africa are only geographically at risk.
Given the massive numbers of black Americans who are at risk, (and the fact that their ability to discover their actual geographic origins were deliberately destroyed), we can use the social construct of race with some efficiency in this one application, but only with a number of caveats about who should or shoud not be concerned.
Nope. Maybe they were thinking along the lines of judging people by “the content of their character and not the color of their skin”. In which case it would be especially appropriate to use that day for this activity.
Of course, if it really was a prank, it was in poor taste. But we don’t know that, and the likely situation is that it was a bit of both-- part prank, part political statement.
Do you have any evidence that the black students are suffering any hardships that the white students aren’t, or is this just an assumption on your part? I don’t know about you, but I’ve been in many situations where I was “outnumbered” by black folks 30-1 or more and it didn’t make me uncomfortable. Also; “Their” award. Are you saying that awards based upon skin tone are a desireable thing? Can we then assume that you would be wholeheartedly behind an “Outstanding White Student” award?
Frankly, I found the post condesending in attitude, but I’m asking for clarificatio because I may have misunderstood what you were getting at.
Although I sympathize with any people who have been marginalized for reasons such as skin color, I also think it’s possible for the pendulum to swing too far the other way.
I have a South African friend who is white (half-Afrikaner, half-German), but who comes from a long line of anti-apartheid left-wing activists, and used to travel to the townships at the end of the apartheid era to volunteer as a literacy tutor. I met him when he was living in the States with his father, a professor, who decided to come work here for a few years after numerous other left-wing colleagues were assaulted and had death threats made against them, or were killed for their political views.
After returning to South Africa, a place where his family has been for hundreds of years, he was kicked out of the ANC – he says it was because he was white. Is he any less African because he is white? He’s certainly more African that I am American; my family has been in the U.S. much less than that (two of my grandparents are foreign-born, as were all of my great-grandparents).
As for the term “African-American,” I dislike it because it lends itself to inaccuracies and misinterpretations, although I’m not crazy about any of the terms in current circulation for various reasons. I think we need some new ones. People are individuals and grow up in individual circumstances. Creating awards for people based purely on skin color, that often have little if any relationship to the hardships they may have had to overcome in order to succeed, is divisive.
Someday I hope to have a long discussion with my white Jewish relatives who are relatively recent immigrants (2-3 generations ago) to South Africa. I’ve always wondered where they stand on the race issue…
I heard a good quote the other day. But for the life of me I can’t remember who said it, which kind of ruins it. I can’t also remember the exact wording… But it was by a black American:
I think that pretty much sums it up.
As to the OP. It looks like teenagers being smart-ass teenagers, imagining they are being clever and funny, than any racist intent. That’s what teenagers do. A days suspension and a dressing down, tops. But they do have a point…
But it was by a black American: