Black church arson in the United States, 1989-1996

A prevalent theme in the public forum on the recent wave of black church arson in the United States is that the events are part of an overarching conspiracy on the part of hate groups to start a race war. In attempting to discount this theme, critics have concluded that events of black church arson are not racially motivated, and instead are random acts of insurance fraud and delinquency. We argue that competition theory sheds light on these recent events by moving us away from both sides of this debate. We argue that, in the absence of good data on connections between various hate groups, it is useful to consider this wave of ethnic violence as a result of ethnic competition for economic and political resources. Using yearly event counts and time-series cross sectional data, we test hypotheses derived from competition theory. We conclude that competition for both economic and political resources increases the yearly counts of black church arson.     

Black Scoter habitat use along the southeastern coast of the United States

While the Atlantic Coast of the United States and Canada is a major wintering area for sea ducks, knowledge about their wintering habitat use is relatively limited. Black Scoters have a broad wintering distribution and are the only open water species of sea duck that is abundant along the southeastern coast of the United States. Our study identified variables that affected Black Scoter (Melanitta americana) distribution and abundance in the Atlantic Ocean along the southeastern coast of the United States. We used aerial survey data from 2009 to 2012 provided by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to identify variables that influenced Black Scoter distribution. We used indicator variable selection to evaluate relationships between Black Scoter habitat use and a variety of broad‐ and fine‐scale oceanographic and weather variables. Average time between waves, ocean floor slope, and the interaction of bathymetry and distance to shore had the strongest association with southeastern Black Scoter distribution.     

"War on drugs" continues in United States under new leadership.

Criticism of the "war on drugs" pursued under Republican administrations has grown in the United States. With the election of Bill Clinton many experts expected a shift from law enforcement policies to an approach favouring treatment and prevention. The budget announced in April, however, revealed no such shift in allocation of resources. Although the war on drugs has apparently failed to reduce the supply of cheap heroin and cocaine to the United States, the prevention strategy favoured by its opponents--school based prevention programmes--has not yet been shown to be effective in dealing with the concentration of drug misuse among the socially disadvantaged. In looking for new strategies Clinton must satisfy both liberals and conservatives in Congress, and community policing might therefore prove to be a politically expedient option.     

Macro-Economic Conditions and Infant Health: A Changing Relationship for Black and White Infants in the United States

We study whether the relationship between the state unemployment rate at the time of conception and infant health, infant mortality and maternal characteristics in the United States has changed over the years 1980-2004. We use microdata on births and deaths for years 1980-2004 and find that the relationship between the state unemployment rate at the time of conception and infant mortality and birthweight changes over time and is stronger for blacks than whites. For years 1980-1989 increases in the state unemployment rate are associated with a decline in infant mortality among blacks, an effect driven by mortality from gestational development and birth weight, and complications of placenta while in utero. In contrast, state economic conditions are unrelated to black infant mortality in years 1990-2004 and white infant mortality in any period, although effects vary by cause of death. We explore potential mechanisms for our findings and, including mothers younger than 18 in the analysis, uncover evidence of age-related maternal selection in response to the business cycle. In particular, in years 1980-1989 an increase in the unemployment rate at the time of conception is associated with fewer babies born to young mothers. The magnitude and direction of the relationship between business cycles and infant mortality differs by race and period. Age-related selection into motherhood in response to the business cycle is a possible explanation for this changing relationship.     

Increasing Black:White disparities in breast cancer mortality in the 50 largest cities in the United States

Introduction: This paper presents race-specific breast cancer mortality rates and the corresponding rate ratios for the 50 largest U.S. cities for each of the 5-year intervals between 1990 and 2009. Methods: The 50 largest cities in the U.S. were the units of analysis. Numerator data were abstracted from national death files where the cause was malignant neoplasm of the breast (ICD-9 = 174 and ICD-10 = C50) for women. Population-based denominators were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau for 1990, 2000, and 2010. To measure the racial disparity, we calculated non-Hispanic Black:non-Hispanic White rate ratios (RRs) and confidence intervals for each 5-year period. Results: At the final time point (2005–2009), two RRs were less than 1, but neither significantly so, while 39 RRs were >1, 23 of them significantly so. Of the 41 cities included in the analysis, 35 saw an increase in the Black:White RR between 1990–1994 and 2005–2009. In many of the cities, the increase in the disparity occurred because White rates improved substantially over the 20-year study period, while Black rates did not. There were 1710 excess Black deaths annually due to this disparity in breast cancer mortality, for an average of about 5 each day. Conclusion: This analysis revealed large and growing disparities in Black:White breast cancer mortality in the U.S. and many of its largest cities during the period 1990–2009. Much work remains to achieve equality in breast cancer mortality outcomes.     

Discursive constructions of race talk among Black men and women living in the United States

Race talk within discourse analytic traditions have largely focused on the discursive construction of racism in majority groups. This article extends this work by examining how Black adults discursively engaged in race talk. Across focus groups, two conversations emerged: explanations of racialized experiences and how racialized experiences should be dealt with. In explanations of racialized experiences, participants highlighted their own negative behaviours or constructed experiences as imprecise or an artefact of ignorance. These discourses functioned to circumvent inequitable relations premised on White normativity. In explanations of how racialized experiences should be dealt with, participants constructed themselves as having responsibilities, downplayed their racialized experiences or framed them as inevitable. Each of these discourses functioned to construct racialization as something that could be corrected through good behaviour or they placed ideological limits for what is possible for Blacks in society. Implications for the existing literature on race talk are discussed.     

Plasma Selenium Biomarkers in Low Income Black and White Americans from the Southeastern United States

Biomarkers of selenium are necessary for assessing selenium status in humans, since soil variation hinders estimation of selenium intake from foods. In this study, we measured the concentration of plasma selenium, selenoprotein P (SEPP1), and glutathione peroxidase (GPX3) activity and their interindividual differences in 383 low-income blacks and whites selected from a stratified random sample of adults aged 40–79 years, who were participating in a long-term cohort study in the southeastern United States (US). We assessed the utility of these biomarkers to determine differences in selenium status and their association with demographic, socio-economic, dietary, and other indicators. Dietary selenium intake was assessed using a validated food frequency questionnaire designed for the cohort, matched with region-specific food selenium content, and compared with the US Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) set at 55 µg/day. We found that SEPP1, a sensitive biomarker of selenium nutritional status, was significantly lower among blacks than whites (mean 4.4±1.1 vs. 4.7±1.0 mg/L, p = 0.006), with blacks less than half as likely to have highest vs. lowest quartile SEPP1 concentration (Odds Ratio (OR) 0.4, 95% Confidence Interval (CI) 0.2–0.8). The trend in a similar direction was observed for plasma selenium among blacks and whites, (mean 115±15.1 vs. 118±17.7 µg/L, p = 0.08), while GPX3 activity did not differ between blacks and whites (136±33.3 vs. 132±33.5 U/L, p = 0.320). Levels of the three biomarkers were not correlated with estimated dietary selenium intake, except for SEPP1 among 10% of participants with the lowest selenium intake (≤57 µg/day). The findings suggest that SEPP1 may be an effective biomarker of selenium status and disease risk in adults and that low selenium status may disproportionately affect black and white cohort participants.     

Senescence, Growth, and Gerontology in the United States

This paper discusses how growth and aging became interrelated phenomena with the creation of gerontology in the United States. I first show that the relation of growth to senescence, which had hardly attracted scientific attention before the twentieth century, started to be investigated by several experimental scientists around the 1900s. Subsequently, research on the connection between the two phenomena entered a new domain through the birth of gerontology as a scientific field comprised of various disciplines, many of which addressed growth. Due to gerontologists’ efforts, the association between aging and growth became stronger and more multifaceted within the discursive and organizational matrix constituting the new science, leading to a broader definition of senescence with an ambiguous connection to chronological age. Furthermore, as gerontologists borrowed the cultural agendas as well as research methods from studies of growth, aging began to be defined as a phenomenon that could be actively controlled and managed in both social arenas and laboratory environments.     

Ethnicity,race and class in the United States

Orlando Patterson, Ethnic Chauvinism: The Reactionary Impulse, New York: Stein and Day, 1977, 347 pp., $15.00.

William Julius Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1978, xxi + 204 pp. £8.85.