Comstock: historical significance and cultural impact

Comstock

Bloodlines and Race

Race and Ethnicity has been a subject matter and variables in most of the Epidemiological and Public Health discourse and researches for a long period of time. As early as the concept of genes, color, skin and races are introduced, scientists are trying to extract out all the differences between individuals in these terms. Comstock, Castillo and Lindsay who are professionals of epidemiology and health services have conducted a comprehensive four-year review of the use of Race and Ethnicity in Epidemiological and Public Health Research from 1996-1999. They have come across a total of 1198 articles which were published in the American Journal of Epidemiology and the American Journal of Public Health during this period, and observed that 919 out of 1198 articles were related to race and ethnicity, which comprise of 77% of the entire research. There was a vast diversity of terms which were used in those articles in order to describe such concepts as variables, but most of the researchers could not distinguish between the variables race and ethnicity. They also found that it is common to compare the prevalence and risks of different disease in different races.

There have been two major concerns regarding the interpretation of these variables, first is the inaccuracy in representation of a particular person's race or ethnicity and second is the possibility that the researchers wrongly attribute the health disparities to different racial and ethnical groups and to understand the causes of such disparities. To incorporate with such issues and concerns, researchers have opted out some methodological recommendations to ensure a quality and fruitful research. These include the differentiation between the concept of race and ethnicity, provide justification for its use, method used in assessment, basis of classification, all relevant information like origin, social and economical status for the particular race or ethnicity, interpretation and discussion of this information and finally taking precautions while comparing and analyzing the information as there can be potential population differences within the information.

Clearly, such discussions upon race and ethnicity broaden our views and open new horizons for the research purposes. There are too many races in the world, and as included in this article, the most familiar or traditional categories are Whites (86.8%), Blacks (76.5%), Hispanic (44.1%) and Asians (22.4%). Other races (38%) emerge from these as a mixture or we divide these four into their sub-categories by which the heterogeneity gets broader. Just as we have Hispanics as Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Spanish etc. Therefore, by doing such a kind of research, we come to know about many such races in the entire world by which we are non-familiar earlier. Although there are some other kinds of races too which we name as mixed or other races, the main four races and their divisions are usually reported and only a small number of mixed race or ethnicity are seemed to be known. In earlier researches, it was reported that the researchers used mixed terms for the same races and did not define them explicitly. However, in this research, it was observed that researchers are now become aware of this and now there is an enormous diversity in describing race or ethnicity, which has expanded with the passage of time. It indicates that there have been some serious efforts in describing the authentic information about a particular race and also there is an increasing trend to be correct in this regard. On the whole, in our culture, there is much discussion upon the Whites and Blacks than any other race or ethnicity. As the demographics of our country are continuously changing, there is a need of a broader discussion in this field so as to have accurate and comprehensive details about all the races and categories existing in this area.