African American-only research

D. FUND/CONDUCT AFRICAN American-Only Research... 

If mandatory inclusion laws and African American-only studies are acceptable, then a fortiori there should be few doubts about the permissibility of funding research or treatment of diseases that have an especially high incidence among African Americans. Because not all racial groups are evenly distributed in disease categories, choices to fund some diseases more than others could end up favoring some races and genders over others. 

Several interviewees saw the two professional organization as complimentary. One Cohort III interviewee said I think there is a need for both ACS and NOBCChE. I don t think membership in one should exclude the other. I wouldn t say that ACS is that conservative because it has elected a black president... That speaks for itself... There are no racial barriers in ACS. To date. Hill (1975-1977) is the only known African American to serve as a president of ACS. In November 2004, an African American, Isaiah Warner, Vice Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, was a contender for the presidentelect. He was opposed by F. Sherwood Rowland, Bren Research Professor of Chemistry and Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine and... 

Before 1991, only four African American students had been awarded Ph.D. degrees in chemistry at LSUBR. Richard Evans was the first African American Ph.D. (1971) in the history of the LSUBR chemistry department. He is now retired from Alabama A M University where he was the chairman of the chemistry department for a number of years. Mildred Smalley (1972) is now vice chancellor for research and strategic initiatives at Southern University. Don Prier and Aris Gallon both joined the local Dow Chemical facility. The excellence of African American Ph.D.s had been proven USU simply needed to actually recruit these students for the graduate program. 

Isiah Warner joined the FSUBR chemistry department in 1992 and brought a number of his students with him from Emory. His presence and stature catalyzed a cascade of applications from African American students that has continued to this day. With his influence, one might think that all African American students come to FSU only to work for him, but in fact only four to five African American students are members of his group. All faculty members actively recruit these minority students they have proven to be of excellent caliber, and they are productive researchers. 

Another key question is, What exactly is the problem The problem is the dearth of diversity in the workforce. One example is the fact that only 18 African Americans and only 22 Latinos are currently employed in chemistry faculty positions by the top 50 institutions as ranked in a recent National Science Foundation (NSF) study. The top 50 institutions have been defined as those receiving the most governmental or private research funds available to academia. It does not mean that these are the best institutions it just means that they are getting the most funds. The net effect of these statistics is that we are averaging less than one African American or Latino per each one of these institutions. Thus the numbers are small. 

Bradford Lewis, writing in the Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, points to several areas for more research (1) generate more empirical research (2) develop more precise meanings of the preponderance of factors found to correlate with students career choices (3) define more sharply some of the constructs used to explain teacher influences on smdents career choices to pursue math and science (4) nnance the research to not only assume that there are deficiencies in the life histories of African Americans as related to science and engineering, and (5) to sharpen the explanatory model for race. 

There are few pharmacogenetic data for Hispanics. As previously stated, not every Hispanic subgroup has been phenotyped. To the best of our knowledge, our research unit is the only one that has reported on the results of CYP2D6 genotyping in Mexican Americans (Mendoza 1996). There are, however, data regarding isozymes that are thought to be fairly specific to Asians, Africans, and Spaniards. 

---