Racial Cultural Groups Research Articles

Tenuous relations: Ethnic–racial cultural and police disrespect in Finland

The relationship between ethnic–racial cultural communities and the Finnish police is evolving, and relatively little research is available within the criminal justice system that highlights police practices and behaviour towards ethnic and racial cultural in Finland. There is also a lack of scientific certainty about how to assess ethnic and racial cultural’ experiences of fair, unfair and impolite treatment by the police. The available research suggests that the experiences of Black and other ethnic–racial cultural groups in the criminal justice system differs from that of the ethnic majority population, and this tends to increase the tense relationship between the police and ethnic–racial cultural communities. The data on which this article is based were collected between April 2013 and July 2015 among ethnic and racial cultural groups from three different sites to explore ethnic cultural perceptions of legal authority in Finland. The experiences of 205 people with a cultural ethnic background were used to examine ethnic–racial cultural views on four types of police behaviour—respect, fairness, politeness and courtesy—in deciding whether to trust or distrust the police. We compared adverse encounters between members of ethnic and racial cultural communities and the police using a mixed-methods approach to procedural justice in a questionnaire and face-to-face interviews. The study indicates that hostile police humour contributes to a negative attitude, fear and lack of trust towards the police, whereas every respectful interaction brings about a positive attitude.

Multicultural genetic counseling: then, now, and in the 21st century.

Scholars, educators, and practitioners have argued that racial-cultural issues are obstacles for those seeking genetic counseling. When available, cross-cultural genetic counseling has focused on simplistic knowledge of client health beliefs and cultural customs, professional cultures, and biased theoretical models as reasons for failure to create realistic knowledge of members of racial-cultural groups in the United States. Recognizing the importance of meeting the needs for all who seek genetic counseling services, genetic counselors have been providing direction in cross-cultural genetic counseling research, practice, training, and developing competency, ethical, and professional guidelines. However, emanating from a cultural pluralism perspective, cross-cultural genetic counseling has often resulted in homogenized group stereotypes without attention to intragroup variation and individual differences. A transition from cross-cultural towards multicultural genetics shifts from culture-specific group norms to an integrated social, historical, psychological, and political perspective. By valuing the process of personal and professional racial-cultural identity development, the evolution from cross-cultural to multicultural genetic counseling that has occurred within the past quarter century is discussed.

Discriminatory risk factors in post-neonatal sudden unexplained death.

Many factors which are routinely reported on live birth certificates have been found to be associated with sudden unexplained death in infancy. Each of these factors has been evaluated individually without regard to its possible interaction with other factors also related to sudden unexplained death. Utilizing a stopwise discriminant analytic procedure live birth certificate information for all cases of sudden unexplained death among the 1968 California live birth cohort was compared to similar information for a sample of infants from the same cohort who survived their post-neonatal peroid. The variables with relatively high discriminatory power were age of mother total number of children born alive birth weight multiple birth duration of prenatal care and sex of the infant. The best discriminating variables for high risk infants (blacks and American Indians) were found to be substantially different from those for low risk infants (whites and Orientals). This finding suggests that different phenomena may account for sudden unexplained death between the 2 different racial-cultural groups. (authors)

Adult Lactose Tolerance

Few aspects of human behavior are characterized by more ethnocentrism than a group's dietary habits and practices. People around the world usually tend to assume that their foods are the most tasty and the most nutritious. Often such beliefs find expression as dietary prescriptions for others. Here the assumption is because we find these foods 'tasty' and nutritious, you should also. Such beliefs, of course, could not be farther from the truth, and in an article to appear later this year in the anthropological journal Current Anthropology , I have reviewed evidence from several disciplines which seems to indicate that (1) Westerners, despite the trappings of civilization, are not free from such biases; (2) racial-cultural groups differ greatly in their ability to benefit nutritionally from certain foods, in particular milk and many milk products; and (3) such differences can be accounted for in terms of a model dealing with the interaction

Urbanism in Southern Africa

Both the cities and the culture region of Southern Africa are actively and passively linked by processes of mutual interrelationship the most prominent of which are the processes of (1) South African urbanization, (2) South African industrialization, (3) acculturation of different racial-cultural groups, and (4) racial segregation or the development of a legal caste society. All four processes influence as well as originate in both the cities and the socio-cultural system of Southern Africa. The investigation of these processes is the central theme of the present study. It is believed that they are the key to the understanding of the peculiar character, functions, and role of the South African cities.