White American Males Research Articles

The association between serological and dietary vitamin D levels and hepatitis C‐related liver disease risk differs in African American and white males

Vitamin D may affect the severity of HCV-related liver disease. To examine the association between serum vitamin D levels and advanced liver disease in a multiethnic US cohort of HCV patients, and account for dietary and supplemental intake. We measured serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels and used FibroSURE-ActiTest to assess hepatic pathology in a cohort of HCV-infected male veterans. We estimated and adjusted for daily intake of vitamin D from diet using a Dietary History Questionnaire, and dispensed prescriptions prior to study enrolment. We used race-stratified logistic regression analyses to evaluate the relationship between serum vitamin D levels and risk of advanced fibrosis (F3/F4-F4) and advanced inflammation (A2/A3-A3). A total of 163 African American (AA) and 126 White non-Hispanics were studied. Overall, ~44% of AAs and 15% of Whites were vitamin D deficient (<12ng/mL) or insufficient (12-19ng/mL); 4% of AAs and 9% of White patients had an elevated level (>50ng/mL). Among AAs, patients with elevated serum vitamin D levels had significantly higher odds of advanced fibrosis (OR=12.91, P=0.03) than those with normal levels. In contrast, AAs with insufficient or deficient levels had > two-fold excess risk of advanced inflammation (P=0.06). Among White males there was no association between vitamin D levels and advanced fibrosis (F3/F4-F4) or inflammation (A2/A3-A3) risk. We observed potential differences in the association between vitamin D levels and degree of HCV-related hepatic fibrosis between White and African American males. Additional research is necessary to confirm that high serum vitamin D levels may be associated with advanced fibrosis risk in African American males, and to evaluate whether racial differences exist in HCV-infected females.

Reducing the Risk of Developing Diabetes

Reducing the Risk of Developing Diabetes

The relationship of oxidative stress, adiposity and metabolic risk factors in healthy Black and White American youth.

What is already known about this subject African Americans are disproportionately affected by obesity and other metabolic risk factors in comparison to White Americans. Increasing prevalence of obesity has been associated with concomitant increases in childhood hypertension, dyslipidaemia and type 2 diabetes. Oxidative stress is associated with obesity in both adults and children. What this study adds Oxidative stress is positively associated with total body fat and truncal fat, but not with body mass index (BMI) or BMI z-score in healthy youth. Oxidative stress is associated with diastolic blood pressure in African American but not in White American healthy youth. Oxidative stress is elevated in obese youth, but less is known regarding racial disparities in the relationship of oxidative stress with metabolic risk factors. To determine the relationship between oxidative stress and metabolic risk factors, adiposity, leptin, adiponectin and cardiovascular fitness (VO2PEAK ) in healthy African American and White American youth. A marker of oxidative stress (F2 -isoprostane), validated markers of metabolic risk factors, fitness and body composition were measured in African American (n = 82) and White American (n = 76) youth (8-17 years old) recruited over a range of BMI percentiles (4th to 99th). F2 -isoprostane concentration was positively correlated with percentage body fat (r = 0.198) and percentage truncal fat (r = 0.173), but was not different between African American and White American males and females (P = 0.208). African American youth had significantly higher mean systolic and diastolic blood pressure (P = 0.023 and P = 0.011, respectively), body weight, BMI percentile and Tanner stage. After adjusting for gender, age, BMI and Tanner stage, African American youth varied from White Americans in the association of F2 -isoprostane with diastolic blood pressure (P = 0.047), but not with systolic blood pressure, triglycerides, VO2PEAK or homeostatic model assessment for insulin resistance (all P > 0.05). Oxidative stress, as measured by urinary F2 -isoprostane concentrations, was positively associated with percent body fat and truncal fat in youth. Oxidative stress levels were similar among African American and White American youth. Among markers of the metabolic syndrome, a significant difference between African American and White American youth was demonstrated only in the association of oxidative stress with diastolic blood pressure.

“What mighty transformations!”: Disfigurement and Self-Improvement in Emma May Buckingham's &lt;em&gt;A Self-Made Woman&lt;/em&gt;

"What mighty transformations!":Disfigurement and Self-Improvement in Emma May Buckingham's A Self-Made Woman Jaime Osterman Alves In Emma May Buckingham's little-known 1873 novel, A Self-Made Woman; or, Mary Idyl's Trials and Triumphs, a young girl embarks on a program of self-construction common to legions of nineteenth-century American males and familiar to readers inundated, by late century, with textual examples from the popular self-improvement genre.1 As Buckingham notes in her novel's preface, "We often hear the remark:—'He is a self-made man;' but the term is rarely applied to a woman" (9). Historians of self-culture tend to corroborate this view: Daniel Walker Howe's Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln suggests that the nineteenth century witnessed a profusion of texts purporting to teach white American males how to access and fulfill their individual potential, to nurture and grow the perfection God had planted in each of them like a seed, "to make oneself better—mentally, morally, and physically—[and] use one's abilities to proper advantage" (123). Yet as Sylvia D. Hoffert's work on midcentury female self-making sums it up, "the most socially acceptable way" for a woman to improve her station "was to marry well"; men alone were "glorified" for the "pluck and luck [that] brought them economic success and the personal autonomy, social influence, and political power that accompanied it" (35). Nina Baym's study of woman's fiction also bears this out: Although large numbers of nineteenth-century women's novels tell about a young female who "win[s] her own way in the world," a young woman's "'own way' . . . seldom involves more than domestic comfort, a social network, and a companionable husband" (ix). Nevertheless, Buckingham's novel appropriates the self-improvement genre for a female protagonist and is dedicated to female readers who may be "struggling up towards a higher moral and intellectual life," presenting a rare tale of female self-culture and self-construction (9). Athough [End Page 101] Mary begins the novel in despair, "disowned" by her father for pursuing an education and thereby impoverished (29), over the course of nearly a quarter century (from the 1850s to the 1870s) she shapes her own destiny and becomes a wildly popular novelist, wealthy colliery owner, Civil War nurse, proprietor of a school for orphaned children, and happily married mother of two. If Buckingham's novel is striking for the agency and self-realization it affords a female character and female readers, it is additionally remarkable for the fact that its protagonist also begins her narrative as a "sickly, puny" ten-year-old, "dwarfed [and] deformed" in face and limb by a bout of scarlet fever she endured before the novel's start (17, 9).2 Despite the censure of her father, doctors' warnings against brain work for sickly girls, and her own poor health and constant pain, Mary educates herself with scavenged books, becomes a teacher and governess for several young children, and saves her earnings to fund both her own formal education and a set of radical, brutal elective surgeries that lengthen her contracted limbs and correct the facial features distorted by her illness. In keeping with the novel's emphasis on total self-improvement, Mary's inner development—the cultivation of her mind and heart—is reflected in her outward physical transformation: By the end of the novel, she is described as a "noble-hearted" intellectual who is also physically lovely and even "perfect" (342). In this essay I trace the function of Mary's disfigurement in Buckingham's novel to question its centrality to the project of her self-making and to interrogate the meaning of its gradual, somewhat troubling "eradicat[ion]" (9). I am intrigued, on the one hand, by the work of disability studies scholars Sharon L. Snyder and David T. Mitchell, who argue that disabled figures in literature have long functioned not as representations of real people with real bodies but as "narrative prosthesis," "a metaphoric signifier," and "a crutch on which literary narratives lean for their representative power, disruptive potential, and social critique" (Mitchell 16, 17). Assuming this is...

Men and Their Father Figures: Exploring Racial and Ethnic Differences in Mental Health Outcomes.

Though gender, racial, and ethnic disparities in health in the United States are well documented, it is less clear how these factors intersect to produce patterns of mental health outcomes among men. This study examined the presence of father figures in the lives of African American, Caribbean black and non-Hispanic white American males until the age of 16; assessed the current socio-demographic factors of these men as adults; and explored whether these factors lead to variations in mental health outcomes. Regression models were used to examine the correlates of socio-demographic, psychosocial, and retrospective father figure measures for depressive symptoms and non-specific psychological distress among African American (n = 999), Caribbean black (n = 506), and non-Hispanic white men (n = 193) from the National Survey of American Life. Findings revealed racial and ethnic group differences by age, employment status, education, and household income on depressive symptoms (measured using the CES-D scale) and non-specific psychological distress (using the Kessler-6 scale). Findings suggested that being raised by a grandfather placed both African American and Caribbean black men at greater risk for depressive symptoms and non-specific psychological distress under certain socio-demographic conditions. This study is unique in that it considers the influence of father figures on the mental health outcomes of adult males across three racial and ethnic groups. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for future mental health research and practice with men of color.

Computed tomography measurement of the auricle in Han population of north China

A large number of anthropometric studies of the human auricle have been conducted in various populations. However, data from Han Chinese population are currently not available. The morphology of the auricle is highly complex. Consequently, traditional direct measurement techniques are unable to provide sufficient detail and accuracy. The present study sought to provide anthropometrical data on the auricles of Han Chinese individuals using a three-dimensional (3D) computed tomography (CT) reconstruction technique. A total of 485 data sets were utilised for this study. This sample consisted of data from 241 females aged 18-75 years and 244 males aged 18-74 years. All participants were categorised by gender and further into three age groups. Twelve anthropometrical dimensions of normal auricles were measured with 3D CT. Auricular, tragal, lobular and conchal indices were calculated to further examine the auricles. Earlobes were classified into three basic groups according to the angle of the junction of the earlobe with the cheek. Few of the anthropometrical data showed significant bilateral differences in auricular dimensions. The height of the tragus, lobular length, lobular width, conchal width, protrusion at tragal level and inclination angle of auricles showed no significant differences between males and females. All the linear dimensions of auricles, except the height of the tragus, conchal length and width, increased with age for both males and females. Protrusion at the superaurale and tragal levels showed a decrease of between 4% and 9% for males and 4% and 10% for females across all age groups. This study is the first to report CT measurement of normal auricles in a northern Han Chinese population. We found that this method enabled the complexity of the ear to be measured easily and accurately. Increasing our knowledge of normal auricular dimensions will be beneficial for plastic surgeons.

Changes in Perceived Parent Derogation in a Sample of African American and Non-Hispanic White Males Through the Middle School Years

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to determine if there were racial differences in perception of parent derogation (i.e., feeling put down by one's parents) in a sample of 451 non-Hispanic White and African American males as they progressed through three years of middle school. Chi-square analyses were used to determine the proportion of participants reporting high levels of parent derogation. Independent t test analyses were utilized to determine mean parent derogation scores. Results indicated that there were no statistically significant differences in mean parent derogation scores between the two races. Furthermore, the mean scores remained stable during the three years of the study. However, the proportion of African American participants reporting high parent derogation was almost double that of their non-Hispanic White peers during the sixth grade, but almost equal in eighth grade. Cultural factors experienced by the two racial groups are discussed as possible explanations for the differences in parent derogation scores over time.

Evaluation of between-methods agreement of extracellular water measurements in adults and children

BackgroundExtracellular water (ECW), a relevant molecular level component for clinical assessment, is commonly obtained by 2 methods that rely on assumptions that may not be possible to test at the time the measurements are made. ObjectiveThe aim of the current study was to evaluate the degree of agreement between ECW assessment by the sodium bromide dilution (ECWNaBr) and total body potassium (TBK; whole-body 40K counting) to total body water (TBW; isotope dilution) methods (ECWTBK-TBW) in an ethnically mixed group of children and adults. DesignECW was measured with the ECWNaBr and ECWTBK-TBW methods in 526 white and African American males and females (86 nonobese children, 193 nonobese adults, and 247 obese adults). Fat mass was assessed with dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Multiple regression analysis was used to examine the variables related to between-ECW method differences. ResultsSignificant but generally small group mean (±SD) differences in ECW were found in the obese adults (1.28 ± 2.54 kg) and children (−0.71 ± 1.78 kg). The magnitude of the differences was related to mean ECW in obese adults, children, and nonobese adults, and the relations between these variables were modified by sex for nonobese adults. ECW differences were also dependent on age, weight, sex, and race or on interactions between these variables. ConclusionsOverall, although good between-method agreement was found across the 3 groups, the degree of agreement varied according to subject characteristics, particularly at the extremes of ECW and body weight. We advance a possible mechanism that may link subject characteristics with the degree of agreement between ECW measurement methods and their underlying assumptions.

Death Star, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Globalization

Death Star, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Globalization Darren Jorgensen (bio) In the original Star Wars series (1977-1983), the destruction of the Death Star takes place twice.1 This battle station, made of metal and as big as a moon, is blown up by rebels in Star Wars (1977) only to be rebuilt in Return of the Jedi (1983), before being destroyed once again. It is built and built again so that a malevolent Empire might dominate the galaxy, but its recurrence only ever presages its end. Its reappearances suggest that the Death Star is stronger than the narratives that want to kill it, yet not strong enough to come to its proper place in the galaxy. Like a ghost haunting the scene of its own murder, it holds within itself something unresolved that returns it to being, without the materiality of a life that would allow it to do so. Its indeterminate status is a source of anxiety for its commanders, who in both films declare that it is near completion or has just been completed, only to witness its sudden demise. The persistent becoming of the Death Star testifies to the dynamism of its image, to the way in which it exceeds the narrative that wants to contain it. It is Vivian Sobchack's argument that the poetics of such images precede and constitute the narratives of science fiction films rather than the other way around (125). Sobchack derives her poetics of cinematic images from Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space (1964), a book that argues for images of "pure sublimation; of a sublimation which sublimates nothing, which is relieved of the burden of passion, and freed from the pressure of desire" (xxix). For Bachelard, the signification of the image, the way its meanings are constituted by social and cultural life, turns away from the essential mystery that animates it. It is, however, to unravel the dynamism of the Death Star that I want to turn to its significations, for the operation of one is not predicated on the exclusion [End Page 206] of the other. The significations of an image echo, that is hear and respond, to its dynamism. The Death Star rotates not only through the Star Wars series but beyond it, into a popular American culture that refers to it as its own. When George W. Bush campaigned for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2000, his reformist opponent John McCain claimed that "I'm Luke Skywalker trying to get out of the Death Star" (qtd. in Cutler par. 1). He was referring to the need to change America from within its most coveted institution, the Death Star a metaphor for the country's conglomeration of political, economic, and military power. Films such as Clerks (1994), Slackers (2002), and Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) also refer to the Death Star, testifying to the transsubjectivity of the image amongst a generation of young white American males who speak its name. Their rearticulation of the Death Star is both metaphor and reverberation, as the planetoid stands in for America and transforms their world into its metal fantasy and back again. The demography of this transsubjectivity and its variations becomes a means of imagining one's place in this country's version of late capitalism, yet the image cannot be reduced to its sublimation of this place. Its significance is not its immanence; its variations do not explain its poetic power. A distinction between the significations of the Death Star and its reverberation can be drawn between the two orders of films here, those in the Star Wars series and those without. In the series, the planetoid's cycle of emergence and demise describes its dynamism, its movement more like the cadence of poetry than the unveilings of narrative significance. This dynamism also takes place in Clerks, Slackers, and Enron, as young white American men speak of the Death Star and, in doing so, occupy the space of its immanent power. This is what Bachelard means by the transsubjectivity of the poetic image, as the speaker calls forth its emergence from the void. Yet this shift out of the Star Wars series...

Comparison of Craniofacial Measurements of Young Adult African-American and North American White Males and Females

Surgical correction of craniofacial disfigurements depends for its success on precise knowledge of the craniofacial norms of the patient's racial/ethnic groups. The norms of North American whites should be restricted to patients of Caucasian origin and not applied to members of other races. This study therefore sought to determine differences in anthropometric measurements of the craniofacial complex between African-American and North American white subjects of both sexes and of similar age (18-25 years old). The study group consisted of healthy young adult African-Americans, 50 males and 50 females. The analysis of craniofacial morphology was based on 51 anthropometric measurements: 9 cranial, 10 facial, 8 orbital, 14 nasal, 4 oral and 6 auricular. The results were compared with 51 norms previously established for North American whites in the same age group, generally based on 109 males and 200 females, fewer in comparisons of some nasal measurements (ac-ac, sbal-sbal, ac-sn, nostril axis). Highly significant differences between groups were found in every craniofacial region, especially in the orbital and nasal areas, and confirmed the need to establish separate norms for African-Americans to guide corrective surgery of the head and face.

The influence of exclusion criteria on the relationship between suicide rates and age in cross-national studies

Traditionally, suicide rates increase with aging in many countries (Shah and De, 1998). However, exceptions to this observation are emerging. Data from the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1995 revealed that female suicide rates did not increase with age in Mauritius, Colombia, Albania and Finland (Shah and De, 1998). Suicide rates increased with age in Switzerland (Ajdacic-Gross et al., 2006), Brazil (Mello-Santos et al., 2005) and China (Yip et al., 2000), but there were smaller peaks in the younger age-bands. Suicide rates among Australian, New Zealand and white American males increased with age, but suicide rates for females initially increased with age, peaking at menopause, and declining thereafter (Skegg and Cox, 1991; Woodbury et al., 1988; Snowdon and Snowdon, 1995). Suicide rates among non-white Americans (Seiden, 1981; Woodbury et al., 1988), Indians (Adityanjee, 1986; Bhatia et al., 1987), Jordanians (Daradekh, 1989), Indian immigrants to the U.K. (Raleigh et al., 1990; Needleman et al., 1997) and some east European countries (Sartorius, 1995) declined with increasing age.

Gender, Race, and Depressive/Mood Disorders: An Analyses of State-Federal Rehabilitation Outcomes

Differences in rates of case closure, case service cost, hours worked, and earnings per week for White and African American males and females, aged 18 to 60 years with depressive/mood disorders were examined using the Rehabilitation Service Administration data base of 2004. Using Chi-square analyses, White females had statistically significantly higher successful case closure rates than did African American males and females. Using analyses of variance and post-hoc Scheffe tests, White and African American males had statistically significantly higher mean earnings per week than did White and African American females. African American females had statistically significantly lower mean case service costs than did White males and females. Implications for rehabilitation professionals and for future research on outcomes with consumers with depressive/mood disorders are provided.

Gender, Race, and the Self in Mental Health and Crime

Strong and consistent gender differences exist in mental health problems and crime. Females suffer more from internalizing problems, including depression and anxiety, while males predominate in externalizing problems, which include delinquency, aggression, and substance abuse. These gender differences vary by race, however. Although gender differences in externalizing problems remain considerable across race, gender differences in internalizing problems are far greater for whites than African Americans. In explaining these patterns, our perspective differs from prior theories in both mental health and criminology by focusing on the intersection of gender and race in relation to both internalizing and externalizing problems. We propose that gender and race affect internalizing and externalizing problems through their impact on schemas about self-salience, which refer to beliefs about the importance of the self versus the collective in social relations. In testing this perspective, we examine a sample of white and African American males and females in adolescence, the point at which these patterns arise. We find that gender and race interact to shape schemas about self-salience. Further, these differences in self-salience help to explain the disparities by gender and race in internalizing and externalizing problems.

And Ever the Twain Shall Meet: The Holiness Missionary Movement and the Birth of World Pentecostalism, 1870–1920

AbstractPentecostalism first appeared as a global movement, built with both modern and antimodern materials provided by the American holiness missionary movement. On the anti-modern side, radical holiness spirituality and theology infused the worldviews of its advocates with supernaturalism, primitivism, and an apocalyptic eschatology. It resisted modern trends toward systematization, bureaucratization, and centralized control. Furthermore, radical holiness minimized the significance of modern categories of nation, ethnicity, race, and civilization. On the other side, radical holiness depended on the modern disintegration of traditional religious deference, used modern techniques for promoting audiencedriven or democratized patterns of authority, and effectively equipped its followers for the pragmatic methodologies of modernity by skillfully making use of transportation networks, fund-raising techniques, and mass media to reach large audiences.American holiness missionaries carried these characteristics overseas, where non-American advocates adapted them to their particular circumstances. Both American and non-American adherents promoted radical holiness in ways that confounded reigning categories of identity, power relations, and conceptions of East and West. Radical holiness granted religious authority to Chinese men, Indian girls, spirit-filled Zulus, working-class Chileans, female evangelists, and African-American leaders, as well as white American males, without consciously mobilizing its followers along lines of national, ethnic, gendered, racial, or class identity. It demanded that its followers leave "heathenism," but it did so without utilizing the imperialist era discourse of civilization that upheld western cultural superiority and non-western cultural inferiority. In terms of its national or racial characteristics, then, early leaders from diverse backgrounds used tools from the American holiness movement to bring a non-American movement, world Pentecostalism, into existence.

Subsite-Specific Colorectal Cancer Incidence Rates and Stage Distributions among Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States, 1995 to 1999

Abstract Objective: This study examined subsite-specific colorectal cancer incidence rates and stage distributions for Asians and Pacific Islanders (API) and compared the API data with data for Whites and African Americans. Methods: Data included 336,798 invasive colorectal cancer incident cases for 1995 to 1999 from 23 population-based central cancer registries, representing about two thirds of API population in the United States. Age-adjusted rates, using the 2000 U.S. standard population, and age-specific rates and stage distributions were computed by anatomic subsite, race, and gender. All rates were expressed per 100,000. SEs and rate ratios were calculated for rate comparison. A significance level of 0.05 was used for all analyses. Results: Overall, age-adjusted colorectal cancer incidence rates were significantly lower in API than in Whites and African Americans across anatomic subsites, particularly for proximal colon cancer in which rates were 40% to 50% lower in API males and females. Exception to this pattern was the significantly (10%) higher rectal cancer incidence rate in API males than in African American males. The incidence patterns by anatomic subsite within API differed from those of Whites and African Americans. Among API, the rate of rectal cancer (19.2 per 100,000) was significantly higher than the rates of proximal (15.2 per 100,000) and distal (17.7 per 100,000) colon cancers in males, with little variations in rates across anatomic subsites in females. In contrast, among White and African American males and females, proximal colon cancer rates were over 25% higher than the rates of distal colon and rectal cancers. Increases in age-specific rates with advancing age were more striking for proximal colon cancer than for distal colon and rectal cancers in Whites and African Americans, while age-specific rates were very similar for different subsites in API with parallel increases with advancing age, especially in API males. Similar to Whites and African Americans, in API, proximal colon cancers (32% to 35%) were also less likely to be diagnosed with localized stage compared with distal colon (38% to 42%) and rectal (44% to 52%) cancers. Conclusion: The patterns of subsite-specific colorectal cancer incidence in API, especially API males, differ from those of Whites and African Americans. Similar to Whites and African Americans, lower percentage of localized disease in API for proximal colon cancer than for distal colon and rectal cancers was also observed.

Early Substance Use and School Achievement: An Examination of Latino, White, and African American Youth

This study examines the impact of early substance use on school completion. From a life-course perspective, early deviance can interrupt adolescent development, including education. Studies have cited substance use in early adolescence as a risk factor for school dropout; however, few studies examine the relationship with diverse samples. Using longitudinal data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, we examine the impact of early alcohol and drug use on high school completion relative to other risk factors for Latino, White, and African American males. Once family, school, and life events are considered, early alcohol and drug use exerts an independent influence on the failure to complete high school for White and African American males. Among Latino males, the relationship between early use and school completion appears to be mediated by impregnating a partner

Prognostic significance of race on biochemical control in patients with localized prostate cancer treated with permanent brachytherapy: multivariate and matched-pair analyses

Purpose: To compare PSA relapse-free survival (PSA-RFS) between African-American (AA) and white American (WA) males treated with permanent prostate brachytherapy (PPB) for clinically localized prostate cancer.Methods and materials: One thousand eighty-one consecutive patients, including 246 African-Americans, underwent PPB with 103Pd or 125I, alone or with external beam radiation therapy between September 1992 and September 1999. Computer-generated matching was performed to create two identical cohorts of WA and AA males, based on the use of neoadjuvant androgen ablation (NAAD), pretreatment PSA, and Gleason score. Presenting characteristics were used to define risk groups, as follows: Low risk had PSA ≤10 and Gleason score ≤6, intermediate risk had PSA >10 or Gleason score ≥7, and high risk had PSA >10 and Gleason score ≥7. PSA-RFS was calculated using the Kattan modification of the ASTRO definition, and the log-rank test was used to compare Kaplan-Meier PSA-RFS curves. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to determine predictors of PSA-RFS.Results: Overall, univariate analysis revealed that AA males at presentation had lower disease stage (p = 0.01), had lower Gleason scores (p = 0.017), were younger (p = 0.001), and were more likely to receive NAAD (p = 0.001) than their WA counterparts. There were no differences in pretreatment PSA, isotope selection, use of external beam radiation therapy, median follow-up, or risk group classification between AA and WA males. Pretreatment PSA and Gleason score were significant predictors of PSA-RFS in multivariate analysis, and race was not significant. There was no significant difference between the 5-year PSA-RFS for AA males (84.0%) and the matched cohort of WA males (81.2%) (p = 0.384). Race was not a predictor of 5-year PSA-RFS among patients treated with or without NAAD and within low-, intermediate-, and high-risk groups.Conclusion: Race is not an independent predictor of 5-year PSA-RFS in patients with localized prostate cancer treated with PPB. This result is consistent with other studies that also show that race does not contribute to differences in outcome after definitive therapies for localized prostate cancer.

GENETIC POLYMORPHISMS IN ETHANOL METABOLISM: ISSUES AND GOALS FOR PHYSIOLOGICALLY BASED PHARMACOKINETIC MODELING*

Chronic exposure to excessive ethanol consumption has adverse effects on virtually all organs and tissues in the body, including but not limited to the liver, pancreas, reproductive organs, central nervous system, and the fetus. Exposure to ethanol can also enhance the toxicity of other chemicals. Not all persons exposed to the same amount of ethanol experience the same degree of adverse effects. For example, only 12% to 13% of alcohol abusers develop cirrhosis. Possible factors which may alter susceptibility include age, sex, nutritional status, health status (i.e., smokers) and race. Some of these factors affect susceptibility because they alter ethanol metabolism, which occurs primarily in the liver by alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH). Genetic polymorphisms for ADH partially account for the observed differences in ethanol elimination rates among various populations but the relative contribution to susceptibility is not completely understood. Incorporation of the kinetic parameters associated with ADH polymorphisms into a physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model for ethanol will aid in assessing the relative contribution to susceptibility. The specific information required to develop this model includes Km and Kcat values for each ADH isoform and the amount of each isoform present in the liver. Blood ethanol concentrations (BEC) from various populations with known ADH phenotypes are also necessary to validate the model. The impact of inclusion of these data on PBPK model predictions was examined using available information from adult white and African American males.

Strange Fruit: Plays on Lynching by American Women

Reviewed by: Strange Fruit: Plays on Lynching by American Women Eileen Cherry Strange Fruit: Plays on Lynching by American Women. Edited by Kathy A. Perkins and Judith L. Stephens. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998; pp. x + 448. $39.95 cloth, $24.95 paper. This carefully assembled collection of fifteen American plays by black and white women writers about the brutal legacy of lynching takes its title from the famous protest song recorded in 1939 by jazz vocalist Billie Holiday. In the foreword, critic and scholar, Sandra L. Richards writes: The Billie Holiday song . . . speaks of the blood at the roots of a tree that is metonymically characteristic of the American landscape, blood that has seeped into the soil that nourishes us all—black and white especially, but finally all who claim the United States as home . . . . This anthology is a challenge to a collective, historical amnesia that would forget the late nineteenth and twentieth century social ritual wherein white men brutally maintained their power by terrorizing black communities . . . . We would will to forget, we would collectively struggle to remove from our consciousness the knowledge that this peculiarly American tree continues to bear strange fruit. [ix] Richards argues that even as we face the end of the twentieth century, Americans cannot deny the legacy of this barbaric cultural practice, which can be found in its contemporary forms in church burnings, internet postings, hate crimes, and a flourishing paramilitary that often serves as a macabre rite of passage for white American males. The lynching dramas presented in this anthology give us an opportunity to examine the phenomenon through the eyes of its victims as well as through the collective voices of American women who were witnesses and, in many instances, complicitous to the horror. But this collection is not merely a litany of gruesome injustices. As an eighty-year retrospective of a dramatic genre, it is significant for its exposure and illumination of the catalytic work of African American women artists who have always been working in the American theatre, albeit from a marginalized space. Concomitantly, it recognizes the cooperating voices of white women playwrights who have challenged the monologism of the dominant discourse that was always prepared to shut them out and shut them up about this particular topic. In fact, one underlying theme that links these women’s performance texts and lives is the threat of silencing and erasure. Some significant voices, like Corrie Crandall Howell’s in her powerful one-act [End Page 224] The Forfeit (1925), are rescued from obscurity by this anthology. In this respect, the collection challenges the borders of race and gender by providing a comprehensive “Table of Lynching Dramas,” as well as rich bibliographic resources that invite further investigation by scholars interested in how ideology can create a common aesthetic ground for diverse artists. Judith L. Stephens writes, “These plays are complementary and reciprocal, both womanist and feminist, in that they reflect commonalities and differences between and among black and white women” (11). In her introductory essay, “The Impact of Lynching on the Art of African American Women,” Kathy A. Perkins reflects on the murder and mutilation of a pregnant black woman, Mary Turner, by a white mob in Brooks County, Georgia in 1918 and the “silence” it evoked in American society, except for the protest of African American artists and activists. In the early decades of this century, to speak publicly and truthfully of such lynching atrocities was indecorous in the eyes of the whites. Additionally, black artists and activists learned that speaking out could prevent their success, subject them to punishment, and have terrifying repercussions. This is why Billie Holiday’s performance and public success with “Strange Fruit” was extraordinary: “Holiday introduced the controversial song, written by white poet Lewis Allan, which she performed at Café Society, New York City’s first interracial club. Never before had a vocal artist been so direct with the issue of lynching” (17). Each play in this anthology speaks unabashedly, using the theatrical devices of social realism that bring this brutality back to its roots—the homes, schools, kitchens and workplaces of everyday America. There are diverse offerings, from Angelina Weld Grimke’s Rachel (1916), which...

Schooling and Delinquency among White and African American Adolescents

Adolescent delinquency may be a likely consequence of negative school experiences, including poor academic performance, low class attendance, and dropping out. Given disparate experiences that African American and White students often encounter in school, this investigation examined the link between delinquency and school behaviors separately for White and African American males at risk for delinquency. In addition, it asked whether school experiences are equally related to both minor and more severe forms of criminal behavior. Results indicated that class attendance was related to higher incidence of both minor and serious delinquency. For African American adolescents, poor school grades and dropping out of school were predictive of both types of delinquency. The insignificant relationship between delinquency and school failure for White adolescents may be partially attributed to an economic safety net that provides assistance for White students who fall from the educational system. The importance of succeeding and persisting in school is highlighted for African American adolescents.