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  • NEWS FEATURE

Facing up to injustice in genome science

Researchers from under-represented groups are making genomics more inclusive by working with communities that have been overlooked or abused.
  1. Giorgia Guglielmi

    1. Giorgia Guglielmi is a freelance science journalist in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Cristian, Genaro and Isidra (l-r) photographed in front of dark backgrounds as part of a project celebrating Afromexican culture

Cristián, Genaro and Isidra (from left to right) are featured in a photography project to celebrate Afromexican culture in Coyolillo, Mexico. They are descendants of enslaved people brought from Africa in the 1500s. Credit: Koral Carballo

Néstor Ruiz Hernández has been fighting for recognition for decades. He grew up in a town near the Pacific coast of southern Mexico, where he and many others trace their ancestry to enslaved people brought across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa in the sixteenth century. They consider themselves Afromexican, but the group is not officially recognized by the Mexican government as a minority ethnic group. If it were, community members might receive government funding for cultural and public-health programmes. As it stands, they’re ignored.

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Nature 568, 290-293 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01166-x

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