Department of Education gone?

[Jonathan Whatley]

Racial health disparities are a health problem proven by unassailable statistics. While some complaints about racism can be disputed as subjective, these are objective.

Significant racial health disparities continue to exist even when obvious covariates are controlled for. A black person in the US can have high education, high socioeconomic status, live in a healthy neighborhood, demonstrate great health behaviors, but they are still statistically more at risk for some significant health problems than a white person matched by these same criteria. Glad you mentioned cardiovascular health, because that's a well-demonstrated area of racial health disparities.

These disparities are not explained either by the race-essentialist hypothesis that racial minorities are biologically less healthy than white people in most of these respects. Yes, there are some specific health problems that specific racial minorities are more susceptible to because of hard biology, like sickle cell anemia among black people everywhere. But there are similarly health problems that white people are more susceptible to because of hard biology, like cystic fibrosis among white people everywhere.

And the biologically less healthy hypothesis falls apart when you compare racial health disparities in countries where one race is a minority to the same measures in countries where that same race is not a minority or where racial stratification in the countries is otherwise very different. That said, similar racial health disparities exist in the US and in peer countries like Canada and the UK.

If America is going to be great its scientists had better get what they need to, to use some words from the president-elect, "figure out what the hell is going on."

"Perceived racism" is a measurable construct that arose out of this research. The hypothesis is that some of the racial health disparities are explained by built-up stress from the perceived experience of racism. It's especially pertinent to the study mentioned above, since it's well established that stress can correlate with cardiovascular disease risk.