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III. Literature

Scholarly articles, literary works and works of journalism that provide evidence for the argument developed in the policy. These articles can be used for readings attached to a course.

Resources are organized by topic as follows:

A. Structural Racism

1. Descriptions and Definitions
2. Historical Frameworks
3. Science and Racism
4. Denial of Opportunity

1. Descriptions & Definitions

Structural Racism and Health Inequities In The USA: Evidence And Interventions 

A powerful article summarizing definitions and manifestations of structural racism in the United States, and the effects that structural racism has on health. The article also summarizes what health professionals and the health sector can do to address racism in health care. For those unable to spend much time or demand much reading by their students, this might be the single required reading assigned. This article is also listed in the section on health racial inequities

Bailey D Krieger N Agénor N Graves J Linos N Bassett MT, Structural racism and health inequities in the USA: evidence and interventions, Lancet 389(10077) 8–14 April 2017, Pages 1453-1463. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)30569-X,
accessed 2/20/2018

Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria? 

A classic written by a developmental psychologist, now president of Mount Holyoke College. She explains how structural racism and human development intersect in ways that help explain both how people respond to and are shaped by racism, and how they can learn to understand and work to dismantle racism. This book is especially helpful in helping explain why people of color need time and space to work separately from the white majority, in order to develop a positive racial identity and a positive framework for working in a multi-racial society.

Tatum, Beverly Daniel, “Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”, Basic Books, New York: 1997. ISBN 13: 978-0-465-08361-9

Glossary for Understanding the Dismantling Structural Racism/Promoting Racial Equity Analysis

Defined terms: Structural Racism, Racial Equity, Systemic Racism, White Privilege, Institutional Racism, Individual Racism, Diversity, Ethnicity, Cultural Representations, National Values, Progress & Retrenchment 

Levels of Racism: A Theoretic Framework And A Gardener’s Tale 

A seminal work published in the American Journal of Public Health that provides a framework for understanding racism at three levels: institutionalized, interpersonally mediated, and internalized. 

C P Jones, Levels of racism: a theoretic framework and a gardener's tale. Am J Public Health. 2000 August; 90(8): 1212–1215.

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack 

A classic article that defines and explains white privilege, how it tends to be invisible to those who benefit from it, and how it operates.

2. Historical Frameworks

We Were Eight Years in Power An American Tragedy

A powerful book, a collection of essays, that covers both the history of structural racism throughout the 20th century, and more detailed meditations on the Obama presidency, the Trump election victory, and the status of racism in the United States today.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, One World Publishing, New York, NY: 2017 

Letter from Birmingham Jail 

The Letter from Birmingham Jail is a letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King Jr. The letter defends the strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism. It is within this letter that King's famous words "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" are written. 

Structural Racism and Health Inequities: Old Issues, New Directions

 An article describing the historical and contemporary health injustices caused by racism. Throughout the article, the author highlighted the need for more research centering structural forms of racism. 

The Case for Reparations 

In this powerful piece of journalism, Ta-Nehisi Coates presents an argument for reparations to African Americans. His argument is based on a historical narrative that includes not just the economic impact of slavery but also the continuing and systematic exclusion from wealth that was imposes upon African Americans through Jim Crow, 20th century housing policy and practice, and other continuing and systematic ways in which African Americans were deliberately excluded from opportunities to gather the wealth generated from their own labor.

Coates, T; The Case for Reparations; Atlantic Monthly, June 2014

3. Science & Racism

Embodying Inequality: A Review of Concepts, Measures, and Methods for Studying Health Consequences of Discrimination

Employing an ecosocial framework, this article accordingly reviews definitions and patterns of discrimination within the United States; evaluates analytic strategies and instruments researchers have developed to study health effects of different kinds of discrimination; and delineates diverse pathways by which discrimination can harm health, both outright and by distorting production of epidemiologic knowledge about determinants of population health.

Kreiger, N., International Journal of Health Services; Volume: 29 issue: 2, page(s): 295-352 Issue published: April 1, 1999

Race, Gene Expression, and the Science of Health Disparities

As essay that reviews modern versions of “scientific racism.” The author points out the logical and scientific fallacies, and ideological biases, that underlie arguments that racial categories are biologically meaningful or that differences in achievement among various populations groups are rooted in biological differences

Krieger N, “Stormy Weather: Race, Gene Expression, and the Science of Health Disparities”, American Journal of Public Health95, no. 12 (December 1, 2005): pp. 2155-2160. DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2005.067108 

Shades of Difference: Theoretical Underpinnings of the Medical Controversy on Black/White Differences in the United States, 1830–1870 

A review of the scientific arguments put forward in medicine in the 19th century to justify and explain racial differences. An important essay on how ideology can influence scientific theory and the practice of medicine. 

Kreiger, N. Shades of Difference: Theoretical Underpinnings of the Medical Controversy on Black/White Differences in the United States, 1830–1870. International Journal of Health Services. Volume: 17 issue: 2, page(s): 259-278. Issue published: April 1, 1987

American Anthropologic Association Statement 

A powerful consensus statement, based on science, describing historical and current concepts of race. It affirms that race is a socially constructed category and that observed differences across racial categories are predominantly a result of the way different racial groups are treated within specific societies. 

Priming Disease Susceptibility for Generations 

This article discussed biological mechanisms, termed here “developmental programming,” whereby adverse environmental experiences of racial and ethnic minorities affect biological processes, including epi-genetic ones that can transmit adverse effects of adverse experiences to subsequent generations.

L. C. Messer , J. Boone-Heinonen, L. Mponwane, L. Wallack, K. L. Thornburg. Current Epidemiology Reports: March 2015, Volume 2, Issue 1, pp 37-51

An Overview of Critical Race Theory & Applications 

An overview of Critical Race Theory and its applications to public health. The authors argue that the theory provides a framework for public health workers to better understand and research the effects of racism on health, and to intervene to reduce health inequities. The provide an example of how Critical Race Theory can be applied to a public health problem.

Chandra L. Ford and Collins O. Airhihenbuwa. Critical Race Theory, Race Equity, and Public Health: Toward Antiracism Praxis. American Journal of Public Health: April 2010, Vol. 100, No. S1, pp. S30-S35.

4. Denial of Opportunity

Healing our Divided Society: Investing in America Fifty Years after the Kerner Report

A powerful collection of reports and essays, released by the Eisenhower Foundation to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Kerner report. The special contribution of this book is its documentation of the significant progress made from the late 1960’s through the 1970’s in reducing racial inequities in income, education, and opportunity; and then the reversal of these gains that started with the dramatic shifts in policy that started in the early years of the Reagan administration. The book demolishes the argument that the War on Poverty, and other economic and social policies designed to combat, do not work. Rather, it demonstrates that such policies do work, and the increasing inequities in our society between rich and poor, and between black and white, are in fact choices we have made through abandonment of policies t 

Healing our Divided Society: Investing in America Fifty Years after the Kerner Report, Harris F and Curtis A, eds., Temple University Press, Philadelphia: 2018

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America

A review of the myriad ways that federal, state and local governments colluded throughout the 20th century, with communities, developers, banks, landlords, and real estate agents, to create and maintain segregated neighborhoods for African Americans. The book is a forceful rebuttal to the Supreme Court sanctioned fiction that housing segregation in the United States is “de facto” rather than “de jure.” The book can be a revelation even to those aware of structural racism in the United States in documenting how pervasive, powerful, and persistent a broad range of public and private coalitions were in preventing the economic advancement of African Americans. A must read for anyone who thinks the economic gaps between White and Black today are the fault of African Americans themselves or that the organized and legal plunder of African 

Rothstein, Richard, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America, Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York: 2017

American Apartheid: Making of the Underclass 

American Apartheid shows how the black ghetto was created by whites during the first half of the twentieth century in order to isolate growing urban black populations. It goes on to show that, despite the Fair Housing Act of 1968, segregation is perpetuated today through an interlocking set of individual actions, institutional practices, and governmental policies.

Douglas S. Massey, Nancy A. Denton. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Harvard University Press, 1993 - Social Science - 292 pages

Why Is Black-White Residential Segregation So Persistent 

This article presents evidence of the persistence of racial segregation by neighborhood and shows that white avoidance, along with discrimination in housing markets, plays a role

Quillian L, Why Is Black–White Residential Segregation So Persistent?: Evidence on Three Theories from Migration Data Social Science Research 31, 197–229 (2002)

Racial Residential Segregation: A Fundamental Cause Of Racial Disparities In Health.

This article documents how residential segregation plays a critical role in reducing African American opportunities in education and in employment, and how this in turn affects health inequities.

D. R. Williams and C. Collins, Racial Residential Segregation: A Fundamental Cause Of Racial Disparities In Health. Public Health Rep. 2001 Sep-Oct; 116(5): 404–416.

Reflections on Ferguson 

A brief reflection that describes how structural racism that contributes greatly to suffering and mental health issues among African Americans gets lost or hidden in the clinical encounter. The author speaks to the need to understand and validate the experiences of structural racism in addressing mental health issues for this community.

Reid R1., Reflections on Ferguson. Am J Psychiatry. 2015 May;172(5):423-4. doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2014.14101297.