PAST INSIGHTS, FUTURE PROMISES: Race and Health in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Over one hundred years ago, W. E. B. Du Bois (1899) documented large, pervasive, and persistent racial inequities in health. While the current demography of racial groups in the United States is radically different compared to the times when Du Bois first discussed issues of race and health, many of the significant developments in research on racial differences in health in the last century can be traced to his seminal work (Williams and Sternthal, 2010). Du Bois recognized that the limited access to economic resources and the social marginalization of some racial groups could have dire social, physical, and psychological consequences for them. Current research studies continue to document that racial groups with a long history characterized by economic exploitation and geographic marginalization—Blacks or African Americans, American Indians, and Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders—have markedly poor health outcomes compared to the dominant White population. Immigrant Asians and Hispanics tend to have better health than the U.S. average, but their health tends to worsen over time and across subsequent generations. Despite Du Bois's prescience and the advances made by contemporary researchers, there are many substantive theoretical and methodological challenges confronting scholars who study the health of diverse racial and ethnic groups. This special issue of the Du Bois Review provides a state-of-the-art overview of some of these unanswered questions and critical research directions for the study of racial inequality in health.