The Groundwater of Racial and Ethnic Disparities Research

Abstract

Research on racial and ethnic disparities is a common and critical area of investigation in the health sciences. To best understand such disparities, scientific investigation and reporting need to recognize the historical foundation of race and take care to avoid perpetuating racism. Race is a social, not biological, construct that was designed to separate one population from another.2,5 Although the use of race has changed over the years—from justifying slavery to currently embedding separatism of economic, academic, and political opportunity—race has served to grant additional privileges to certain populations (ie, White race) at the exclusion of others, and this is a global phenomenon.2