Goodman, A., Moses, Y., Jones, J. 2012. Race and Health Disparities. In: Goodman, A., Moses, Y., Jones, J. Race: Are We So Different? West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 214-230.

In this chapter, Goodman et al. discuss the role of race, racialization, and racism in perpetuating health disparities.  The authors mention how race is not connected to human biological variation.  They then continue on to state that while race is social and is in no way biological; race, racialization, and racism have biological consequences that start prenatally.  Recent epigenetic research has demonstrated that there are genetic and later phenotypically biologically expressed consequences to racial domination (and other forms of social inequality).  In this chapter the authors review a number of different cases where people of color experience racism in relation to their health, which includes: racism and stress (e.g. blood pressure, cardiovascular disease), how they treated by health care professionals, the worldwide history of medical apartheid, and the embodiment of economic and social disparity.  The authors also discuss the double negative effects of racial and economic inequality which increases the disease risk (mortality, morbidity, etc.) of marginalized populations.  The authors also discuss the consequences of environmental racism which is linked to racial segregation which is still occurring in the United States today and influencing the distribution of diseases like cancer, asthma, and even the nutritional consequences of living in a food desert.  

Krieger, N. 2000. Refiguring “Race”: Epidemiology, Racialized Biology, and Biological Expressions Of Race Relations. International Journal of Health Services. 30(1): 211-216.

In this article Krieger covers how racial/ethnic health disparities are not reducible by class and how the racial/ethnic health disparities are reflections of many of the other social inequities suffered by racial/ethnic minorities which includes but is not limited to socioeconomic factors as well as the consequences of racism.  Krieger also mentions the unfortunate history of biology being racialized, thus charging biology and other sciences to provide social scripts to justify the socially sanctioned exploitation and oppression of those branded as socially inferior.  In this article Krieger argues that social relations are embodied and can manifest as biological expressions.  Krieger argues that what we see as racial/ethnic health disparities are “biological expressions of race relations”.  Krieger argues against solely relying on class to explain racial/ethnic health disparities.  In this article, Krieger argued that whitewashing race out of research on understanding health disparities causes many problems in regards to understanding how racism harms health.