Why Black People Die Sooner
What Medicine Gets Wrong About Race and How to Fix It
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Columbia University Press
Published:21st Oct '25
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
There is a persistent gap in life expectancy between Black people and their white counterparts in the United States. It is a direct result of structural racism within American society and has nothing to do with genetic differences. In past eras, scientific racism sought to shift the blame to the supposed physical inferiority of people of African descent. Even today, medicine labors under false beliefs derived from nineteenth-century racial thinking, harming patients who are not of European descent.
Why Black People Die Sooner is a powerful and rigorous examination of the ways racism shapes health and disease. Joseph L. Graves Jr. demonstrates that the medical profession still fails to grasp basic facts about race, tracing how deep-rooted falsehoods have perpetuated the disparity between Black and white lifespans. He equips readers with the tools to dispel the fallacies and errors of racialized medicine, including an understanding of evolutionary biology and human biological variation. Graves also debunks common misconceptions about race and health on topics such as high blood pressure, sickle cell disease, the microbiome, infectious diseases, and cancer. Why Black People Die Sooner closes by offering a sweeping vision for dismantling medical racism, from professional training to clinical practice through biomedical research. Timely and bracing, this book reveals why medicine keeps misunderstanding race—and how we can make it change.
A compelling exposition for why using race to inform medical decisions is potentially harmful to Black patients. * Science *
This groundbreaking book exposes how racism systematically undermines medical diagnosis and treatment while challenging political policies that perpetuate health inequities rooted in socioeconomic disparities. Its rigorous documentation and compelling analysis make it an essential resource for evolutionary medicine courses and will resonate with anyone seeking to understand the intersection of race, politics, and public health. -- Stephen Stearns, Edward P. Bass Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University
Why Black People Die Sooner examines how race and racism remain entrenched in medical thought, policy, technology, and practice, despite a half-century of biological research that refutes a genetic basis of race. Graves explains how evolutionary biology, history, and health science converge to challenge pervasive medical misconceptions and proposes solutions grounded in evolutionary biology and precision medicine. -- Paula Ivey Henry, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Why Black People Die Sooner is another tour de force from Joseph L. Graves Jr. He shines a bright light on the persistently devastating inequalities in health among races and offers solutions for society and health care. A brilliant synthesis and a must-read. -- Alan H. Goodman, former president of the American Anthropological Association
With characteristic brilliance and force, Graves demolishes the errors of conventional medical thinking premised on widely misconceived beliefs about supposed human races. In their place, he offers a deep reformulation of medicine that draws from the cutting edges of genomics, transcriptomics, and evolutionary biology. Remarkably powerful, profoundly considered, this book unflinchingly presents a medical tragedy of maltreatment yet counterbalances it with an inspiring vision of an alternative future for medicine that would indeed work for everyone. -- Michael R. Rose, University of California, Irvine
A unique must-read whodunnit. The author convincingly, skillfully and delightfully weaves together evidence from history, evolution, human genetics, science, medicine and personal experiences. The answer? Not genetics, but injustices beginning on slave ships and continuing today as ever-morphing forms of health disparities, societal inequities and racism. Read and find out! -- Joel S. Brown, Moffitt Cancer Center
Joseph Graves, Jr. skillfully combines his expertise on biological and social conceptions of race with historical and contemporary dimensions of modern medicine to illustrate the inevitable links between dehumanization of black bodies and premature death. Outstanding and timely work that explicates the problems and their origins and offers actionable solutions! -- Charmaine DM Royal, Duke University
ISBN: 9780231217965
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
272 pages