How skin color matters for the physical and mental health of African Americans

Research in recent decades has found that African Americans have worse health outcomes compared to white Americans. In new research Ellis P. Monk, Jr. investigates this disparity. Using a unique dataset to examine intra-racial skin color discrimination, he finds that the more discrimination African Americans felt from other African Americans and non-blacks, the worse their physical and mental health was. With this in mind, he argues that in not capturing skin color, current census ‘race’ categories make it harder to understand how social inequalities are reproduced through discrimination.