Over the past two decades, the body of research documenting and examining racial differences in health has grown exponentially, from fewer than 20 publications between 1980 and 1989, to more than 130 between 1990 and 1999, and over 700 in the first four years of the new millennium.i This literature has documented racial disparities in a substantial range of health outcomes, often comparing the health of one or more racialized groups to the health of “Whites.” In other words, the search for explanations regarding the cause of racial disparities in health—and indeed, often the definition of racial disparities itself—is largely framed in terms of explicit or implicit comparisons of racialized groups to the referent group of White.
Daniels, J., & Schulz, A.J. (2006). Constructing whiteness in health disparities research. In A. J. Schulz & L. Mullings (Eds.), Health and illness at the intersections of gender, race and class (pp. 89-127). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishing.