Overview

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.

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9780231217965

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Reviews

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 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 is another tour de force from Joseph L. Graves. 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 Goodman, former president of the American Anthropological Association

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

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

Author Information

Joseph L. Graves Jr. is the MacKenzie Scott Endowed Professor of Biology at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. A fellow of the Council of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he received the Liberty Science Center’s Genius Award in 2024. His books include Racism, Not Race: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (Columbia, 2021, with Alan H. Goodman), which received the 2024 W. W. Howells Prize for the best book in biological anthropology.

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