Resources

We have collated a list of books, articles and videos that address structural racism in health care and the criminal justice system.

We encourage you to purchase books from Elizabeth's Bookshop and Writing Centre of Akron, a Black-owned bookstore that donates a percentage of their sales to The Loveland Foundation, Inc. to support their mission of making mental healthcare accessible for Black women and girls.

Articles

Zinzi Bailey ScD, Nancy Krieger PhD, Medina Agénor ScD, Jasmine Graves MPH, Natalia Linos ScD, Mary T. Bassett MD

"Structural racism and health inequities in the USA: evidence and interventions"

Julie Netherland, Helena Hansen

"White opioids: Pharmaceutical race and the war on drugs that wasn't"

Drug Policy Alliance

"Five years ago, white families called for a ‘gentler war on drugs.’ Did we get one?"

Books

Structural Racism and Racial Bias in Healthcare

Harriet Washington Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present – an examination of racism and the origins of racial bias in the American medical system.

Harriet Washington A Terrible Think to Waste: Environmental Racism and its Assault on the American Mind – an examination of the consequences of environmental racism and what America can do to remedy its toxic effects on marginalized communities

Dorothy Roberts Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century – an examination of how the myth of biological concept of race--revived by purportedly cutting-edge science, race-specific drugs, genetic testing, and DNA databases--continues to undermine a just society and promote inequality in a supposedly "post-racial" era

Loretta Ross, Lynn Roberts, Erika Derkas, Whitney Peoples, and Pamela Bridgewater (eds.), Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundation, Theory, Practice and Critique – Expanding the social justice discourse surrounding reproductive rights to include issue of environmental justice, incarceration, poverty, disability this anthology explores the practical applications for activist thought in the community and academy

Structural Racism and the Criminal Justice System

Michelle Alexander The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness – a detailed examination of structural racism and its impacts on the US criminal justice, ranging from lawmaking to sentencing to policing

Tony Lewis Jr. Slugg: A Boys Life In the Age of Mass Incarceration – a first-person account of the impact of the US “War on Drugs” on families and communities by Washington DC community activist Tony Lewis, Jr.

Structural Racism Across American Institutions

Isabel Wilkerson Caste – an examination of the caste system that governs the United States and how poverty is a social determinant of health

Ibram X Kendi Stamped from the Beginning – A definitive history of how racist ideas were developed, disseminated, and enshrined in American society.

Reports

Read the Chicago Urban League, a research and policy center, report, "Whitewashed," which presents the data on African American death rates from opioid overdose and calls for an inclusive approach to public health solutions

Read the Chicago Urban League, a research and policy center, report "An Epidemic of Inequities: Structural Racism and COVID-19 in the Black Community" which presents the data on racial disparity and COVID-19 and calls for public health and community engagement policy solutions

Read the Drug Policy Alliance, a research and policy center, report "Dismantling the Federal Drug War: A Comprehensive Drug Decriminalization Framework," which presents data on the failed US War on Drugs along with comprehensive, evidence-based policy solutions

Videos

Watch an interview with Harriet Washington about Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

Michelle Alexander George E. Kent Lecture at the University of Chicago on The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness

If you have suggestions for our resources page, please email Dr. Ravenel Richardson at researchtorecovery@case.edu