Prof. James S. Jackson says the overwhelming propensity among researchers to view data on health disparities among African Americans through the lens of race is highly misleading, and masks deeper truths about how blacks and others cope with societal stressors.
“We know that race matters,” Jackson said to scientists attending the Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research conference in April at the University of California, Davis. But the color of one’s skin is genetically irrelevant to understanding racial and ethnic disparities in health, he explained.
Jackson is the co-director of the Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research [http://mcuaaar.wayne.edu/about.php], at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University. During his keynote address at the national research conference, he described findings that challenge the very basis of racial categories in research on health disparities.
[For more of this story, written by Paul Kleyman, go to http://newamericamedia.org/201...s-top-researcher.php]
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