Thom Hartmann, The Hidden History of American Healthcare: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich. Berrett-Koehler Publishers | Amazon page, Sep 7, 2021.  See interview by Ryan Grim, Kim Iversen, and Robbie Suave, Thom Hartmann: Why Sickness Bankrupts You And Makes Others Insanely Rich. Rising | The Hill, Sep 12, 2021.  Hartmann explains how racism largely drove white American opposition to national health care since the 1880s. Chris Ladd, Unspeakable Realities Block Universal Health Coverage In The US. Forbes, Mar 13, 2017.  On "white socialism" operating by giving health care through employers, while employment discrimination was rampant, and the federal government subsidized WWII corporations in a corporate warfare state. Derek Thompson, Why Americans Die So Much. The Atlantic, Sep 12, 2021.  “U.S. life spans, which have fallen behind those in Europe, are telling us something important about American society.” See interview by Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Derek Thompson: New Report Reveals Americans Dying At Record Rates, Why? Breaking Points, Sep 14, 2021.

E. Richard Jones, Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America. University of California Press, 1979.

David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, The Struggle over Employee Benefits: The Role of Labor in Influencing Modern Health Policy. Milbank Quarterly, Mar 2003.  Means that striking workers can and do lose their health benefits and even pensions (like the GM worker strike); means that unions can be pressured to accept less comprehensive health plans (see this); means that union leaders and benefits coordinators make commission money from selling insurance to union members (see this); and why union-funded Senate Democrat Sherrod Brown (D-OH) opposes Medicaid for All. see this), even though he is otherwise progressive

Paul Waldman, Yes, Opposition to Obamacare Is Tied Up with Race. Washington Post, May 23, 2014.

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime. TED Talk, Sep 2014.  Re: when a child experiences abuse, neglect, parental mental illness, substance abuse, incarceration, separation or divorce, domestic violence.

Heather Tirado Gilligan, Why Racism Is Terrible for Everyone’s Health. JSTOR Daily, Oct 21, 2015.  “Heather Gilligan explores the impact of racism on the fight towards universal health care.”

Algernon Austin, Obamacare Reduces Racial Disparities in Health Coverage. Global Policy Solutions, Dec 2015.

Nashwa Khan, The Lasting Fallout of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. JSTOR Daily, Jun 20, 2016.  “A recent paper provides evidence that the Tuskegee Syphilis Study reduced the life expectancy of African-American men.”

Chris Ladd, Unspeakable Realities Block Universal Health Coverage In The US. Forbes, Mar 13, 2017.   On "white socialism" operating by giving health care through employers, while employment discrimination was rampant, and the federal government subsidized WWII corporations in a corporate warfare state.

Perry Bacon Jr., The Obamacare Fight Is About Way More Than Health Care. FiveThirtyEight, Mar 23, 2017.

John Blake, The Cruel Double Standard That Could Save Obamacare. CNN, Mar 25, 2017.  The perception of white beneficiaries.

BBC News, Why is Obamacare So Controversial? BBC News, Jul 13, 2017.

Deepa Bharath, Think Race Isn't a Problem in California? Think Otherwise. San Jose Mercury News, Dec 3, 2017.  Income, incarceration rates, education, health outcomes.

Nina Martin, Renee Montagne, Nothing Protects Black Women From Dying in Pregnancy and Childbirth. ProPublica, Dec 7, 2017.

Liz Kowalczyk and the Boston Globe Spotlight Team, Color Line Persists, in Sickness and in Health. Boston Globe, Dec 12, 2017.

Matt Ufford, Serena Williams Self-Diagnosed a Life-Threatening Emergency After Birth. SBNation, Jan 10, 2018.

H. Luke Shaefer and Analidis Ochoa, How Blood-Plasma Companies Target the Poorest Americans. The Altantic, Mar 15, 2018.

Leonard E. Colvin, Company Wants to Put Trash Dump Site in Black Norfolk Neighborhood. New Journal and Guide Local News in Virginia, Mar 22, 2018.

John Eligon, They Push. They Protest. And Many Activists, Privately, Suffer as a Result. New York Times, Mar 26, 2018.  re: the emotional and physical toll of activism on activists

Sharon Lerner, EPA Violated the Law By Failing to Investigate Civil Rights Complains, Court Rules. The Intercept, Apr 3, 2018.  

Alvin Chang, Living in a Poor Neighborhood Changes Everything About Your Life. Vox, Apr 4, 2018.  

Linda Villarosa, Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis. New York Times Magazine, Apr 11, 2018.

Hollie Silverman, The Smithsonian Unveils a Portrait of Henrietta Lacks, the Black Farmer Whose Cells Led to Medical Miracles. CNN May 17, 2018.

Marilyn R. Gardner, Repenting for Healthcare Inequality: A Christian Response. Plough, Jun 2018.

The Atlantic, Healing the Divide: An Atlantic Forum on Health Equity. The Atlantic, Jun 13, 2018.

P.R. Lockhart, Republicans Say Race Isn't a Factor in the Food Stamp Debate. Research Suggests Otherwise. Vox, Jun 13, 2018.

Saskia Miller, How to Fix the Health Gap Between Black and White America. The Atlantic, Jun 20, 2018.  

Olga Khazan, Being Black in America Can Be Hazardous to Your Health. The Atlantic, Jul-Aug 2018.  In Baltimore and other segregated cities, the life-expectancy gap between African Americans and whites is as much as 20 years. One young woman’s struggle shows why.

Ed Yong, The Next Plague Is Coming. Is America Ready? The Atlantic, Jul-Aug 2018.  The epidemics of the early 21st century revealed a world unprepared, even as the risks continue to multiply. Much worse is coming.

P.R. Lockhart, Environmental Racism is Dangerous. Trump's EPA Doesn't Seem to Care. Vox, Jul 9, 2018.  

Katherine J. Wu, Dads Pass On More Than Genetics in Their Sperm. Smithsonian, Jul 26, 2018.

Keith Brannon, Tulane Psychiatrist Wins National Award for Research That Shows How Trauma Seeps Across Generations. Tulane University, Aug 17, 2018.

Brian Resnick, Genetics Has Learned a Ton — Mostly About White People. That’s a Problem. Vox, Oct 22, 2018.

Natalie Kitroeff and Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Planned Parenthood Is Accused of Mistreating Pregnant Employees. New York Times, Dec 20, 2018.  subtitled "Employers that champion women face accusations of discriminating against their pregnant workers, showing how widespread the problem is in American workplaces"

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, U.S. Health Care Spending Highest Among Developed Countries. Johns Hopkins University, Jan 7, 2019.  we pay more for worse outcomes

John Iadarola, Nikki Haley's Anti-Bernie Tweet Backfires. The Damage Report, Mar 23, 2019.  About Bernie's tweet that delivering a baby costs $12,000 in the U.S. but $60 in Finland, and maternal mortality and infant mortality rates are much better in Finland; shows how racial prejudice meant to deny minorities from accessing high quality, government insured health care winds up backfiring on white Americans too

Jessie Wright-Mendoza, The 1910 Report That Disadvantaged Minority Doctors. JSTOR Daily, May 3, 2019.  “A century ago, the Flexner Report led to the closure of 75% of U.S. medical schools. It still explains a lot about today’s unequal access to healthcare.”

Christopher Willoughby, How Black Activists Sought Healthcare Reform: A New Documentary. Black Perspectives | African American Intellectual History Society, Sep 5, 2019.

Travis Gettys, Behar Exposes “Sad Truth” About Some Trump Voters: “They Don’t Want Health Care If You Get It Also”. Salon, Oct 21, 2019.

Eduardo Porter, Why America Will Never Get Medicare for All. New York Times, Mar 14, 2020.  “Forget politics or money. Racism explains why the country lacks the safety net its citizens deserve.”

Davey Alba and Sheera Frenkel, Medical Expert Who Corrects Trump Is Now a Target of the Far Right. New York Times, Mar 28, 2020.  “Dr. Anthony Fauci, the administration’s most outspoken advocate of emergency virus measures, faces a torrent of false claims that he is mobilizing to undermine the president.” One indication that more troubling cultural currents are at work.

Sarah Mervosh, ‘It’s Not in My Head’: They Survived the Coronavirus, but They Never Got Well. New York Times, Sep 28, 2020.  “With seven million known cases of the coronavirus across the country, more people are suffering from symptoms that go on and on.” “By some estimates, as many as one in three Covid-19 patients will develop symptoms that linger. The symptoms can span a wide range — piercing chest pain, deep exhaustion, a racing heart.”

Maggie Fox, Unvaccinated People Are ‘Variant Factories,’ Infectious Diseases Expert Says. CNN, Jul 3, 2021.  “Just 18 states have fully vaccinated more than half their residents, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Currently, approximately 1,000 counties in the United States have vaccination coverage of less than 30%. These communities, primarily in the Southeast and Midwest, are our most vulnerable. In some of these areas, we are already seeing increasing rates of disease," CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told a White House briefing Thursday.” Shows that racial prejudice manifests itself in lack of public investment and infrastructure, of which public health is one aspect. Suspicion of public health efforts is related to COVID vaccine skepticism. Thus, white supremacy is self-harming.

Thom Hartmann, The Hidden History of American Healthcare: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich. Berrett-Koehler Publishers | Amazon page, Sep 7, 2021.  See interview by Ryan Grim, Kim Iversen, and Robbie Suave, Thom Hartmann: Why Sickness Bankrupts You And Makes Others Insanely Rich. Rising | The Hill, Sep 12, 2021.  On how racism largely drove white American opposition to national health care since the 1880s. See interview by Joy Reid, Mad at UnitedHealthcare? Voted for Trump? You Voted for U.S. to Be Run Like UnitedHealthcare.  MSNBC, Dec 10, 2024. If you want the government to be run like a business, then you want it to be run like United Healthcare.  And one story from guest Thom Hartmann is quite pertinent:  In 1887, Germany developed the first single payer health care system.  In 1888, Frederick Hoffman came from Germany and became VP of the Prudential Insurance Company.  In 1896, he published a book, Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro.  He argued that Black people were genetically inferior and therefore, if the U.S. simply denied them health care, Black people would simply die out in a few generations.  His book was one of the bestselling books from 1896 to 1930.  He testified before Congress and committees.  He was the reason why FDR’s efforts and Harry Truman’s efforts at single payer care were shot down.  In 1965, when Medicare was developed, there was a 20% hole in Medicare so that poor people -- aka poor Black people in the South -- wouldn’t integrate the doctors’ offices.

Derek Thompson, Why Americans Die So Much. The Atlantic, Sep 12, 2021.  “U.S. life spans, which have fallen behind those in Europe, are telling us something important about American society.” See interview by Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Derek Thompson: New Report Reveals Americans Dying At Record Rates, Why? Breaking Points, Sep 14, 2021.

Juan Cole, Trump as Mass Murderer? Former President's Top Pandemic Official Suggests He Is.  Common Dreams, Oct 28, 2021.  Dr. Deborah Birx said his COVID policies cost 130,000 - 160,000 lives.

Willian Saletan, Sickening Decisions. Slate, Dec 20, 2021.  “Republicans are attacking the White House with a new talking point: More Americans have died of COVID-19 under Joe Biden’s presidency, they point out, than under Donald Trump’s. Mathematically, that’s true. When Trump left office, the U.S. death toll was around 400,000 people; now it’s above 800,000. The comparison is misleading for many reasons, however. One is that Biden has been dealt two new variants, Delta and Omicron, that spread more aggressively than the original Wuhan virus did. Furthermore, while Biden has begged Americans to get vaccinated, Republican politicians have constantly undermined him by banning or blocking vaccine mandates. But there’s another crucial difference between the two administrations, and it’s outlined in a new report from the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. Trump’s administration, unlike Biden’s, deliberately sabotaged the nation’s response to the pandemic.”

Walker Bragman and Alex Kotch, How The Koch Network Hijacked The War On COVID.  The Lever, Dec 22, 2021.  The Kock Network push “natural immunity” through infection and recovery.  Features Hillsdale College, ALEC, the Great Barrington Declaration. 

Jacobin Magazine, Race Is a Bad Proxy for Class.  Jacobin Magazine, Jan 14, 2022.  Some Democratic leaders, and the Biden CDC, are using race as one of many criteria for allocating COVID therapeutics, of which there is a limited supply.  Fox News and other right-wing media are using this policy to agitate their viewers:  this is anti-white; this is vengeance.  Jacobin explains why using race as a public health policy is inappropriate from a scientific and administrative standpoint, and dangerous from a political standpoint.  This commentary shows what the real tension is between liberal capitalists vs. the left.  Liberal capitalists want to preserve the capitalist foundation of the economy while carving out exceptions based on race.  But this is politically inflammatory because it is likely to set up racial tension and anger on the right.  Universal programs are still the more appropriate and at times, more politically popular, way to proceed.  But this does also require white people to get past the myth of the undeservingness of black and brown people (see Heather McGhee, The Sum of Us), and the myth of meritocracy.  Sadly, many liberal capitalists -- like the majority of the Democratic Party, still -- would be fine with losing public policy battles while they virtue signal:  they will be able to preserve their wealth.

Joy Reid, Mad at UnitedHealthcare? Voted for Trump? You Voted for U.S. to Be Run Like UnitedHealthcare.  MSNBC, Dec 10, 2024. If you want the government to be run like a business, then you want it to be run like United Healthcare.  And one story from guest Thom Hartmann is quite pertinent:  In 1887, Germany developed the first single payer health care system.  In 1888, Frederick Hoffman came from Germany and became VP of the Prudential Insurance Company.  In 1896, he published a book, Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro.  He argued that Black people were genetically inferior and therefore, if the U.S. simply denied them health care, Black people would simply die out in a few generations.  His book was one of the bestselling books from 1896 to 1930.  He testified before Congress and committees.  He was the reason why FDR’s efforts and Harry Truman’s efforts at single payer care were shot down.  In 1965, when Medicare was developed, there was a 20% hole in Medicare so that poor people -- aka poor Black people in the South -- wouldn’t integrate the doctors’ offices.

Chinea Rodriguez, What’s Going on With Synthetic Braiding Hair? The Cut | New York Magazine, Mar 3, 2025.

“Since going viral on social media, the study has garnered a lot of attention. Cosmetics chemist Javon Ford weighed in with additional expert context to help his followers “make more informed decisions,” he said in a video on TikTok. After reading the study further, he found the levels of lead and volatile organic compounds like acetone did not exceed the maximum levels allowed. “The limit for lead allowed in lipstick is 5ppm, while none of the lead in the braid samples exceeded 2ppm and you’re much more likely to ingest lead via lipstick than you are via hair,” he said. Ford also found that the study was based on oral exposure, not dermal exposure. “You’re not eating your braids,” the cosmetic chemist said. After reaching out to the study group, they said they went with an oral-exposure model because of the likelihood of braiders coming in contact with the chemicals after eating food while braiding hair. Read the full study here.”

Angela Wyse and Bruce D. Meyer, Saved by Medicaid: New Evidence on Health Insurance and Mortality from the Universe of Low-Income Adults. National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2025.

“We examine the causal effect of health insurance on mortality using the universe of low-income adults, a dataset of 37 million individuals identified by linking the 2010 Census to administrative tax data. Our methodology leverages state-level variation in the timing and adoption of Medicaid expansions under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and earlier waivers and adheres to a preregistered analysis plan, a rarely used approach in observational studies in economics. We find that expansions increased Medicaid enrollment by 12 percentage points and reduced the mortality of the low-income adult population by 2.5 percent, suggesting a 21 percent reduction in the mortality hazard of new enrollees. Mortality reductions accrued not only to older age cohorts, but also to younger adults, who accounted for nearly half of life-years saved due to their longer remaining lifespans and large share of the low-income adult population. These expansions appear to be cost-effective, with direct budgetary costs of $5.4 million per life saved and $179,000 per life-year saved falling well below valuations commonly found in the literature. Our findings suggest that lack of health insurance explains about five to twenty percent of the mortality disparity between high- and low-income Americans. We contribute to a growing body of evidence that health insurance improves health and demonstrate that Medicaid’s life-saving effects extend across a broader swath of the low-income population than previously understood.”

Johanna T. Crane and Carolyn P. Neuhaus, Enacting Justice in Community Health Centers. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, Spring 2025.

“Started in the 1960s with a commitment to justice, the community health center (CHC) movement emphasized that everyone deserves respectful, quality health care and that addressing social drivers of health is within the remit of health-care organizations. Sixty years on, the network of federally funded community health centers that developed from this movement remain committed to serving vulnerable populations in America as they set the standard for high-quality, wraparound primary care services. This essay draws on the authors’ qualitative study of moral uncertainty in community health to show how CHC providers enact a commitment to justice as they both improve access to care and services and recognize their patients’ humanity in a society where too many of them are “chewed up and spit out.” CHCs’ ability to enact justice, however, is limited in the US’s fractured health-care system and profoundly unequal society, and their success and financial viability are not assured. In order for CHCs to fully enact their mission, it will take appreciating the key role they play in advancing health justice in America, and strong, savvy advocacy efforts.”

These are the images used in artistic physical displays. They are survey questions and conversation starters that are topically and thematically organized. They demonstrate how Jesus is relevant to each topic or theme. You can also just view the images on your device. If you would like, see all our Conversation Stations; below are the ones that relate to the topic of Race.

Whose Justice? (and instructions and Christian Restorative Justice Study Guide)

Whose Justice? for Harvard Law School

Is a Good Friend Hard to Find? (and instructions and conversation tree)

What Can We Do About Evil? (and instructions and conversation tree) and smaller version and brochure version

Que Podemos Hacer Sobre La Maldad? for the Asociacion Dominicana de Estudiantes Evangelico, 2014

Does the Good Outweigh the Bad? (and instructions)

Race What's the Problem? (and instructions) and brochure version

Is God a Liberator or an Oppressor? (and instructions)