Legitimizing Health Injustice Through Colorblindness

Despite the advancements that have been made in addressing death and disease, the health of racial minorities still lags in many ways. Health disparities characterize the United States health system. African Americans are sicker than their white peers and are more likely to die prematurely from all causes. The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the drivers of health disparities and how the law has long underwritten those drivers.

Despite the glaring health disparities, the Supreme Court has continued to read colorblindness into the Constitution, scuttling race-conscious efforts to close racial gaps. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court ruled that it is unlawful for higher education institutions to take affirmative race-conscious steps to diversify their student bodies. While that decision focused on admissions programs in institutions of higher education, its reasoning sweeps broadly. A colorblind conception of equality that sees no difference between laws designed to harm individuals because of their race and those adopted to ameliorate racial harms severely narrows how policymakers may craft policies that meaningfully close racial gaps in health.

To show how the Court’s decision affects health policy, this report lays out how the law unequally shapes various socio-structural determinants of health, including housing, education, employment, and access to health care. By operating unequally, the law engenders health inequity by burdening racial minorities with disease, injury, and premature death. Colorblind equality that refuses to interrogate both the historical and contemporary meanings of race will not only entrench racial health disparities but also exacerbate them.

Today, various public and private players continue to weaponize colorblindness to challenge race-conscious policies in health, including efforts to diversify the health care workforce and encourage clinicians to guard against implicit racial bias. The report calls for a more robust, race-conscious judicial understanding of equality that stares “unblinkingly” at the reality of racial domination in the United States. Otherwise, health gaps will continue to widen to the catastrophic detriment of all Americans.

Read the report here.