RACE AS LIVED EXPERIENCE

• Published in: Du Bois review Vol. 12; no. 2; pp. 349 - 373
• Main Authors: Garcia, John A., Sanchez, Gabriel R., Sanchez-Youngman, Shannon, Vargas, Edward D., Ybarra, Vickie D.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.10.2015
• Subjects: Discrimination; Ethnicity; Health; Health care utilization; Health problems; Hispanic Americans; Illness; Inequality; Minority & ethnic groups; Power; Race; Race relations; Racism; Research applications; Skin; Social research; Social science research; State of the Art; New Mexico; United States > US; Ethnicity; Skin Color; Discrimination; Ascribed race; Race; Self-Reported Health; Lived Experience
• ISSN: 1742-058X; 1742-0598
• DOI: 10.1017/S1742058X15000120

A growing body of social science research has sought to conceptualize race as a multi-dimensional concept in which context, societal relations, and institutional dynamics are key components. Utilizing a specially-designed survey, we develop and use multiple measures of race (skin color, ascribed race, and discrimination experiences) to capture race as a “lived experience” and assess these measures’ impact on Latinos’ self-rated health status. We model these measures of race as lived experience to test the explanatory power of race, both independently and as an integrated scale, with categorical regression, scaling, and dimensional analyses. Our analyses show that our multiple measures of race have significant and negative effects on Latinos’ self-reported health. Skin color is a dominant factor that impacts self-reported health both directly and indirectly. We then advocate for the utilization of multiple measures of race, adding to those used in our analysis, and their application to research regarding inequities in other health and social outcomes. Our analysis provides important contributions to research across a wide range of health, illness, social, and political disparities for communities of color.