https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4678-2541
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Linda M Chatters, Harry O Taylor, Robert Joseph Taylor, Racism and the Life Course: Social and Health Equity for Black American Older Adults, Public Policy & Aging Report, Volume 31, Issue 4, 2021, Pages 113–118, https://doi.org/10.1093/ppar/prab018
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Life course theory (LCT; Elder & George, 2015) links human development and behavior to sociohistorical contexts that are embedded within social and personal relationships and processes. Although well-known in gerontology and human development, LCT is seldom used to examine the lives of racial/ethnic minority groups and how systemic racism (i.e., discriminatory policies and practices) operates as a structural driver of social and health inequities across the life course (see Gee et al., 2012). Bonilla-Silva (2006) and Reskin (2012) argue that racism and discrimination is an all-encompassing system that produces race-linked disparities in health and social well-being and represents a: “meta-level phenomenon that shapes our culture, cognitions, and institutions, thereby distorting whether and how we perceive and make sense of racial disparities” (Reskin, 2012, p. 17). Gee and colleagues (2019, p. S43) link racism and the life course in stating: “racism shapes the life course, a perspective for understanding how human experiences unfold over time.” Racism, enshrined in historic and ongoing policies and practices and experienced over the life course, has a continuing impact on the social and health statuses of racial and ethnic minority groups in the United States and in producing inequities in health and social well-being that are unfair, unjust, and avoidable (Braveman et al., 2011).
