Anti-Latino Racism, the Racial State, and Revising Approaches to "Racial Disparities".

Abstract

I write as an outsider to public health and allied fields, as a legal scholar of critical race theory, and as a sociologist of race and racism. My goals are 3-fold: (1) to situate so-called racial disparities in the broader context of the racial state and the federal census as a tool of race-making and racial subordination; (2) to highlight the specific context of anti-Latino racism as a distinct racial logic in the United States today; and (3) to apply that analysis to recent studies confirming the extent to which COVID-19 has disparately affected Latinos, African Americans, and Native Americans.