About

The toxicity of racism has long been understood by communities of color. With the growth of camera phones and social media, there has been a rapid growth in the public documentation and discussion of racism in the US. Within the University community, there is a growing interest across multiple disciplines to systematically document the linkages between racism and social, economic, political, and health-related resources and constraints. Nevertheless, there continues to be a lack of clarity about the ways in which racism affects the lives of people of color, making intervention challenging. This lack of clarity stems from little integration of scientific knowledge and collaboration across disciplines to foster sophisticated theory development and hypothesis testing. Therefore, we have created a transdisciplinary research collective to bring together doctoral students, post-doctoral fellows, and faculty to develop innovative theoretical frameworks and empirical approaches to better understand the impact of racism on health and well-being (very broadly defined).

In addition to regular working group meetings, we convene annual campus-wide events on the conceptualization and measurement of race and racism at the Institute for Social Research and participate in writing retreats.

RacismLab is supported by UM’s Rackham Graduate School as a Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop.