the top journals of the discipline, sociologists have made and continue to make seminal contributions to our understanding of racial disparities in health. Examples include Williams and Collins (1995) in the Annual Review of Sociology, Link and Phelan (1995) in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and Markides and Coreil (1986) in Public Health Reports. Sociologists have also been contributors to several landmark publications on race in the last several decades. These include A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society (Jaynes and Williams 1989), Unequal Treatment (Smedley, Stith, and Nelson 2002), and America Becoming: Racial Trends and their Consequences (Smelser, Wilson, and Mitchell 2001). As we indicate below, much of the sociological research on race and health has built and elaborated on many of the insights that were present in Du Bois’ (1899) seminal work.
