Reply to: ‘Does race have confounders? by Loux and Wankum

Loux and Wankum ask whether race has confounders.1 Without a clearly articulated research question, however, it is not possible to know which variables are confounders or even if adjustment for confounding is necessary. Table 1 outlines three distinct research questions that the authors appear to be contending with, each requiring different adjustment sets (table 1).

Researchers are often interested in the effect of an individual’s race on health, but they may not fully consider what this implies or whether it is the most informative question to ask. As stated, this question is about changing a person’s race while holding any accumulation of historical racism constant. The effect of an individual’s membership in a minoritised racial group compared with a privileged racial group on health is largely due to contemporary racism and is confounded by parental race, historical racism and socially constructed racialisation.2 Some…

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