via racism review
Many whites and some blacks aren't comfortable recognizing that racial bigotry is more than just a personal psychic flaw...Too many Americans are reluctant to deal with racism on any level. Exploring it scientifically has met resistance from funding sources.
Effects of racism show up in poorer health of its victims
Those who think it is only an attitude that can be ignored don't know the facts.
Leigh Donaldson
November 26, 2007
...There has been a quickly emerging field of research that demonstrates that racism hurts the health of the body. According to Madeline Drexler, a medical columnist and visiting lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health, more than 100 studies now document the effects of racial discrimination on physical health.
According to Drexler, research has suggested that racism acts a classic stressor in the same physiological ways as job strain and marital conflict; elevating heart rates, increasing levels of the stress hormone cortisol and suppressing immunity.
In the 1990s, the Harvard School of Public Health's social epidemiologist, Nancy Krieger, confirmed that "race-based discriminatory experiences were associated with higher blood pressure" and that "not talking to others about the experience or not taking action against the inequity, raised blood pressure even more."
The timing of these kinds of studies is noteworthy, as lawmakers and government officials begin to focus more on the racial disparities in the quality of American health care. Despite social and economic growth, people of color are still dying at a higher rate from heart disease, diabetes, stroke and hypertension.
On average, affluent blacks have more health issues than the poorest whites.
These studies are not without their critics, who charge that they are flawed because there is no way to objectively measure "racial discrimination."
I beg to differ. Hook any person of color up to a blood pressure monitor just after being called a slur by a white person and you'll see what I mean.
Studies of African-Americans' heart rates in a controlled laboratory environment where they are exposed to film footage of a racist encounter bear this out.
The problem with some is that they chose to believe that these studies are preliminary and/or too controversial, and that they have the potential of profoundly altering the way we look at the
links between racism and health.
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Doesn't surprise me...when I've tried to bring this up
to certain Black folk - the health ramifications of racism - I have been poo-pooed. There thing is ' where is the proof? where is the study?'
My thing is, you actually think that those who cause it are going to fund a study to prove that,
a) it's not only in our heads, but
b) there are health ramifications from it?
Come on, now.