Racism Affects Health

Racism Affects Health

‘A Political View’ By Sherry Holliman People cope with daily discrimination, whether it be overt or subtle. Racism is not only a danger to a person’s legal rights, which guarantee equal protection under the law, it is also a danger to its victim’s health. Racism is harmful to the mental and physical health of those who are the targets, yet little research has explored the impact of racism on those who perpetrate racism. In terms of mental health, racism costs people their sanity. Those who felt victimized by discrimination and forms of racism were twice as likely to develop psychotic episodes. Being on the receiving end of racism creates intense and constant stress which boosts the risk of depression, anxiety, anger and of course, because of the mind/body connection, factors like depression, stress and anger can lead to or aggravate high blood pressure and heart disease.

Recent literature shows that racism and discrimination harms health by raising the risk of many emotional and physical problems. Discrimination has been shown to increase the risk of stress, depression, and mental disorders.

This stress is the leading cause to poorer mental and physical health; not only because stress breaks the body down but also because stress pushes people to cope in unhealthy ways.

When people feel stressed from discrimination they sometimes cope by picking up unhealthy habits such as drinking an excess amount of alcohol, misusing pills, and, when they turn to a drink, they may also want a cigarette (tobacco) to go along with it for a perfect quick fix. But discrimination is not just any form of stress.

It is a type of stress that disproportionately affects minorities. Racism works in a cycle to aid with damaging health. People at a social disadvantage are more likely to experience stress from racism and they are less likely to have the resources to extinguish this stress, because they are at a social disadvantage. It gets worse. Just the fear of racism alone will cause one’s body to switch on the body’s stress-response systems. If the individual think their environment contains threats, then they will be on guard causing emotional stress. Explaining racial differences in health in terms of individual biology, or behavior may be difficult but it can assist with locating health problems in the bodies of those most negatively affected by social inequalities. In this sense, the explanations are consistent with the “colorblind” tactics that is often abused by many implicit racists. The fact is, racism continues to extract a toll from people of color in terms of physical and mental health. It brings on death sooner because of the many health issues that are associated with dealing with its many inequalities. There will always be numerous matters of dis- agreement among society involving the matters of inequality issues that are wrong, there will always be very slow movement towards the ways that we can dismantle racism and improve everyone’s health, it is easier to continue the current system of inequality that systematically and disproportionately benefits the health of the colorblind. We shouldn’t wait until we have all the answers before taking action. The government efforts to address systemic discrimination are more likely to have the greatest impact, because they should disrupt pathways that lead to poor health. “It’s much easier to point our fingers at obvious racism instead of trying to fix the education system, and criminal justice system. These are systems we can change with our votes, and holding our elected officials accountable for addressing these issues can prevent racial disparities from occurring.

Is it possible to prove that racism is bad for our health? Yes! Listen to the stories of people who have experienced racist behavior.

Sherry Holliman is a concerned citizen of Crittenden County and has some views on a variety of topics that she wants to share with her neighbors.

‘A Political View’

By Sherry Holliman