Racism and Health... And the Same Old Nonsense

Filed in archive Latin Issues on July 17, 2007

I've found this via Racialicious: How Racism Hurts the Body

Research into the physical effects of racism on its victims could help explain a disparity in health across races and reframe racism as a health issue. Health experts have long blamed racial disparities on social forces, linking higher rates of disease and death among African-Americans to joblessness, unsafe housing, and other inequities. This round of research, which scientists stress is preliminary, seeks to establish if racism itself plays a role in the disparity. In more than 100 studies on the subject, most of them published since 2000, some patterns have been established, reports Madeline Drexler for the Boston Globe.

I went to the Boston Globe to read the original article. I found this:

Critics of the new research tying racism directly to disease have charged that it is flawed because one cannot objectively measure "racial discrimination."

Sure. There are many things one cannot objectively measure, as the psychological pain caused by a rape, how much Post-traumatic stress disorder hurts, how bad you feel when you are clinically depressed, how deeply lost you feel after a miscarriage. But hey, who cares? Probably, none of those things really exist, since you cannot measure them, right?

Look at the comments at The Informed Reader:

This statistical nonsense. Where are these stressed out blacks? (...) Racism or Sexism is just an easy excuse for why you late for every meeting while delivering projects late or not at all (...)

"Where are these stressed out blacks?" Of course "blacks" could be exchanged for "Hispanics", "Latinos", "Asians" or any other race. And this person asks where are these people who are stressed by racism. Is he serious? It's so easy to say that racism and sexism are merely excuses, when you're not a victim of neither types of discrimination, isn't it?

I didn't buy into this research either because I thought "how many racist encounters does one really go through to cause this much stress?" But after reading some of these posts it's clear that there is more racists out there than I realize.

This commenter obviously is a pretty naive person. Again, if you're asking how much racism you have to face in order to get stressed, I'm sure you've never suffered a racist attack. You have no idea how awful, humiliating and hurtful it is - not to mention the times when racism becomes a physical threat.

Racism is part of our Human behavior. It only affects you if you let it affects you. Accept the fact and live with it.

This is one of the most stupid defenses for racism. Part of human behavior? WHAT?? Racism is as natural in humans, as murder or rape; maybe even less, since I've never heard of racism among animals. And "It only affects you if you let it" is ridiculous. Ask the victims of brutal racially motivated attacks, or the relatives of someone that was beaten to death because of their race.

It's always the same. People just say and write the most stupid, ridiculous and outrageous things about racism, when they are not victims of it.