Racism Is Not Just Immoral, But Affects The Health Of Victims

(The map above reflects the most racist areas, and was found at Daily Kos.)

Even though the United States has now elected a Black president, the sad fact is that racism is still alive and well in the country. In fact, that election seems to have emboldened the racists and brought them back out in the open.

Most decent Americans know that racism is immoral and indefensible -- and that thanks to racists in general (and in our police departments), being Black in this country can get a person killed. But it turns out that it's even worse than that. Being the victim of racism can be detrimental to the health of Black Americans in other ways -- by causing stress, which can lead to a variety of negative medical conditions. That's the conclusions of a new study published by PLOS ONE. And these health problems caused by stress over racism leads to about 30,000 unnecessary deaths each year.

If the immorality of racism wasn't enough to get decent people to fight it, these thousands of deaths attributed to it should be sufficient. It is simply inexcusable to put up with racism any longer -- and any person not actively engaged in fighting it has obviously decided it is OK.

Here is the abstract from that study:

Racial disparities in health are well-documented and represent a significant public health concern in the US. Racism-related factors contribute to poorer health and higher mortality rates among Blacks compared to other racial groups. However, methods to measure racism and monitor its associations with health at the population-level have remained elusive. In this study, we investigated the utility of a previously developed Internet search-based proxy of area racism as a predictor of Black mortality rates. Area racism was the proportion of Google searches containing the “N-word” in 196 designated market areas (DMAs). Negative binomial regression models were specified taking into account individual age, sex, year of death, and Census region and adjusted to the 2000 US standard population to examine the association between area racism and Black mortality rates, which were derived from death certificates and mid-year population counts collated by the National Center for Health Statistics (2004–2009). DMAs characterized by a one standard deviation greater level of area racism were associated with an 8.2% increase in the all-cause Black mortality rate, equivalent to over 30,000 deaths annually. The magnitude of this effect was attenuated to 5.7% after adjustment for DMA-level demographic and Black socioeconomic covariates. A model controlling for the White mortality rate was used to further adjust for unmeasured confounders that influence mortality overall in a geographic area, and to examine Black-White disparities in the mortality rate. Area racism remained significantly associated with the all-cause Black mortality rate (mortality rate ratio = 1.036; 95% confidence interval = 1.015, 1.057; p = 0.001). Models further examining cause-specific Black mortality rates revealed significant associations with heart disease, cancer, and stroke. These findings are congruent with studies documenting the deleterious impact of racism on health among Blacks. Our study contributes to evidence that racism shapes patterns in mortality and generates racial disparities in health.

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And while we're on the subject of race, there's another myth propagated by racist and their defenders -- that Black men aren't as good a father's as Whites and fathers of other races. To be blunt -- it's a damned lie -- and a report from the National Center for Health Statistics (whose results are illuminated in Daily Kos) shows that clearly. The chart below shows their findings.