Race-y things
Race has its own impact on a person’s health, separate from education, income, and other social-economic factors. In other words, just being Black (for example) is a health hazard no matter what a person eats, where he lives, how much education he has, and what he does for work.
Here’s a few things I’ve learned lately . . .
From this week’s headlines: Black and African American military members are denied benefits more often than white members. This includes disability benefits, home loans, education support, and other services. The analysis is the basis for a lawsuit. Kudos to the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center for their study of 15 years’ worth of data.
Men and white people are more likely to get a referral for cardiac catheterization than women and Black/ African American people. (Cool study –actors of various races and both genders played the role of cardiac patient using the same script, same history, same occupation, etc. Medical providers referred white people for the procedure, especially men more often and did NOT refer Black African American people.)
Myths dating back hundreds of years about Black and African American bodies still haunt us today. One such myth is that Black people do not experience pain the way White people do, as described in a 1787 manual by a British physician. You might think that 120 years of progress in science and medicine would have erased this idea, but it seems to persist: a 2016 study found that doctors under-treated pain in Black patients.
And my favorite . . .
Infants born to college-educated Black parents are twice as likely to die in infancy compared to babies born to white, college-educated parents.
With social-economic status the same, why would one be so much more likely to die than the other? There is something about being Black – and weathering the small and large problems that racism itself creates – that gets under the skin and shapes a person’s health and even how long they live.
Try this at home . . .
These gaps between races come from actions by countless people – ranging from obstetricians to mortgage bankers to military officers. Changing subtle, “muscle memory” behaviors is hard because you have to think about things that you don’t think about.
Test this yourself – sign your name on a piece of paper; then put the pen in your other hand and sign your name backwards. It’s hard because you have no visual guide or physical experience of writing that way. That’s the kind of change needed here – new ways, new ideas, new thinking. The reward will be in reaping the human potential that has been squandered. The world could be a very different and better place.
