Being Black Is Bad for Your Health [USNews.com]

Jane,

I appreciate that the authors focused their attention on social determinants of health for Black people, by  name.   In all things I would not aggregate (minoritize/people of colorize) the Black experience with that of any group or demographic.  There is no equivalent or approximate trajectory on a historical nor contemporary analysis.   When I look at the disparate outcomes of Black people I see institutions and systems that created, supported and presently enforce those disparate outcomes.  I also see people who've made choices to initially create and inter-generationally perpetuate those unequal systems.  We each have responsibility to decide on our identity, deviance of our lives from racial justice, and accountability for our legacy of adherence to the multiple systems of being available to us.  For the purpose of naming cause/accountability/capacity building, I hesitate to pull back the lens of analysis to "systems" (alone).  I think we boarder on using "systems" as a scapegoat for avoiding "racial accountability," accountability for chosen "racial identity," and accountability for chosen modes of "racial socialization."  I am proposing that these three factors more significantly inform the toxic stress-excess death phenomenon than a lens that places greatest emphasis on systems; especially since people create systems based upon their socialization and identities.  There is no (non-biological) systems/institutions without people (of particular socialization) to construct them.  Socialized people (which people?) are the greatest common factor/denominator and thus the point of critical action.

About both the title and content of the article:  I did not think the article victim blamed, outright; at the same time it didn't explicitly cite cause, make a strong ask, recommend socialization changes based on causal analysis.  As I said, " The US News article, read in its entirety, reiterates some good information about determinants of health and how toxic stress (a.k.a. state anxiety) affects the health and performance of people of African ancestry.   The present article and wealth of existing research on high levels of state anxiety among Black people is worthy to be read and utilized for corrective action.  The title of the US News article, however, passively suggests the determinant of health is blackness or Blackness. "  (I gathered that the chosen title was attention grabbing) My contention was related to the naming of the article.  Seeking to nuance the way the community names is about more than semantics, it is about analysis and naming of cause for accountability and capacity building.  

Tell me this, how and in what timeline can we change the "system(s)" that cause the toxic stress-excess death phenomenon?  In contrast, how and in what timeline can we change the racial socialization that creates, reinforces, and perpetuates the toxic stress-excess death phenomenon?

Hi, Pamela: I completely agree with you! It's another way of blaming the victim, instead of putting the responsibility for change where it belongs, on the systems. So, perhaps a better headline would be: Systems inequities responsible for excess deaths in minority communities.

What do you think?

Thanks for sharing, Samantha.   The US News article, read in its entirety, reiterates some good information about determinants of health and how toxic stress (a.k.a. state anxiety) affects the health and performance of people of African ancestry.   The present article and wealth of existing research on high levels of state anxiety among Black people is worthy to be read and utilized for corrective action.  The title of the US News article, however, passively suggests the determinant of health is blackness or Blackness.  Shouldn't we strive to nuance dialogue that continues to ascribe the race-related 'problem' of determinants of health onto people of Aborigines African ancestry? Nothing has EVER happened to me Because of my ancestry.   No denial of service, no unkind remark/gesture, no discriminatory act happened to me "Because I am Black."  The nature of the problem is not my color/ancestry. 

I would submit to you that there is significant story making and affective/cognitive/conative difference in how the determinant is framed.    Thinking "being Black is bad for your health" makes the problem intractable, or even worse, inherent or addressed by re-categorization.  Framing the problem as "being Black" does little to address the identity constructs that actually inform the perceptions/cognitions/actions that actually fuel the "toxic stress - excess death" cascade arising from  innumerable unhealthy but (apparently) unavoidable stress inducing race-informed interactions and stimuli.   I wonder if being "Black" (categorical) is bad for Black health, is being seen and treated as "black" (ordinal) bad for Black health, or is interacting with "whiteness" (ordinal) bad for Black health.  Which is the more significant measure of "determinant?"    What does an interest in "health equity" require after investigating those questions?