The title of this blog post is a question raised by Dr. Camara Jones, MD, MPH, PhD while she was Research Director on Social Determinants of Health at the Centers for Disease Control. Last year, she gave a TedX talk (link pasted below) on how racism conveys a health disadvantage to afflicted communities.
In a short 20 minutes, Dr. Jones manages to make a difficult topic completely accessible to any audience, and adds nuance to our understanding of ACEs:
"People ask me, all else being equal, don’t you think that the impacts of slavery would have washed out by now?
But the key phrase there- is all else being equal. All else has not been equal since 1865 and all else still is not equal today.There are still contemporary, present day structural factors that are perpetuating the initial historical insult.
So when people ask me, am I talking about racism or social class, I say that institutionalized racism explains why we even see an association between social class and race in this country. Institutionalized racism can be through acts of doing, as well as acts of not doing, and often shows up as inaction in the face of need."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNhcY6fTyBM
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