Terminal Heart Disease And White Racism Are Related: Researchers Say

A research team from UC Berkeley found out that the lives of Blacks and whites could be cut short if they live in disconcerted racist communities

Researchers made a comparison of the racial prejudice of about 1.4 million people throughout the nation and the rate of death in over 1,700 counties in the country. They came to the conclusion that Blacks and whites who live in racist communities are liable to die from heart disease and other circulatory diseases with the Blacks being more susceptible because the oppression on them is higher.

“This suggests that living in a racially hostile environment might be detrimental to both the group targeted by this bias, in this case Blacks, as well as the group that harbors the bias, in this case whites,” said study lead author Jordan Leitner, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at UC Berkeley.

Unfortunately this isn’t surprising, but it’s still disturbing “White racism tied to fatal heart disease for blacks”https://t.co/D23YEGGhFv

— Veronica Derricks (@vderrick1025) September 8, 2016

The researchers took age, education, income, population, rural, urban and other factors that might impact health into consideration when the study was carried out. They discovered that Blacks living in more blinkered neighborhoods have less access to affordable health care, while the whites have more access, irrespective of the racial bias in their neighborhoods.

In an analysis that was made by the researchers, they measured explicit and implicit bias in relation to race. Explicit bias is the more conscious bias and implicit bias refers to subdued automatic bias. “We found that whites’ explicit bias was more powerful than their implicit bias at predicting negative health outcomes for blacks,” Leitner said. “One possibility is that Blacks in racially hostile communities experience lower quality health care, or may avoid seeking health care, even if it is available, because they feel like they won’t be treated fairly,” Leitner added.

Based on this research, I think it’s safe to say that if Blacks live together in a community without any racist whites, we are going to be less liable to face racial hostility, or better still, live better lives without being prone to having heart or circulatory diseases. Racism kills people! Live freely and open-mindedly.

Source: Universityofcalifornia