The Relation between Racial Discrimination and Health among Ethnic Minority Groups - Coursework Example

The Relation between Racial Discrimination, Social and Health among Ethnic Minority Groups The Relation between Racial Discrimination, Social Class and Health among Ethnic Minority Groups Introduction Crawford (2013) points out that rising inequality and racial discrimination in the United States is nothing new. Over the years, there have been a large number of incidences whereby differences in health across ethnic groups have been documented. However, Nazroo (2002), points out that there has been a contested debate pertaining to the actual extent to which socioeconomic inequalities are responsible for underlying these differences. A number of researchers have been attempting to focus on genetic and cultural explanations to explain these inequalities. The ethnic and racial inequalities in healthcare are not a recent issue as Williams, Neighbors & Jackson (2002) highlight the fact that a 1999 review of available literature on health and discrimination was able to identify 15 studies that were able to positively identify evidence of racial and ethnic discrimination in healthcare. This study will seek to analyze The Relation between Racial Discrimination, Social Class and Health among Ethnic Minority. The topic of racial discrimination is important in sociology and is worth studying because discrimination affects the manner in which minority groups are treated by the majority groups. Discrimination has been noted to vary in form depending on how it is expressed, who expresses and against whom it is aimed at. It can occur in all the different aspects of life. According to Karlsen & Nazroo (2002), discrimination can essentially be divided into two main, but not mutually exclusive categories; these are institutional and interpersonal racism. Interpersonal racism has been defined as discriminatory interactions that occur between individuals. This category of discrimination can usually be directly perceived. Institutional discrimination can be defined as typically describing discriminatory practices or polices that have been embedded and occur in organizational structures. It is as a result of this attribute that this form of discrimination often tends to be more invisible as compared to interpersonal racism. As will be shown in this research, racial discrimination has the effect of causing the discriminated groups to have poor access to proper health services due to their low socioeconomic class; this in turn causes these individuals to suffer from a number of health related maladies. Hypotheses H1: Individuals who are racially discriminated are more likely to live in fear than individuals who are not discriminated. H2: Individuals who are economically poor and are categorized as being in the lower social classes are more likely to have lower incomes than individuals who are not discriminated. H3: Individuals who are in the ethnic and racial minority groups in theological institutions are more likely to have experiences of lack of recognition, marginalization and denial of promotions than individuals form ethnic and racial majority groups. H4: Individuals who are economically poor and are categorized as being in the lower social classes are more likely to have poorer health than individuals who are well off. H5: Individuals living in manually-headed households or those that had no full-time worker are more likely to suffer from more cases of poor health than individuals from non -manual households. This study will be a qualitative research study that will examine secondary sources such as journal articles with the aim of establishing the existing relationship between Racial Discrimination, Social Class and Health among Ethnic Minority Groups. It is expected that the research will find that there exists a common link between these factors. Literature Review Research conducted across both Britain and the United States suggests that the number of expressions of discriminations targeted at individuals from ethnic minority groups has been on the increase and is now quite widespread. Karlsen & Nazroo (2002), point out that in a study targeted at investigating the racism experiences of people from different ethnic groups, in a sample size that had been drawn from 4 areas of the United Kingdom, it was found that for most of the respondents, interpersonal racism experiences were actually a part of everyday life; it was also disturbingly noted that the respondents pointed out that being made to feel different was largely perceived to be a routine and was even expected. A third of the study’s UK-based respondents were recorded as stating that the manner in which they led their lives was largely constrained by fears of their being racially harassed, on the other hand, eighty percent of the US based respondents reported having experienced some form of racial discrimination at some point in their lives. In an indicator of the prevalence of this form of racism among individuals form the lower societal classes, Karlsen & Nazroo (2002), argue that well documented research has been able to repeatedly show that individuals from ethnic minority groups tend to have lower incomes and often live in highly concentrated economically and environmentally poorer geographic areas; they live in poor quality overcrowded accommodations, work in less desirable occupations, and often suffer relatively longer periods of unemployment as compared to their ethnic majority counterparts. The evidence presented by Karlsen & Nazroo (2002), showing the prevalence of racial discrimination is further supported by Goldberg (2010), who is keen to point out that structural and institutional racism have both for long been able to reveal a number of profoundly ingrained discriminations or exclusions aimed at members of groups and that had once been marked by racial terms that have since then been erased. Aspects such as culture were not meant to be used as a basis for discrimination as according to Gans (2012), culture was and is still often used by anthropologists as a descriptive term that enables them to successfully differentiate and portray both the societies and groups that they are engaged in studying empirically. The issues surrounding racial discrimination are seen to extend even to theological institutions as was established by a study by Cascante (2010). The results of the study data showed that racial/ethnic minority faculty members that are currently teaching in predominantly white theological institutions in North America, experience various forms of racial and ethnic discrimination. This includes a lack of recognition of their research and teaching, denial of promotion or tenure due to racial/ethnic bias as well as feeling disrespected by high ranking officials at the institutions (Cascante, 2010). These findings are supported by Pui-Lan (2011), who points out that ethnic and racial minority bible scholars were of the strong belief that their body of scholarship is still largely marginalized in academic guilds, publishing and in the curriculum. According to Lee (2012), race and gender can have the effect of rendering someone invisible and silent, this postulation is supported by Goldberg (2010), who argues that racism has for long remained invisible. Invisibility in this context suggests a hidden dimension to racism, regardless of whether this dimension is unknowing or inadvertent it is often most likely ordered or at least planned and structurally embedded. As such, it is not that racism has institutionally been absent but instead its presence has largely been rendered invisible and silenced, it has been purged off all its explicit terms of reference. Goldberg (2010), points out that racism has historically not been simply been the presence of a negative attitude or discrimination towards someone because of some supposed distinct attitudes, behaviors or even values. Nor is it the prejudging of individuals based on some generally conceived prejudicial grounds pertaining to the groups to which the discriminated party is taken to belong to. Racism is actually based on a misconception that a given group is presumably less developed in its cultural and intellectual capabilities as compared to individuals emanating from regions that are supposedly represent more appealing capacities and habits. The discriminated group is thought to have coalesced from the fragments of heterogeneous dispersals that occurred in some distant past into some supposedly geographically bound coherence with the attendant cultural habits and physical traits. The individuals making such judgments often tend to overwhelmingly perceive themselves to be members of a more developed group. The relatively lower socio-economic status of Black youth has been noted to predispose them to violence and discrimination. In a recent journal article, Crawford (2013) points out that rising inequality in the United States is nothing new. However, this topic has recently become an increasingly hot discussion topic for media personalities and pundits alike. For low income Black Americans, the relatively stark contrast between their poor lower social class communities and the white picket fence image that is characteristic of the American Dream has for years remained an unfortunate reality. Crawford (2013) argues that the increasing poverty levels in these communities came caused for there to be an increase in underground economy. This coupled with the passage of what were stricter drug laws forced increasing numbers of convicted young men who were mostly from communities of color to go to prison for longer time periods in record numbers. Crawford (2013) further points out that by the time that black men attain the age of thirty, about thirty percent of them are recorded as having been imprisoned; this figure increases to about 60 percent in the event that the black men happen to have no high school degree. The high rate of incarceration among black men in this community has resulted in incarceration now being considered to be a normal stopping point on their extensively treacherous route to mid-life. The racial discrimination concerns raised by Crawford (2013) are not limited to Black men only. According to Rios, (2006), Latino youth are also being met with the same discrimination. Most youth from the Latino community often come from economically poor families and neighborhoods. This has caused them to become exposes to the same racial discriminations that are faced by their black counterparts. In his research (Rios), argues that both the Latino and Black youth encounter high levels of discriminatory stigmatization upon their entry into the juvenile justice system. This stigmatization continues to prevail although most of these youth happen to be arrested for non-violent offenses. Rios (2006) further argues that as a result of this stigmatization, non-violent Black and Latino juvenile offenders are forced to experience the full force of both the indirect and direct punishment as well as the criminalization that has traditionally been aimed at violent offenders. With the drastic increase in crime control measures, racially discriminated Latino and Black youth are subject to not only experiencing hyper-criminalization from criminal justice institutions, but also from the various non-criminal justice structures that were set up to nurture; these institutions include the family, community center and school. Ultimately, in this disturbing era of mass incarceration, there has emerged a youth control complex that has been mainly created by a large network of racialized punishment and criminalization that has been deployed primarily from a number of socialization and control institutions that have been formed with the aim of managing, controlling and incapacitating Black and Latino youth. The effects of the increasing discrimination against the minority Black American and Latino men that has seen large numbers of this demographic become imprisoned is seen to arguably expose them to stressful conditions that ultimately affect their health and mortality rate. According to Nazroo (2002), it is now evidently clear that a socioeconomic patterning of health is currently present within the different ethnic groups that are present in industrialized countries. Nazroo (2002) points out that an analysis of US Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial (MRFIT) shows that in the United States, mortality rates generally increased with decreasing income. This trend has resulted in there being a twofold difference in mortality rates between individuals and families that happen to be in the top annual income band and earn an average of $27,500 or higher and those that are in the bottom annual income band and earn less than $10,000 per year. The MRFIT data also showed that standardizing for mean household income in areas of residence had the effect of reducing the relative risk for all-cause mortality of Black men as compared to White men from 1.47 to 1.9; this results indicate that that about two thirds of the significantly elevated mortality risk among the population of black men can be successfully explained by statistical income measure. The high mortality among Black men as compared to their white counterparts cannot simply be explained by behavioral factors or biological markers of risk. This is because according to Nazroo (2002), adjusting the Black-White mortality differential for a number of serious medial risk factors such as cigarette smoking, serum cholesterol, prior hospitalization resulting from coronary heart disease and well as evidence of diastolic blood pressure only had the effect of decreasing the relative risk from 1.47 to 1.40. These results clearly demonstrate that the socioeconomic position as has been indexed by the average income of an individual based on the area of residence is in fact a more important factor of determining the Black-White differentials pertaining to mortality in the United States as compared to the various biological markers of risk as well as behavior factors such as diet or habits such as cigarette smoking. The results of a study on the effects of racism on health conducted by Karlsen & Nazroo (2002), suggests that the individual experiences of various forms of interpersonal racism and the perceptions of racism across the worker society have both had independent negative health consequences. In the study, respondents from those households that had been classified as having individuals whose main source of income was from manual labor were found to be about 40% more likely than those from the non-manual labor household to describe their health as being either poor or fair; those respondents from households that had no full-time worker were found to be about 150% more likely to respond in a similar manner. Interestingly as compared to those who had no experience of verbal abuse, verbally abused discriminated individuals were found to be at an 85% increase in risk of respiratory illness and a 150% increase in the general estimates rates of both depression and psychosis. The research by Karlsen & Nazroo (2002), also established that compared with living in a household categorized as being non-manual, residing in a households that is manually-headed, and especially that which has no full-time worker is associated with a significantly increased risk of ill health for nearly all the indicators that the research study explored. The research also report that the belief by racially discriminated individuals that they live in a society that will ultimately discriminate them on grounds of their ethnicity may in itself serve as a factor that is detrimental to health. This is because responses, susceptibility and exposure to any socially inflicted trauma, of a physical or mental nature can be identified as being one of the five pathways of embodying discrimination. It has been suggested that long-term exposure to a devaluation of status and inferior treatment is greatly damaging to an individual’s self esteem, it may block the aspirations of individuals as well as greatly invalidate their self worth. Such negative exposure may ultimately have the effect of shaping the frequency and content of all the various stressful life events that the affected individual experiences. It may also result in a limitation of the range of feasible responses and social supports that are available to them. A combination of these factors will eventually have some severe consequences on the health of the individual in question. Racially discriminatory acts may have the effect of producing a sense of threat within an affected individual which may result in a number of adverse reactions that might include fear, distress, denial and anger. These reactions could have the effect of producing serious physiological responses affecting the individual’s endocrine, immunological, neurological or cardiovascular system and as such, affect the person’s health. Conclusion The results of this study indicate that there exists a link between racial discrimination, social class and health. Poor individuals from lower socio-economic classes, those living in manual-headed households as well as those from minority groups tend to have poorer health as compared to individuals from well off majority groups that live in non-manual households. The research also showed that racially discriminated individuals are more likely to live in fear as compared to their non-discriminated counterparts. Living in fear has been tied to a number of serious and negative physiological responses that can affect an individual’s endocrine, immunological, neurological or cardiovascular systems resulting in poor health. References Cascante, F. A. (2010). A Decade of Racial/Ethnic Diversity in Theological Education. Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion. 1(3), 1-32. Crawford, G. (2013). To Be Young, Criminalized, and Black: How the Black Church Matters for Young, Black men in the 21st Century. Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion, 4(3), 1 -26. Gans, H. J. (2012). Against culture versus structure. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and power, 19(2), 125-134. Goldberg, D. T. (2010). Call and response. Patterns of Prejudice, 44(1), 89-106. Williams, D. R., Neighbors, H. W., & Jackson, J. S. (2003). Racial/ethnic discrimination and health: findings from community studies. American Journal of Public Health, 93(2), 200-208. Karlsen, S., & Nazroo, J. Y. (2002). Relation between racial discrimination, social class, and health among ethnic minority groups. American journal of public health, 92(4), 624-631. Kyung-Jin Lee, J. (2012). Elegies of Social Life: The Wounded Asian American. Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion, 3(2.7). Nazroo, J. Y. (2003). The structuring of ethnic inequalities in health: economic position, racial discrimination, and racism. American journal of public health,93(2), 277-284. Pui-lan, K. (2011). Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Academy. Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion. 2(2.2). Rios, V. M. (2006). The hyper-criminalization of Black and Latino male youth in the era of mass incarceration. Souls, 8(2), 40-54. Williams, D. R., Neighbors, H. W., & Jackson, J. S. (2003). Racial/ethnic discrimination and health: findings from community studies. American Journal of Public Health, 93(2), 200 -208. Read More