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Today a large amount of races are stereotyped, yet African Americans are one of the largest common racial groups stereotyped against. Ever since slavery, the opposing stereotypes of African Americans have been around. The stereotypes served a strong purpose and have come to affect the everyday lives of this individual group and their mental and health conditions. In the journal article “ The Cost of Color: Skin Color, Discrimination, and Health among African-Americans” by Ellis P. Monk, Jr, the negative image of dark skinned African Americans has led to a higher number of health issues and social disadvantages in our society.
The topics of race and discrimination in the journal article show disturbing data of African Americans who are more likely to have physical and mental health issues. The constant exposure to racism that African Americans face leads to serious health issues such as hypertension, depression, and feelings of unworthiness. In Du Bois’s article “Du Bois stressed the role of socioeconomic inequality, such as unit housing, unsanitary living conditions, and poor food quality”. (Monk 397) It seems as if African Americans are going through these socioeconomic inequalities because of race and how they less fortunate because of societal views. Going back to the history of slavery, light skinned blacks were favored more than darker skinned field slaves. Usually, light skinned blacks received less discrimination than darker blacks. Even the idea of socioeconomic inequality is similar to the way light skinned blacks were treated better by white minorities, when it came to buying property from real estate. It seems as if physical appearance is a crucial element for determining factors about people.
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...st this hypothesis with my research method to see if the study consists of validity or at least reliable.
Skin tone plays a great factor in shaping the health of African Americans. The way that society views African Americans can make them feel suppressed and vulnerable. We must look beyond race and see people for who they are. The Unites States of America is an example of the "melting pot”, inhabited from people all over the world. This melting pot has not been exactly special after it has caused diverse conflicts. There have been consistent conflicts among people of different social class, race or sex. This negative behavior reflects as discrimination. Discrimination that is affecting the well-being and lives of African Americans. To lessen the discrimination and separation of people, we must come to look at skin tone as people who are all equally the same.
Throughout American history, relationships between racial and ethnic groups have been marked by antagonism, inequality, and violence. In today’s complex and fast-paced society, historians, social theorists and anthropologists have been known to devote significant amounts of time examining and interrogating not only the interior climate of the institutions that shape human behavior and personalities, but also relations between race and culture. It is difficult to tolerate the notion; America has won its victory over racism. Even though many maintain America is a “color blind nation,” racism and racial conflict remain to be prevalent in the social fabric of American institutions. As a result, one may question if issues and challenges regarding the continuity of institutional racism still exist in America today. If socialization in America is the process by which people of various ethnicities and cultures intertwine, it is vital for one to understand how the race relations shape and influence personalities regarding the perceptions of various groups. Heartbreaking as it is, racism takes a detour in acceptance of its blind side. Further, to better understand racism one must take into account how deeply it entrenched it is, not only in politics, and economics but also Health Care settings. In doing so, one will grasp a decisive understanding of "who gets what and why.” The objective of this paper is to explore and examine the pervasiveness of racism in the health care industry, while at the same time shed light on a specific area of social relations that has remained a silence in the health care setting. The turpitude feeling of ongoing silence has masked the treatment black patients have received from white health care providers...
More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (Issues of Our Time)
Large disparities exist between minorities and the rest of Americans in major areas of health. Even though the overall health of the nation is improving, minorities suffer from certain diseases up to five times more than the rest of the nation. President Clinton has committed the nation to eliminating the disparities in six areas of health by the Year 2010, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will be jumping in on this huge battle. The six areas are: Infant Mortality, Cancer Screening and Management, Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, HIV Infection and AIDS, and Child and Adult Immunizations.
In today’s age, African-Americans are still viewed as the lower race. There are entire ghettos associated with housing only African-American individuals and cities are divided among racial lines. For example, our hometown of Chicago, the north serves as residence to the “whites” while the south end of the city home to “blacks”. There is a wide-spread belief that African-Americans are not as smart as the rest of the population, are in some way related to a criminal background, and/or do not care about their betterment in any way and are lazy. This is because, Mills argues, racial realists associate racial characteristics to the “peculiar” history of that race. This makes argument makes logical sense given the oppressive history of African-Americans in
Du Bois argues in this quote that “basic racial difference between human beings and had suffered not change,” meaning that racism is still a pressing issue. In this quote he essentially asks the questions, why wont the idea of racism die? Du Bois then links the persistence of racism to economic incentives when he states, “and clung to it… the modern African slave trade a tremendous economic structure and eventually the industrial revolution had been based on racial differences.” As illustrated in this quote, the link between economics and racial indifferences is one reason Du Bois offers as an explanation for why racism has been able persist even until today. The perpetuation of racism and racial difference is how society allocates status and wealth, while socialization maintains the idea of racism Du Bois argues
The African American community is suffering with the issue of inadequate mental health care for many decades. There is a deep lack of understanding about what mental illness is and there are many barriers that hinder African Americans from receiving the care that they need. People are unaware of the effects of mental illness, and what mental illness can encompass. “Most importantly, mental health includes people’s feelings of worth in the context of the total cultural and societal system as well as within the identifiable groups to which they belong.” (Snowden, 165) The experience you receive as a race and how you perceive your race is apart of mental illness. Many African American people look down upon their race due to socioeconomic hierarchy that society has given people. African American’s are at high risk to developing mental illness. Healthcare providers have misdiagnosed many African Americans due to lack of knowledge. “African Americans in ...
In recent discussions of health care disparities, a controversial issue has been whether racism is the cause of health care disparities or not. On one hand, some argue that racism is a serious problem in the health care system. From this perspective, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) states that there is a big gap between the health care quality received by minorities, and the quality of health care received by non-minorities, and the reason is due to racism. On the other hand, however, others argue that health care disparities are not due to racism. In the words of Sally Satel, one of this view’s main proponents, “White and black patients, on average don’t even visit the same population of physicians” (Satel 1), hence this reduces the chances of racism being the cause of health care disparities. According to this view, racism is not a serious problem in the health care system. In sum, then, the issue is whether racism is a major cause of health care disparities as the Institute of Medicine argues or racism is not really an issue in the health care system as suggested by Sally Satel.
All blondes are dumb. Gingers have no soul. All Jews are greedy. All Asians are bad drivers. Imagine living in a world where people are put into a category simply because of their appearance, race, or religion. It limits a person’s chance of expressing individuality through categorization. Desmond Cole’s article, “The Skin I’m In” introduces the struggles faced by black people through racial stereotypes in Canada— a country known for its diversity. Cole reveals the experiences of black people who are stereotyped as dangerous; as a result, they are victimized with prejudice, discrimination, and injustice by society.
Townsend, P., Whitehead, M. and Davidson, N. (eds) (1992) Inequalities in Health: the Black Report and the health divide, Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Williams, D. R., & Jackson, P. (2014, April 1). Health Affairs. Social Sources Of Racial Disparities In Health. Retrieved April 29, 2014, from http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/24/2/325.short
It must be noted that for the purpose of avoiding redundancy, the author has chosen to use the terms African-American and black synonymously to reference the culture, which...
Today’s society protects against discrimination through laws, which have been passed to protect minorities. The persons in a minority can be defined as “a group having little power or representation relative to other groups within a society” (The Free Dictionary). It is not ethical for any person to discriminate based on race or ethnicity in a medical situation, whether it takes place in the private settings of someone’s home or in a public hospital. Racial discrimination, in a medical setting, is not ethical on the grounds of legal statues, moral teachings, and social standings.
Social Stratification in the African American community has changed over the years. Social stratification is defined as a rigid subdivision of a society into a hierarchy of layers, differentiated on the basis of power, prestige, and wealth according to Webster’s dictionary. David Newman in Sociology Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life describes stratification as a ranking system for groups of people that perpetuates unequal rewards and life chances in society. From slavery to the present, the African American community has been seen to have lower status compared to white people. Today, the stratification or hierarchy difference between whites and black are not really noticeable, but it is still present. However, during slavery, the difference in social stratification was noticeable. Whites dominated over the blacks and mulattoes (offspring of a white and black parent). The mulattoes were seen to have a higher stratification than an offspring of black ancestry. Because the mulattoes were related to the whites, they were able to obtain higher education and better occupations than blacks. For example, most slaves of a lighter skin tone worked in the houses and darker slaves worked in the fields. As the people of light skin tone had children, they were able to have advantages too. The advantages have led into the society of today. In this paper I will discuss how stratification has been affected in the African American community over time by skin tone to make mulattoes more privileged than dark skin blacks.
The Association of Black Psychologist (ABP) (2013) defines colorism as skin-color stratification. Colorism is described as “internalized racism” that is perceived to be a way of life for the group that it is accepted by (ABP 2013). Moreover, colorism is classified as a persistent problem within Black American. Colorism in the process of discriminatory privileges given to lighter-skinned individuals of color over their darker- skinned counterparts (Margret Hunter 2007). From a historical standpoint, colorism was a white constructed policy in order to create dissention among their slaves as to maintain order or obedience. Over the centuries, it seems that the original purpose of colorism remains. Why has this issue persisted? Blacks have been able to dismantle the barriers faced within the larger society of the United States. Yet, Blacks have failed to properly address the sins of the past within the ethnic group. As a consequence of this failure, colorism prevails. Through my research, I developed many questions: Is it right that this view remain? How does valuing an individual over another cause distribution to the mental health of the victims of colorism? More importantly, what are the solutions for colorism? Colorism, unfortunately, has had a persisted effect on the lives of Black Americans. It has become so internalized that one cannot differentiate between the view of ourselves that Black Americans adopted from slavery or a more personalized view developed from within the ethnicity. The consequences of this internalized view heightens the already exorbitant mental health concerns within the Black community, but the most unfortunate aspect of colorism is that there is contention on how the issue should be solved.
Diversity, we define today as one of our nation’s most dynamic characteristics in American history. The United States thrives through the means of diversity. However, diversity has not always been a positive component in America. In fact, it took many years for our nation to become accustomed to this broad variety of mixed cultures and social groups. One of the leading groups that were most commonly affected by this, were African American citizens, who were victimized because of their color and race.