Eden Knight
A03
The introduction of "Fight the Tower" was so inspirational to me. I love stories of hope surrounding "modern medical wonders". What a fighter. I noticed, footnote one that discussed people of color are actually more susceptible to health conditions. A link to this could be due to continuous racism and sexism. There are health disparities between race. Last quarter I took HDE117 which discussed longevity of different ethnic minorities. Structural racism plays a role in stress levels and mental health. Longterm stress has serious implications on the body. Stress causes metabolic imbalance, hormone changes and harmful coping mechanisms. The stress of micro and macro-aggressive attacks the author speaks of could be one of the causes of the miscarriage.
Among race, there's also healthcare inequalities. In low-income areas, known to have a larger proportion of minorities, the healthcare quality is lower. There's also fewer providers for healthcare and less jobs that have health insurance included. This structural inequality causes a lower life expectancy among minorities.
Question: How can individuals work to defeat structural racism?
Graph showing the life expectancy differences in America between 1970-2006. Although the total life expectancy has improved, the difference in life expectancy between White and Black, has remained large.
Sources:
Image: Xu J, Kochanek KD, Murphy SL, Tejada-Vera B. Deaths: final data for 2007. Natl Vital Stat Rep 2010;58(19). Available at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_19.pdf
.Valverde, K.-L. C. & Dariotis, W. M. (2019). Introduction. Fight the Tower. United States: Rutgers University Press
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