Warning: Racism Is Bad for Your Health

[marmar]

via AlterNet:




Greater Good / By Elizabeth Page-Gould

Warning: Racism Is Bad for Your Health
Harboring prejudice, it seems, may be bad for your health.

August 11, 2010 |


Note: This month, Beacon Press is publishing the latest Greater Good anthology, Are We Born Racist? New Insights from Neuroscience and Positive Psychology. To coincide with its release, Greater Good featured a sneak peak at some of the contributions to the book, including this provocative essay by psychologist Elizabeth Page-Gould. To learn more about Are We Born Racist?, click here.

When we think about the victims of racism, we typically think of the immediate targets of racial prejudice: Those who have suffered at the hand of discrimination and oppression. But new research has identified another, unlikely group of victims: the racists themselves.

In the urban metropolises of the United States and Canada, it is almost impossible to avoid talking to someone of another race. So imagine the toll it would take if every time you did, your body responded with an acute stress reaction: You experience a surge in stress hormones, and your heart pumps harder while your blood vessels constrict, inhibiting the flow of blood to your limbs and brain.

These types of bodily reactions are helpful in truly dangerous situations, but a number of recent studies have found that racially prejudiced people experience them even during benign social interactions with people of different races. This means that just navigating the supermarket, coffee shop, or modern workplace can be stressful for them. And if the racist person then has to go through this every single day, the repeated stress can become a chronic problem, which places them at heightened risk for disease in later life.

Harboring prejudice, it seems, may be bad for your health. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/147814/warning%3A_racism_is_bad_for_your_health/

[liberal N proud]

1. I will have to provide this information to my racist brothers

Tell them I care for their health while raising their blood pressure a little higher.

[Kind of Blue]

2. Good article, good site.

I love that picture of Sammy Davis, Jr. and Carrol O'Connor (as Archie Bunker) in the related article. Makes me nervous just looking at Archie http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_racism_is_bad_for_your_health/

[Tutankhamun]

3. I've long suspected that racism is bad for a racist's health.

Harboring that much anger and hatred can't be healthy. Racism doesn't make the racist a happier person, either. The thing I didn't realize was the amount of fear or apprehension racists feel.

It makes sense, though. Racists feel negative emotions in the presence of another race, they then become angry with people of that race and blame them for their unpleasant feelings. As a result, the racist's hypothesis (people of ethnicity X are "bad") is, in the racist's confused mind, confirmed. Future interracial interactions are further poisoned by the racist's paranoia.