The Effects Of Racism On Health

Not only does racism feel bad for people who fall victim to it but recent studies have shown that it can affect our bodies as well. According the article people have tested that the fear of racism can affect people's stress levels and it can leave people with bad mental and physical health. This happens because racism can make most people deal with stress in unhealthy ways, especially when the victims of racism are socially disadvantaged. A woman named Kathryn Freeman Anderson, created a study and collected data from 30,000 people to see if racism harms their health. She found out that “18.2 percent of black participants experienced emotional stress and 9.8 percent experienced physical stress. Comparatively, only 3.5 and 1.6 percent of whites experienced emotional and physical stress, respectively” (Silverstein, 3). It seems as if this information was not really surprising to Anderson when she made her study, this is likely because she predicted that blacks would have more stress than whites in the end. …show more content…
The “experiment paired Latina college students with white females”(Silverstein,4), to test out how the Latinas reacted to being with white females (which are supposed to have more “power” than a Latina in our society). The Latina students had to make a three-minute speech explaining what is was like to work with their partner. At the end of the speeches the Latina students had a higher blood pressure, a faster heart rate, and etc. From this information you can tell that the students didn't feel comfortable around white females. From all of the studies and experiments that were talked about in the article people were able to conclude that racism can affect poor health and overall affect how people who are held victims of racism can easily stress them out from what people say about