Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-15T22:40:10.169Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

ON STICKS AND STONES AND BROKEN BONES

Stereotypes and African American Health

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2011

Naa Oyo A. Kwate  and
Ilan H. Meyer
Naa Oyo A. Kwate*
Affiliation:
Departments of Human Ecology and Africana Studies, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Ilan H. Meyer
Affiliation:
Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
*
Naa Oyo A. Kwate, Department of Human Ecology, School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, 55 Dudley Road, Cook Office Building, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8520. E-mail: nokwate@rci.rutgers.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Deeply embedded in everyday discourse, social interactions, and institutional practices, racism negatively affects the health and well-being of Black people in the United States. Theory and empirical research on the impact of racism on health have focused on stressful events and individual perceptions of racism, although racism is not expressed only as racist acts. Racism subordinates people and diminishes their importance; stereotyping is one of the most insidious forms of such subordination. The stereotypes that underlie social discourse about race influence how others perceive Black people and, to some extent, how Black people perceive themselves. Thus stereotypes help maintain and promote racism. Despite the importance of stereotypes in understanding racism and its effects on Black people, little attention has been paid to the impact of stereotypes on health. This paper explores the adverse effects of stereotypes on African American health, focusing on the psychological and structural pathways through which stereotyping operates. Psychological pathways are salient for these reasons: stereotyping constitutes a form of racism that may be experienced vicariously; stereotypes induce vigilance and rumination as people caricatured by them anticipate their use and spend time trying to disconfirm them; stereotypes may be internalized. Structural pathways occur because stereotypes that portray Black people as deviant, undeserving, and ultimately less human negatively affect opportunity structures and physical environments.

Keywords

RacismDiscriminationStereotypesBlackAfrican AmericanHealth
Type
Unpacking Racism and its Health Consequences
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 8 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Racial Inequality and Health , Spring 2011 , pp. 191 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alexander, M. (2009). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. NY: The New Press.Google Scholar
Allport, G. W. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Bevis, W. M. (1921). Psychological Traits of the Southern Negro with Observations as to Some of his Psychoses. American Journal of Psychiatry, 78(1): 69–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blair, I. V., Judd, C. M., and Fallman, J. L. (2004). The Automaticity of Race and Afrocentric Facial Features in Social Judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(6): 763–778.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bogle, D. (2000). Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, 3 ed.New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Bonilla-Silva, E. (1996). Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Interpretation. American Sociological Review, 62(3): 465–480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Branscombe, N. R., Ellemers, N., Spears, R., and Doosje, B. (1999). The Context and Content of Social Identity Threat. In Ellemers, N., Spears, R., and Doosje, B. (Eds.), Social Identity: Context, Commitment, Content, pp. 35–58. Oxford, England: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Brooks, R. (2009). Racial Justice in the Age of Obama. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cannuscio, C. C., Weiss, E. E., and Asch, D. A. (2010). The Contribution of Urban Foodways to Health Disparities. Journal of Urban Health, 87(3): 381–393.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, R., Anderson, N. B., Clark, V. R., and Williams, D. R. (1999). Racism as a Stressor for African Americans: A Biopsychosocial Model. American Psychologist, 54(10): 805–816.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Collins, P. H. (1990). Black Feminist Thought. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Commission on Social Determinants of Health (2008). Closing the Gap in a Generation: Health Equity Through Action on the Social Determinants of Health. Final Report of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization.Google Scholar
Delgado, R. and Stefancic, J. (2001). Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Geronimus, A. T. (2003). Damned If You Do: Culture, Identity, Privilege, and Teenage Childbearing in the United States. Social Science and Medicine, 57(5): 881–893.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geronimus, A. T. and Thompson, J. P. (2004). To Denigrate, Ignore, or Disrupt: Racial Inequality in Health and the Impact of a Policy-Induced Breakdown of African American Communities. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 1(2): 247–279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giscombe, C. L. and Lobel, M. (2005). Explaining Disproportionately High Rates of Adverse Birth Outcomes Among African Americans: The Impact of Stress, Racism, and Related Factors in Pregnancy. Psychological Bulletin, 131(5): 662–683.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goff, P. A., Eberhardt, J. L., Williams, M. J., and Jackson, M. Christian (2008). Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization, and Contemporary Consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(2): 292–306.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Harrell, J. P., Hall, S., and Taliaferro, J. (2003). Physiological Responses to Racism and Discrimination: An Assessment of the Evidence. American Journal of Public Health, 93(2): 243–248.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
hooks, b. (1992). Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston, MA: South End Press.Google Scholar
Howarth, C. (2006). Race as Stigma: Positioning the Stigmatized as Agents, Not Objects. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 16(6): 442–451.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, S. A. (2003). Confronting the Moral Economy of US Racial/Ethnic Health Disparities. American Journal of Public Health, 93(2): 189.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jones, C. P. (2002). Levels of Racism: A Theoretic Framework and a Gardener's Tale. American Journal of Public Health, 90(8): 1212–1215.Google Scholar
Kawachi, I. and Berkman, L. F. (Eds.) (2003). Neighborhoods and Health. New York: Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krieger, N. (1999). Embodying Inequality: A Review of Concepts, Measures, and Methods for Studying Health Consequences of Discrimination. International Journal of Health Services, 29(2): 295–352.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kwate, N. O. A. and Meyer, I. H. (2010). The Myth of Meritocracy and African American Health. American Journal of Public Health, 100(10): 1831–1834.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kwate, N. O. A., Yau, C. Y., Loh, J. M., and Williams, D. (2009). Inequality in Obesigenic Environments: Fast Food Density in New York City. Health & Place, 15(1): 364–373.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levins, R. (2000). Is Capitalism a Disease? The Crisis in U.S. Public Health. Monthly Review, 52(4): 8–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Link, B. G. and Phelan, J. C. (1995). Social Conditions as Fundamental Causes of Disease. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 36: 80–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Link, B. G. and Phelan, J. C. (2001). Conceptualizing Stigma. Annual Review of Sociology, 27: 363–385.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loury, G. C. (2002). Anatomy of Racial Inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Massey, D. S. (2004). Segregation and Stratification: A Biosocial Perspective. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 1(1): 7–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mays, V. M., Cochran, S. D., and Barnes, N. W. (2007). Race, Race-Based Discrimination, and Health Outcomes Among African Americans. Annual Review of Psychology, 58: 201–225.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McCoy, S. K. and Major, B. (2007). Priming Meritocracy and the Psychological Justification of Inequality. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43(3): 341–351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Means Coleman, R. (1998). African American Viewers and the Black Situation Comedy: Situating Racial Humor. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Melaniphy, J. C. (1992). Restaurant and Fast Food Site Selection. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Meyer, I. H. (2003). Prejudice as Stress: Conceptual and Measurement Problems. American Journal of Public Health, 93(2): 262–265.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Wisco, B. E., and Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). Rethinking Rumination. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(5): 400–424.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nosek, B. A., Smyth, F. L., Hansen, J. J., Devos, T., Lindner, N. M., Ratliff, K. A. (Ranganath), Smith, C. T., Olson, K. R., Chugh, D., Greenwald, A. G., and Banaji, M. R. (2007). Pervasiveness and Correlates of Implicit Attitudes and Stereotypes. European Review of Social Psychology, 18: 36–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nuru-Jeter, A., Dominguez, T. Parker, Hammond, W. P., Leu, J., Skaff, M., Egerter, S., Jones, C. P., and Braveman, P. (2008). “It's the Skin You're In”: African-American Women Talk About Their Experiences of Racism. An Exploratory Study to Develop Measures of Racism for Birth Outcome Studies. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 13(1): 29–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Omi, M. and Winant, H. (1994). Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2 ed.New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pascoe, E. A. and Richman, L. Smart (2009). Perceived Discrimination and Health: A Meta-Analytic Review. Psychological Bulletin, 135(4): 531–554.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, D. E. (1997). Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Schulz, A. J., Gravlee, C. C., Williams, D. R., Israel, B. A., Mentz, G., and Rowe, Z. (2006). Discrimination, Symptoms of Depression, and Self-Rated Health Among African American Women in Detroit: Results From a Longitudinal Analysis. American Journal of Public Health, 96(7): 1265–1270.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, W. A., Allen, W. R., and Danley, L. L. (2007). “Assume the Position … You Fit the Description”: Psychosocial Experiences and Racial Battle Fatigue Among African American Male College Students. American Behavioral Scientist, 51(4): 551–578.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steele, C. M. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi and Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Stephens, D. P. and Phillips, L. D. (2003). Freaks, Gold Diggers, Divas, and Dykes: The Sociohistorical Development of Adolescent African American Women's Sexual Scripts. Sexuality & Culture, 7(1): 3–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steptoe, A. and Feldman, P. J. (2001). Neighborhood Problems as Sources of Chronic Stress: Development of a Measure of Neighborhood Problems, and Associations with Socioeconomic Status and Health. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 23(3): 177–185.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sue, D. W., Capodilupo, C. M., Torino, G. C., Bucceri, J. M., Holder, A. M. B., Nadal, K. L., and Esquilin, M. (2007). Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Implications for Clinical Practice American Psychologist, 62(4): 271–286.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Torres, K. C. and Charles, C. Z. (2004). Metastereotypes and the Black-White Divide. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 1(1): 115–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vergara, C. J. (1997). The New American Ghetto. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
The Washington Star (1976). ‘Welfare Queen’ Becomes Issue in Reagan Campaign. Reprinted in The New York Times, February 15, 1976, p. 51.Google Scholar
West, C. (1993). Race Matters. New York: VintageGoogle Scholar
Williams, D. R. and Jackson, P. B. (2005). Social Sources of Racial Disparities in Health. Health Affairs, 24(2): 325–334.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Williams, D. R. and Williams-Morris, R. (2000). Racism and Mental Health: The African American Experience. Ethnicity and Health, 5(3/4): 243–268.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wright, R. (1966 [1945]). Black Boy. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar