Research reveals being racist REALLY bad for your health

By Tom Campbell via SWNS

Racism makes the heart grow weaker, warns a new study.

People who live in racist communities are more likely to suffer from mental health issues and die of heart disease, according to the findings.

Despite efforts to combat racism, many people are still prejudicial toward those of another ethnicity or colour.

Now scientists in the United States have found these views could also be damaging for people's health.

Lead author doctoral student Eli Michaels at the University of California, Berkeley said: "Racism is gaining recognition as a fundamental driver of health inequities.

"Leveraging big data to capture area-level racial prejudice is one innovative approach to measuring the overall racial climate in which people live, work, play and pray.

"The studies included in this review revealed that living in an area with high levels of racial prejudice may harm health and widen racial health inequities.”

A review of 14 studies that used information from Google, Twitter and other big-data sources to measure the level of racial prejudice across the United States was carried out by the researchers.

Three of the studies analyzed data from Google Trends on how often people's online searches included a racial slur.

Another four analyzed people's tweets to see whether they included negative sentiments toward people of colour.

Data from the General Social Survey, which looked at social and political attitudes in the United States, was also used in three of the studies.

Four studies also used data from an online tool dubbed Project Implicit, which assesses people’s implicit biases toward various groups.

All of the data was coded by geographic area so the researchers could see which communities had the highest levels of racial prejudice.

They then looked at death rates, complications at birth for mothers and children, heart and blood conditions, as well as mental health.

People of colour living in areas where racism ran rife were more likely to develop health problems, the researchers found.

White people also faced higher chances of having health issues if they lived in racist places, two of the studies found.

Co-author Professor Amani Allen said: "The majority of research on racial discrimination and health to date has focused on experiences at the individual level.

"The emerging body of work examined in this review is an important step in going above the level of the individual to capture the context of place and how it may impact the health of people living in those places."

A number of theories have been put forward to explain the link between people's health and the levels of racial prejudice of their community.

It could increase the number of racist interactions that a person experiences, causing them harmful stress.

Important values like trust could also be eroded, leading to less social and emotional support for people to cope with stressful life events.

There may also be less political support for policies and programmes which could enhance the health and welfare of all community members.

Professor Allen said: "As we see from this review, living in an environment with an overall climate that is prejudiced against people of colour is not only bad for racially marginalised groups, but for everyone.

"Area-level racial prejudice is a social determinant of population health.”

More research is needed to disentangle the factors which link racism and people's physical and mental health.

Michaels said: "Because racism is multidimensional, dismantling it and its effects on health will require multidimensional solutions.

"Research identifying the root causes of, and testing interventions to shift, our collective prejudice is an urgent priority.”

The findings were published in the journal Health Psychology.