The Injurious Relationship Between Racial Microaggressions and Physical Health: Implications for Social Work

ABSTRACT

In recent years, the study of racial microaggressions (or subtle forms of racial discrimination) has increased significantly in the social sciences, particularly highlighting the negative impact of racial microaggressions on individuals’ mental health. Despite this, there is a dearth of literature that has examined the relationship between racial microaggressions and physical and psychological health. Using two self-reported measures—the Racial and Ethnic Microaggressions Scale (REMS) and the RAND 36-Item Short Form Health Survey—with a diverse group of participants (N = 277), results suggest that racial microaggressions are significantly correlated with poorer health conditions. Furthermore, racial microaggressions were found to predict various types of physical health conditions, such as general health problems, pain, lower energy levels, and fatigue. Finally, different types of microaggressions (e.g., microaggressions in school or the workplace, environmental microaggressions) were found to be predictors of specific health issues. Implications for social work are discussed.     

Hyperconsciousness of Race and Its Negation: The Dialectic of White Supremacy in Brazil

Brazilian social relations—their practices and their representations—are marked by a hyperconsciousness of race. Such hyperconsciousness, while symptomatic of how Brazilians classify and position themselves in the life world, is manifested by the often vehement negation of the importance of race. This negation forcefully suggests that race is neither an analytical and morally valid tool, nor plays a central role in determining Brazilian social hierarchies. The hyperconsciousness/negation of race dialectic allows us to understand how a system that is on the surface devoid of racial awareness is in reality deeply immersed in racialized understandings of the social world. To approach the hyperconsciousness/negation of race conundrum, I review pertinent Brazilian and United States bibliography focusing on problems associated with the racial democracy myth, and utilize ethnographic data and interpret newspapers articles reporting on one of the many events of police corruption and brutality in Rio de Janeiro.     

Perspectives on ethnicity,gender and race and their empirical referents: a four-sided paradigm and critical review

Based on a sample of general textbooks in sociology, this article proposes a heuristic, four-sided paradigm of the extant literature on ethnicity, gender and race and highlights their empirical referents: (1) order–integrative, which emphasizes the progressive adaptation of ethnic and racial groups to a dominant, Anglo-Saxonic, Eurocentric culture; (2) pluralist–multiculturalist, which emphasizes markers of social differentiation between ethnic and racial groups that are compatible with social diversity; (3) power–conflict–stratification, which frames successive generations of minority ethnics in contentious power relations amongst themselves relative to the perceived or actual mainstream white powerbrokers in society; and (4) gender–feminist, which critically analyses the white, male, heterosexual bias and hegemony built into the structures and practices of social institutions and social discourse. The paper concludes by suggesting further research on cross-national perspectives as developed countries become more diverse and, as a result, more culturally divisive.     

Race and Interactions on Public Transportation: Social Cohesion and the Production of Common Norms and a Collective Black Identity

In this article, I examine interactions on public transportation in order to assess social cohesion among members of the same race. Contrary to the prevailing view of social cohesion in urban places, I find that individuals in poor, black areas demonstrate more social cohesion than individuals in more affluent, white areas. This cohesion is meaningful as it plays a role in the production of common notions of a particular black reality and collective black identity, and that it serves a normative function in defining appropriate behaviors. I use Goffman's idea of civil inattention as a heuristic for studying social cohesion.     

From Political to Material Inequality: Race,Immigration, and Requests for Public Goods

Studies of political participation typically analyze voting, contentious collective action, or membership in voluntary associations. Few scholars investigate a more mundane—but highly consequential—form of neighborhood politics: requests for basic city services. We conceptualize city service requests as a direct, instrumental contact with local government that alters the geographical distribution of public goods. We hypothesize that rates of service requests vary with the ethnic and immigrant composition of neighborhoods, due to differences in these communities’ expectations of local government. We test this hypothesis using administrative data from the City of Boston. We find neighborhoods with high concentrations of first‐generation immigrants less likely to request services, relative to need. The concentration of African Americans, however, is associated with large increases in neighborhood service requests. We conclude with implications for the study of race, inequality, and political incorporation.     

The Effects of Traditional Family and Gender Ideology on Earnings: Race and Gender Differences

Despite increasing gains in labor market opportunities, women and racial minorities earn less than their white male counterparts. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this study explores racial and gender variation in how family and gender ideology shape this wage gap. The findings reveal that traditional role attitudes reduce earnings for African American men, African American women, and white women. However, white women experience the largest threat to wages as a result of conventional gender ideology. Further, the number of children and the timing of childbearing are detrimental to black and white women’s earnings, while neither of these factors hampers men’s earnings.C. André Christie-Mizell, Department of Sociology, University of Akron, 258 Olin Hall, Akron, OH 44325-1905, USA; e-mail: mizell@uakron.edu.     

The National Elder Mistreatment Study: Race and Ethnicity Findings

The prevalence of elder mistreatment with respect to race and ethnicity was examined in an unweighted sample of 5,777 participants (5,776 participants in weighted sample). Random Digit Dialing methodology was used to select a representative sample of community-dwelling older adults, and the survey was available in English and Spanish. Mistreatment types included emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Race- and ethnicity-based differences were largely absent, and the only observed increase was for physical mistreatment among non-White older adults; however, this association was not sustained in multivariate analyses controlling for income, health status, and social support. Findings are in contrast to prior reports of increased risk of mistreatment in minority populations and point to correlated and modifiable factors of social support and poor health as targets for preventive intervention.     

The heart of whiteness: On the study of whiteness and White Americans

From the nation's first non-white President, to prevalent narratives of demographic change, a surging reactionary Right and emerging social awareness of white identity, the social context in which white Americans relate to whiteness and white privilege has changed since the early 1990s foundations of whiteness studies. In this article we review work on white Americans and whiteness generally to grapple with their (dis)positions within, and provide a roadmap for sense-making through, recent cultural and racial-political developments. We begin with an overview of now canonical critical-theoretical scholarship, set in the context of other (more limited) empirical work about specific white American subgroups. We highlight how these related, frequently overlapping, though certainly non-synonymous tracks of inquiry into whiteness and white Americans have since evolved, emphasizing that iterative exchange between them may best situate potentially different, cross-cutting orientations toward whiteness and privilege held by various contemporary American whites. We then focus our discussion on several socio-historical developments that will have significant, if somewhat uncertain implications for the reproduction, possible transformation, and study of white America in coming years. Specifically, we detail literatures surrounding recent questions upon the shapes of the white color line, contemporary white nationalisms, and prospects for white antiracism.     

Family Cap and Nonmarital Fertility: The Racial Conditioning of Policy Effects

Using an experimental design, this research examines the effect of the nation's first family cap on the births, abortions, and contraception use of over 8,000 women receiving public assistance in New Jersey. The family cap denies additional cash benefits to children conceived while the mother is receiving public assistance. Our research shows that a targeted welfare benefit manipulation does influence fertility behavior; however, the effect is conditioned by race. We find that Black women in the experimental group have a 21% lower birth rate and a 32% higher abortion rate than Black women in the control group. We do not find a birth effect for Hispanic or White women. We discuss the policy implications of the effects of a segmented family cap.     

The Race and Class Privilege of Motherhood: TheNew York Times Presentations of Pregnant Drug‐Using Women1

Prior research has examined race and class bias embedded in media presentations of pregnant drug users; however, this past research is limited in identifying biases because it focuses on single substances—primarily crack cocaine. I build on this work by conducting a comparative analysis of more than 15 years worth of New York Times articles on three drugs (crack cocaine, alcohol, and tobacco) used during pregnancy. These three drugs have varying levels of deleterious effects on fetal development and infant health, as well as varying levels of use by poor and minority women. Because of this variation, I am able to assess whether media coverage of pregnant drug‐using women is proportional to the documented adverse consequences of specific drugs or, rather, whether media coverage is higher and more negative for poor and minority pregnant women regardless of the degree of adverse health consequences associated with the specific drug used. Through this analysis, I demonstrate that the prevalence and framing of news stories about pregnant drug‐using women has little to do with protecting the health of children. Rather, concern for children is a rhetorical tool used to define poor and minority women as bad mothers and blame them for contemporary changes in families.     

The Problem with Tragic Narratives: Lessons from the Los Angeles Uprising

This article considers the different media narratives about the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, in order to explain how the genre of tragedy became the most powerful representational form for talking about race and civil society during the 1990s. Three narrative mechanisms were used to shift discussions of race and civil society toward the tragic frame: (1) a change in temporality, (2) the rhetorical failures of politicians, and (3) the emplotment of new events into the dominant tragic narratives. Because most crises get their dramatic power from the tension between romance and tragedy, the shift to tragic discourse led to cynicism, skepticism, resignation, and inaction. The article concludes by arguing that the search for genre imbalance is an important tool for those interested in studying culture and ideology during times of crisis.     

Residential Segregation on the Island: The Role of Race and Class in Puerto Rican Neighborhoods

In this paper, we use racial data from Census 2000, available for the first time in 50 years, to examine the links among race, socioeconomic status, and residential location on the island of Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans overwhelmingly chose white as their race, and they chose only one race, not a combination of races that would seem more in keeping with the ideology of mestizaje. Overall, segregation by race is modest compared with residential segregation in the United States. In keeping with the Puerto Rican claim that class is more important than race, we find that segregation by race is generally lower than segregation between the lowest and highest income categories in all metro areas, but that the results for education and occupational status differ by metropolitan area. In San Juan-Bayamón, the most diverse metropolitan area on the island, we find that as percent black increases, neighborhood socioeconomic status decreases, though the changes are not that stark, except in Loiza, a community of black Puerto Ricans and in some Dominican neighborhoods, though there are relatively few of these neighborhoods.     

The Influence of Race/Ethnicity and Gender on Psychological and Social Well-Being

Abstract

Psychological and social well-being was investigated, using a sample of non-disadvantaged African American men and women, and White men and women. Three standardized scales, the Generalized Contentment Scale, the Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale, and the Cohesion subscale of the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scale were used to measure well-being. The data were analyzed through t-test, ANOVA, and regression statistical procedures.

An association between race, gender and well-being was supported. More importantly, race was found to be the most important single variable in predicting levels of well-being. These results may support the continuing significance of race in the lives of African American individuals and families.     

The Case of Cubans: Racial Inequality in U.S. Homeownership and Home Values

Prior research finds that human capital may explain racial housing inequality, whereas others note the historical role that race played in creating unequal housing conditions. This study uses the case of Cubans in the United States to examine whether human capital explains Black–White housing inequalities, or if they are a result of nativity/cohort differences—a proxy for the federal policies that supported Cubans’ economic and social incorporation. Using pooled data from the American Community Survey, I examine how human capital characteristics and nativity/migration cohorts shape odds of homeownership and predicted home values among Cubans. Extended analyses using decomposition methods find that although human capital characteristics are important, they play a smaller role in explaining Black–White differences in homeownership and home values. Indicative of the changing structure of racial stratification in the United States, results reveal substantial inequality among the oldest of Cuban immigrants and U.S.‐born Cubans, despite a trend toward declining inequality among recent arrivals. Supported by the literature of systemic racism, the case of Cubans shows how human capital explanations do not sufficiently explain racial housing inequalities and how the future of racial stratification is one of inter‐ and intra‐ethnic group inequality.     

Correlates of Race and Substance Abuse with Religious Support Systems: A Study of Pregnant Substance Abusers

Women who misuse substances may have decreased connections with community structures, including religious support systems. This study examined the correlates of race, age, socioeconomic status, and drug use status on 1,116 pregnant women's connections with religious support structures. Data were derived from the 2002 National Survey of Drug Abuse and the 2003 National Survey of Drug Use and Health and were used to perform a secondary analysis of the variables. Results of the analyses revealed that race is not an indicator of social connectivity; while drug use, age, and socioeconomic status are indicators.     

The Reach and Limits of Asian Panethnic Identity: The Dynamics of Gender,Race, and Class in a Community-Based Organization

Qualitative Sociology - What are the processes that foster or inhibit the development of panethnic alliances? Through ethnographic study of an Asian pan-ethnic community agency I examine the ways...     

Race,threat and workplace sexual harassment: The dynamics of harassment in the United States, 1997–2016

Sexual harassment is a persistent problem for women in the workplace. Prior research has explored the effects of sexual harassment on the psychological, physical and economic wellbeing of the victims. Despite the extensive research exploring the causes, most studies focus on micro‐level factors, and few studies examine the role of macro‐level factors on sexual harassment in the workplace. Using public Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) data and a separate dataset of individual level workplace sexual harassment complaints, we test two hypotheses about sexual harassment in American workplaces. First, we show that the decline in workplace sexual harassment complaints has been uneven, with African‐American women experiencing an increased relative risk of sexual harassment in the workplace, even as overall reported harassment complaints are down. Second, we show that economic threat — operationalized in this case through unemployment rates — drives increases in sexual harassment of women in American workplaces. While the data on harassment complaints is limited, data strongly suggests that the changes are driven by shifts in underlying levels of harassment, rather than changes in the likelihood of reporting harassment.     

Racial penal governance in Australia and moments of appearance: disrupting disappearance and visibilizing women on the inside

ABSTRACT

The paper considers the lives of women that are invisibilized by the racial penal governing mechanisms of the settler state. It demonstrates how a racial penal governance is configured historically by its interlockings with multiple and hierarchical systems of oppression that intervene differently in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and women, convict women, racialized diaspora and marginalized white women. The paper engages with four ‘moments of appearances’ that interrupt and speak back to racial penal governance. Mirzoeff’s The appearance of Black Lives Matter (2017, https://namepublications.org/item/2017/the-appearance-of-black-lives-matter/) theorization of decolonial spaces of appearance is integrated to the analysis of historical and recent moments of appearance visibilized in the testimonials of Thomas Brune, the Aboriginal youth Co-editor of the Flinders Island Chronicle in 1837 in the Wybalenna prison Camp and of Zoe, Alison and Pamela who have lived experience of prisons. These are embodied moments that make lives in prisons appear and matter.     

Consultancy to a Care Home: The Influences of Family and Gender Roles,and of Race and Colonialism

This paper is an account and critical analysis of the psychodynamic and systemic consultancy that the author provided to a care home (and the voluntary organisation running it) over a period of about 16 months. In addition two emergent, linked themes are identified and discussed: family and gender roles in care homes, and racism and colonialism. Care homes are of course part of the society in which they exist and of which they are a product. This means that all the overt and covert psychological and social pressures, defences and trends that occur in the wider society, for individuals, families, groups and communities are also to be found in care homes and in the organisations that run them. They are not isolated from these forces, indeed, it is argued in this paper, the forces are intensified in the ‘hot house’ environment of a care home and, if ignored, avoided and denied, result in the exploitation, abuse and neglect of both staff and residents.