Why the Health of Everyone Affects All of Us

I confess - I am constantly struggling to stay within my "scope."  

I rarely want to engage in controversy, sometimes because I don't think I know enough to speak intelligently, and always because I'm not a confrontational person and it makes me feel insecure.  

But I can't ignore this topic of racism, especially against America's black community. 

I've thought through what I wanted to say for many days now. I wanted to use this forum, my little health and fitness blog, to say something meaningful. 

Many people I know have said more inspiring, eloquent things than I could already. And more importantly, they've taken actions that are noteworthy and make a difference.  

So I'm not going to hammer on the obvious and urgent spiritual, mental and social issues that racism in the United States has created. 

I want to talk about the health effects.

The current protests and turmoil in the US, sparked by George Floyd's murder, reminded me of a fascinating Ted Talk I watched a few years ago.

Dr. David Williams provides a research-based perspective on why racism and discrimination (even subconscious or implicit bias) has negatively affected black people in the States. Please watch it here. 

This blog promotes everything that is healthy, for mind and body (after all, our minds and bodies are interconnected). 

Racism is not healthy. Quantifiable research supports this.

George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and so many others have lost their lives to racism in this country.  

But from Dr. Williams' research, even if they had survived, they and their kids faced a system that was stacked against them.  I urge you to watch the video, but if you want some Clif Notes, here's some of the data he cites: 

- By age 25, there is a five-year gap in how long black people live compared to whites, at every level of education.  This meant that white people who graduated from high school lived longer than black people with a college degree. 

- Research found that higher levels of discrimination (like being unjustly stopped by police, or simply being treated with less courtesy) were associated with an elevated risk of several diseases, including heart disease and diabetes. 

- Research also found that blacks and other minorities received poorer quality medical care than white people, not always due to outright racism but to implicit bias. 

I am a minority myself. I've felt the fear, and anger, of what the COVID-19 panic has done against Asian American communities in my beloved country, the place my parents chose to put down roots in pursuit of a better life. I've faced racial discrimination in my life too, in so many small and insidious ways. 

But I don't know the fear and anger that our black communities know.

I don't feel my health, or my life, threatened. People generally don't just assume that my ethnic Taiwanese father, or my ethnic Chinese husband, might be criminal or dangerous because of the color of their skin. 

I've seen how our society treats black people, however, even within my own family. 

I remember growing up and having my Asian American elders warn me not to go to certain neighborhoods because that's where "a lot of black people live." The implication being that black people were not to be trusted. Black people were dangerous.   

I remember getting in an argument with a family member over me dating a black man. The kicker is that the man in question didn't actually exist, I just demanded the option but was essentially told I would be ostracized. 

During my senior year, my Midwestern, predominantly-white university was thrown into turmoil when the newspaper printed an op ed written by a white student that essentially told the black sorority to segregate itself from the rest of the school. And this coming from a liberal campus known for its prestigious journalism school.  

The racism is real - I've grown up with it, and still, woe to my privilege and naivete that I didn't see it more clearly.

Let's talk about a following aspect of racism.

Racism is bad for everyone's health. 

I watched another Ted Talk that spoke mainly about the negative economic effects of racism. Watch it here - it's eye-opening.  

The gist is that racism eventually affects all of us negatively, whether we are the ones being discriminated against or not. 

The fallacy is the belief that putting down one community benefits another. Certainly there may be immediate and tangible benefits by taking advantage of someone else, but the truth is, we're shooting ourselves in the foot. 

Racism has its claws in everyone's well-being. 

A health system that discriminates against its own citizens is a system that is worse for everyone. Think about just the innumerable dollars and other resources that go into a system that has to treat more sick people than it should because of that discrimination. 

Think of the productivity, not to mention the creativity and innovation, that we lose because our black citizens are dying prematurely from preventable causes.  

Think about the spiritual and mental drain on our health that we experience collectively when racism permeates our society like cancer.  One has only to look at the unrest that is happening around the US to see that our system is sick.  

Black Lives Matter.

When our black community is in crisis, the whole of our society is in crisis. Racism ultimately only destroys - it does not build up anyone or anything. Without protecting the dignity and safety of black people in the United States, our country chews apart its own stated values of freedom and equality.  

If we fail to enact immediate change for our black brothers and sisters, the irony is that the racists don't even win, not really.

We all lose. 

I encourage you to watch Ted Talks' playlist of videos on the link between health and racism and another on racism in America.  They include the two videos I reference above. Powerful stuff.