Week 3: Ethnicity's Role in Psychology

A social issue that has become an important point of discussion in today's world is the idea of racial equity. Movements like Black Lives Matter and DACA have risen up to combat the injustice of racism in American society.

Stereotypes are formed in our minds all the time, and they may not all be bad until these generalizations also make them biased. However, having implicit biases may lead to discrimination in some cases, even if people aren't aware of it. There are also perceptual illusions like when white subjects perceive black faces as angrier than white faces with the same expression, see harmless objects as weapons when they are in the hands of black men, dislike abstract images that are paired with black faces, and link bad words paired with black faces than white faces. 

Field experiments demonstrate that real-world discrimination is still widespread. White applicants get about 50 percent more call-backs than black applicants with the same resumes; college professors are 26 percent more likely to respond to a student’s email when it is signed by Brad rather than Lamar; and physicians recommend less pain medication for black patients than white patients with the same injury.

Another important issue is that stigmatized ethnic-racial groups carry a disproportionate burden of negative health outcomes. For example, Hispanics and African Americans are more likely than White Americans to be obese (a risk factor for a variety of chronic physical health conditions like heart disease and diabetes), suffer higher rates of hypertension and some cancers, are less likely to rely on a private physician for their medical care than White American adults, and receive a lower overall quality of healthcare than that received by White Americans. Ethnicity also appears to influence the diagnosis and treatment of depression. A Rutgers University study found that African-Americans are significantly less likely to receive a depression diagnosis than were non-Hispanic whites and that those diagnosed were less likely to be treated for depression.

These systematic health inequities are targeting groups with relatively low position in the social status hierarchy. Poverty, inadequate health care, less education, greater residential segregation, and lack of access to healthy foods are all proof of the unequal distribution of social, economic, and environmental resources. An individual’s ethnic-racial identity, those who are African American, Hispanic, and Native American, are less likely than those who are Whites to possess these tangible resources necessary for good health. Scientists are beginning to shed light on the psychological processes by which one’s ethnic identity translates into poor health and how these issues are strongly tied to racial biases and stigma but until then, these problems still remain prevalent in American society.

People are still skeptical of implicit bias because it would mean that at heart we aren't the kind, pure people we think we are. Though this truth may be uncomfortable to conclude, we still need to fix this cause of injustice.

Links:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-think-about-implicit-bias/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sound-science-sound-policy/201804/ethnic-racial-health-disparities-are-social-justice-issues

https://psychcentral.com/news/2011/12/22/ethnic-disparities-persist-in-depression-diagnosis-treatment/32902.html