The corporeal manifestation of race and health outcomes in marginalized communities

¶ … Race: Hazards and Benefits

Corporeal Manifestation of Race

Race represents the recognition of otherness, but in contrast to the many other ways that people choose to group individuals, the outward differences society associates with race is inherently unchangeable. This means that individuals who are persecuted or marginalized for something they have no control over find themselves struggling with an identity that has brought suffering into their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Belonging to a marginalized or persecuted racial group can therefore foster feelings that range from self-loathing to pride-filled defiance.

The psychological effects of racial identity in a race-based society, like the United States, can be both positive and negative, depending to a large extent on whether you belong to the majority or minority identity. The corporeal manifestation of race can therefore emerge as a change in mental and physical health. To better understand how race impacts a person's being, or corporeal state, this essay will examine scientific findings addressing various aspects of this issue.

The Health Hazards of Group Identity

Persons of Native American descent can generally be distinguished from other races by a cinnamon, reddish-brown skin color, broad faces, straight black hair, prominent noses, and minimal facial hair (Son of the South, 2008). However, being Native American in contemporary society is much more than sharing common physical features, it can also mean embodying the effects of belonging to a marginalized group. These effects include high unemployment, family violence, substance abuse, and alienation (Bell and Lim, 2005).

The overall, long-term impact of these conditions can have a devastating impact on Native American communities. For example, the prospect of facing this future can often motivate young Native Americans to seek alternatives to a traditional lifestyle, such as membership in a gang (Bell and Lim, 2005). The idea of forming a gang probably comes from being exposed to American culture through television and movies. The criminal lifestyle thus portrayed glamorizes violence and the pursuit of power and wealth. Compared to the grim future many of these young people face, the risks associated with gang membership probably seem insignificant.

The corporeal manifestation of belonging to a marginalized group, such as a Native American community, is primarily one of mental and physical health. Gang membership implies a change in values from service to the community, to one of violence, aggression, and power (Bell and Lim, 2005). The possibility of generating a criminal record increases, which will further limit opportunities for employment. These youth will not only continue to experience alienation from American culture, but also from the law-abiding citizens of their own communities. Academic performance will suffer, which will all but destroy any chance of attending college or getting a job requiring a high school diploma. When the mental health of African-American male gang members were examined, it was found that they suffer from an increased risk for violent behavior, depression, anxiety, and chronic substance abuse (Harper, Davidson, and Hosek, 2008). The results of this study suggests that the cycle of violence and addiction will continue, in part because Native American youth chose a gang lifestyle. In other words, these youth ensured that they would live the future they were trying to escape by joining a gang.

The Protective Effect of Individual Identity

The negative psychological effects of racial discrimination can lead to poor academic performance and emotional problems among inner city African-American youth (reviewed by Nussbaum and Steele, 2007). When confronted with discriminatory attitudes in school and society at large, these children are taught that they are different, inferior, and should have low expectations of themselves and their 'race'. However, some of these children will succeed despite the obstacles placed in their path. Researchers have attributed this resiliency to the ability of these children to distance themselves from lower expectations and discriminatory attitudes through a process called psychological disengagement and disidentification. What this psychological tactic does is preserve their identity as an academic student pursuing success, while discounting negative feedback that they attribute to racist attitudes. Choosing when and where to employ this survival technique is called situational disidentification. These youth therefore manifest race as an expectation of discrimination, but are able to limit its expression to situations involving racially-motivated negative appraisals.

Death by Race

The corporeal manifestation of race can also be measured in terms of mortality. Contemporary African-Americans are living under the burden of historical discrimination and one of the more obvious outcomes is an average lower economic status. Based on a study conducted in California that examined the variables of race and socioeconomic status, life expectancy can be dramatically affected by racial identity. The difference between the longest-living California residents, Asian-American females, and the shortest-living, African-American males, is 20 years (84.9 vs. 65.3) (Clarke et al., 2010). The authors of this study pointed out that this difference is essentially equivalent to the life expectancy difference between a western country like Japan and a third-world country like Bangladesh (82 vs. 63).

In support of the conclusion that life-expectancy was a function of race, one of the demographics that benefited the most from improved socioeconomic status was African-Americans (Clarke et al., 2010). However, the estimated average life expectancy of African-American males may be an artifact of incarceration rates. A recent study examined the impact of incarceration on life expectancies of different racial groups and found that incarceration actually provided a protective effect against death for African-Americans (Patterson, 2010). In fact, the life span discrepancy between African-American males and their White counterparts actually disappeared among the incarcerated population, because the life span of African-American males increased relative to the non-incarcerated segment.

The protective effect of incarceration for African-American males against death has created a paradox. In the United States, 14% and 61% of males between 16 and 29 years of age are African-American and White, respectively (KFF, 2006). This represents a ratio of 4.4 White males for every African-American male. The percentage of African-American and White males incarcerated at any one time is 10.1% and 1.5%, respectively. The results of this study suggest that if not for the criminal justice system's racial bias against African-American males, the average life expectancy of this demographic could be significantly worse.

Based on recent trends and the findings of the above studies, the life expectancy of African-American males should continue to increase due to increasing incarceration rates. The Bureau of Justice Statistics predicts that 1 in 3 African-American males born in 2007 are expected to spend time in prison during their lifetime (Bonczar, 2003). By comparison, only 1 in 17 White males born at the same time are predicted to have the same fate. Race can therefore manifest corporeally in the form of dramatic changes in life expectancy.

Race Defined

The anthropologist John Shea (2011) argued recently that the differences between races are an arbitrary and useless distinction scientifically or socially. From his perspective, humans that lived two million years ago were just as capable as modern humans in using the technology at their disposal. In other words, if the child of a caveman were to be transplanted into a 21st century home, he or she would have little trouble learning to master an X-box game or attending college. The implications of this view is that the estimated 200,00-year time span between the emergence of Homo sapiens and the 21st century did not create any significant differences in intelligence or behavior. By contrast, racial differences emerged during relatively miniscule periods of time when populations were separated geographically. This implies that if there was no real difference between the first H. Sapiens and modern man, there cannot be any real difference between racial groups. Shea goes still further and points to the evidence that there is no significant difference in the sophistication of tool making between H. sapiens, Homo habilis, and Homo erectus. This observation implies that the intellectual and behavioral sophistication between different hominid species may be insignificant, which makes racial differences seem laughable by comparison.

In response to Shea's statement that race is a discredited scientific principle, Malcom Johnson (2011) wrote a letter to the American Scientist editors and argued that race is a valuable concept that has advanced medical research into individualized medicine and mechanisms of disease susceptibility. To support his contention, Johnson pointed out that medical research has revealed that disease prevalence and drug interactions can be divided along racial lines.

Shea (Johnson, 2011) responded by stating that the concept of race is primarily a social construction, which probably arose when sea travel to other continents became commonplace about 500 years ago. According to Shea, race distinctions represent genetic differences that arose during periods of geographic reproductive isolation, not intellectual and behavioral adaptations. In addition, Shea suggested that efforts to define disease and drug susceptibility along racial lines is a waste of time, because it shifts the focus and research funding away from discovering what causes diseases in the first place.

Becoming Ethnic

Shea's (2011) argument that race plays no useful role in society rings true. In an increasingly multicultural society, the concept of racial purity is not only anti-social, but obviously ridiculous and without merit. A viable alternative may be the fostering of cultural and ethnic identities as a protection against race-based discrimination that still seems to flourish in some corners of American society.

However, there are signs that the situation is improving. For example, a sitting president with an African-American identity was recently reelected to a second term. In addition, a recent study examined the utility of cultural identity capital in the workplace and revealed that workers with an outward appearance that assigned them to a racial or ethnic group tended to exploit this identity to their professional advantage (Ho and Bauder, 2012). Physical appearance, or the corporeal manifestation of race, is one form of identity capital these workers use to their advantage in social situations at work. The ethnic appearance of a client, supervisor, or coworker is also used by workers in a manner that allows them to interact socially in a culturally-sensitive manner.

When it comes to conferring a racial identity to a person, society seems to play the dominant role. Most people no longer believe that racial awareness is something people are born with, but a trait that is conferred by society and the childhood environment. Families can also play an important role, but this may be primarily a protective response. When a sample of Latino adolescents from several Midwestern high schools were interviewed, what researchers found was that ethnicity was reinforced by family social interactions independent of appearance (Gonzales-Backen and Umana-Taylor, 2011). The authors of this study interpreted their findings as evidence that parents with a strong ethnic identity will in turn instill a strong ethnic identity in their children, regardless of how 'ethnic' the child appears. The corporeal manifestation of race therefore plays a minor or insignificant role in how Latino families raise their children.

Conclusions

The above studies reveal that society has historically provided a strong negative interpretation of racial appearance with sometimes appalling consequences. For example, the extreme paradox between the government's attempts to penalize hate crime, while at the same time preferentially incarcerating a large percentage of the African-American population, reveals how dominant society can be in controlling the fate of individuals based on nothing more than their appearance. The corporeal manifestation of race within a race-based society can therefore determine an individual's mental and physical health, life expectancy, and socioeconomic status. However, within many Latino families the corporeal manifestation of race does not influence whether parents choose to define their children as ethnic or not. Racialized individuals can therefore find sanctuary within their families and immigrant communities.

If only more Americans paid attention to the views of anthropologists like John Shea, the concept of race could be dispensed with. If race is nothing more than the sum of a few genetic differences arising from periodic reproductive isolation, then any differences are merely superficial. Such a view would solve a lot of problems.