What makes you sick? For some people, it’s their race.
Last week, newspapers carried an Associate Press article on race and health. The New York Times, where all the news that’s fit to print appears, published three paragraphs.
The AP article reported on the latest issue of the journal Health Affairs which is devoted to racial disparities in health. The Times version carried only a report on a study by Dr. David Satcher, the African-American who served as Bill Clinton’s Surgeon General.
The Satcher study found that although death rates for both blacks and whites improved between 1960 and 2000, the difference between death rates remained stubbornly the same: African-Americans died at a rate 40% greater than whites.
Below the surface of this statistic lies a strange balance. The death rate for black women compared to white women improved, but that for black men got worse.
There was cold comfort in the report for African-Americans who manage to reach 85 who have a lower death rate than whites 85 and older.
Other studies in the Health Affairs special issue didn’t make it into the news: the social determinants of health, the effect of race and class, how African-Americans systematically receive a lesser quality of medical care than whites, how community activism improves people’s health, the success of community health care centers.
Your health is determined by how your unique biology is affected by your environment: your exposure to pollutants where you live and work, your struggle to make ends meet, your access to medical care.
Your race is not about your biology. It is about how other people classify you and treat you. So in addition to all those other environmental effects, how you get classified affects your health. You’ll get a different quality of neighborhood and work environment, a different quality of job opportunity, a different quality of medical care.
Knowing about your unique biology will help you protect and maintain your health. And so will knowing that health care is available when you need it, that you can earn a living wage, that it’s safe where you live and work.
