Darrick Hamilton definitely is asking the right questions. And he might have the right answers. But I suspect not. Yes, there is something very deep in America's culture that discourages public responsibility for the conditions of poor and especially poor black Americans, to the country's shame. Adam Smith wrote in 1776 that: "no society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity... that they who feed, clothe, and lodge... the people, should... be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged..." We today can replace his "greater part" with "substantial part", and it is still true. But I suspect that the health gaps between high-status, high-income, and high-wealth African Americans and their white peers have other origins—not that I know what those other origins are, mind you: Darrick Hamilton: Post-racial rhetoric, racial health disparities, and health disparity consequences of stigma, stress, and racism: "High achieving black Americans, as measured by education, still exhibit large health disparities...
...Post-racial, politics of personal responsibility and “neoliberal paternalism” troupes discourage a public responsibility for the conditions of the poor and black Americans, and, instead, encourage punitive measures to “manage…surplus populations” of the poor and black Americans. We introduce an alternative frame and integrate it with John Henryism as a link to better understand the paradox above–the added efforts and stigma imposed upon high achieving blacks that threaten the relative position of the dominant white group translates in deleterious health for high achieving blacks. Ultimately, we explore how the potential physical and psychological costs of stigma and, ironically, exerting individual agency, which in the context of racist or stigmatized environment, may explain the limited role of education and income as protective health factors for blacks relative to whites...
#shouldread
#racism
