Black Lives Matter movement reveals that racism still exists globally, and it is more dominant in the US. The recent killing of George Floyd showed that racism is a hierarchical process that has become a pandemic. The perception that blacks have a likelihood to commit crimes than whites forms the basis for racism. Racism in countries with a high percentage of the white population is deeply embedded in the residents’ minds. While it is virtually challenging to avoid the situation, rampant racism cases are life-threatening to blacks, indigenous, and people of color. Racism refers to the institution of prejudice against other people based on a particular racial or ethnic group membership. However, Roberts, a Stanford psychologist, argues that this definition is wrong. It is an organized system dependent on racial groups ranking and categorization into social hierarchies. Differential values, power, resources, and opportunities are apportioned to ethnic groups, disadvantaging minority groups, and favoring the dominant populations. Thus, racism is a system of benefits accorded to individuals based on their race.
The police unit is one of the areas that depict the prevalent racism situation in the US. The recent police brutality case against George Floyd, a black man, shows a disparity in treatment between blacks and whites. While one is white, being booked for minor crimes by the police is not a life-threatening incidence. Moreover, there are fewer interactions with the police if a white person is professional and affluent as they do not come to the whites’ doorsteps. However, if one is colored, it is a different case. The people of color live in their own world where the police can appear on their doorstep any day, and being booked for minor cases is a stress source for them.
Racism has various negative impacts on the recipients. First, it is said to influence the health of the person facing discrimination both directly and indirectly. The indirect aspects include disparities in societal resource access and health facilities based on race or ethnicity. Such disparities are evident through income inequalities, education level, employment levels, and living standards between BIPOC individuals and whites. It exposes BIPOC persons to more risks and less protective factors. At a personal level, racisms affect the individual’s physical, psychological, and physiological health. Racism is a stress pathway that impacts negatively on the mental and physical health of an individual. Mental illnesses could be depression and anxiety, while physical could be obesity. Further, racism influences healthcare through institutions and personal health providers that cause an ethnic disparity in accessing quality healthcare. For instance, ethnic differentials in socioeconomic status lead to care access disparity indirectly. On the other hand, individual health provider race bias can impact quality and healthcare interaction outcomes. Therefore, discrimination impacts not only a person’s mental health but also their physical and physiological one.
Another impact of racism is social identity, which refers to an individual’s sense of belonging to a certain group. The group could be a family, a social class, or an ethnic group that significantly influences a person’s self-esteem and pride. Groups are defined by the physical, mental, and social traits of the individuals they contain. Identity formation is a critical developmental activity that depends on the environment within which a person is brought up. It is perceived that people of color to be less harmless and older than whites. They are also perceived to be more threatening than whites, increasing the chances of adolescents aged 13-17 being discriminated against. To adolescents, discrimination from a dominant class indicates rejection and inferiority, making them strongly identify themselves with their race. The dimension developed significantly influences the opinion attached to the discrimination they are subjected to. Adolescents are in the process of exploring and defining their racial groups. Individuals exploring their identities and those who attach importance of their race belonging to overall self-esteem are adversely impacted by discrimination than their counterparts. Individuals who are more accommodative concerning their racial definition and belonging are less adversely affected.
Last, racial bias causes low self-esteem. A study on the “effect of discrimination and depressive symptoms among black American men: moderated-mediation effects of ethnicity and self-esteem” found that self-esteem plays a mediator role between daily discrimination and depression for black-American men but not for afro-Caribbean men. They also identified that routine discrimination was associated significantly with self-esteem and depressive symptoms in the two men groups studied. Discrimination takes a toll on an individual’s feeling of worthiness and confidence, lowering their self-esteem. They feel out of place in a particular society, which reduces their productivity in the overall life.
Among the factors behind discrimination are the categories, which organize individuals into distinct groups. The division creates environmental grounds for discrimination based on racial groups. The second factor is factions that trigger in-group solidarity and intergroup rivalry. The factor makes discrimination incidences rampant and makes racists unremorseful. The last reason is segregation that hardens racist beliefs, preferences, and perceptions. It gives more meaning to racial discrimination with the belief that they deserve the treatment. The three factors make the whites gang together against the people of color. They are the minority and not native residents making the whites feel entitled to discriminate against them concerning resources and privileges.