Health disparities by race, gender, and socio-economic status

First published in 2010, Janet R. Grochowski’s article Social Determinants and Family Health* outlines the various ways in which factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, and socio-economic status, among many other factors, affect both physical and mental health. It is very apparent that each of these things alone, as well as in combination with one another, can have significant affects on health, quality of life, and life expectancy.

While there are many different facets to these issues and lots of different health problems to be addressed, one that really interested me was varied levels of access to recreation. Grochowski’s case study begins with brief profiles of four people. All of them work for the same company, and yet each experiences a very different level of health. She briefly mentions that the most affluent has the most access to recreation; this access is based both in economic terms, but also in geographic location.

As mentioned in a recent post on Everyday Feminism, outdoor recreation isn’t accessed by different groups of people in equal ways. The title of the post suggests that the main barrier is financial — it costs money to have the “right” gear or to even access areas where outdoor recreation is possible. However, it also makes it very clear that outdoor recreation is also stratified based on race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation.

For example, communities of color are far less likely to be located near parks or other natural recreation areas. As spoofed in a classic Funny or Die video, people of color don’t access hiking trails or areas like national parks at the same rates that whites do. In addition to access, recreational activities are often learned at a young age. When people of color or women (of any race) don’t have family members who do these activities, and they also don’t see themselves reflected in representations of these activities through any type of media, they are less likely to pick them up.

Luckily, there are some movements trying to change this, such as the social media campaigns #brownpeoplecamping (also curated on Instagram as @brownpeoplecamping) or #melaninbasecamp (also @melaninbasecamp). The Everyday Feminism post also mentions some groups working to provide recreational access to people of color, members of the GLBTQ community, and more. Those that are careful to include children and families, such as Latino Outdoors, provide a multi-generational approach to disparities that are otherwise likely to increase over time.

A public post from the @LatinoOutdoors Instagram account – April 27, 2016.

 

The solutions to some of these health disparities are undoubtedly complex, but there seems to be a lot of room in the library and information science world to help get people started. Regarding recreational access, libraries could consider lending fitness and activity gear that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive to people. They might also create programs about health and fitness in ways that demonstrate how it can be accessible to people from many different backgrounds.

To reach back to the other issues Grochowski addresses, libraries might consider the types of health resources they acquire, such as databases, journals, and books, and how they display or promote those materials. LAMs could all find ways to participate in local health campaigns or in national periods of recognition about mental health or other health issues in order to help de-stigmatize these experiences. Libraries could consider partnering with local clinics in order to offer flu shots or educational programming about prenatal health, free local health screenings, and much more. Each of these would address an issue that Grochowski lays out as being disproportionate among women and people of color. (Her list includes infant mortality, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancers, HIV/AIDs, immunizations, and mental illness, as well as the compounding factor that many of these things tend to be stigmatized and therefore harder to address.)

While the specific actions taken might vary based on the community an institution is in and the population it serves or strives to serve, there seems to be a lot of room for LAMs to help close the gap in some of these health disparities.

 

*Grochowski, J. R. (2010). Social determinants and family health. In S. J. Ferguson (Ed., 2016), Race, gender, sexuality, and social class: Dimensions of inequality and identity (2nd ed., pp. 377-385). Los Angeles: CA, Sage.

Children, racism, and the myth of innocence

In a 1996 field study, sociologists Debra Van Ausdale and Joe R. Feagin[i] observed a preschool of three- to five-year-old children for 11 months in order to challenge the popular notion that children this young have not developed the cognitive understanding of race and ethnicity that will come to them in adulthood. Performing a field study rather than isolated experiments resulted in the authors’ discovery that these children did in fact have awareness of and various uses for racial and ethnic physical markers as well as understanding of how both physical and abstract aspects of race and ethnicity informed their identities. While the way the children discussed or used race and ethnicity did not always conform to the ways adults might do so, that did not mean there was a lack of awareness on the children’s part.

The previous research bias described by the authors in explaining why they approached the study in this way reflects a popular phenomenon I’m noticing 21 years after it was published. While white allyship seems to have started, finally, to reject the idea of color-blindness because it is counterproductive to the dismantling of systemic racism, many people still want to cling to the notion of a child’s innocence.

Anecdotally, the same people I might see lambasting the notion of colorblindness will also enthusiastically share this Facebook post about a young white boy who wanted his hair buzzed so that he and his friend, a black boy, could trick their teacher. The post, which garnered over 225,000 Facebook reactions, blog posts around the world, a segment on NBC Nightly News, and a TV appearance for the boys on the Steve Harvey Show, ends with the following observation from the white boy’s mother:  “If this isn’t proof that hate and prejudice is something that is taught [sic] I don’t know what is. The only difference Jax sees in the two of them is their hair.”

Photo from Facebook page of Lydia Stith Rosebush, linked above

 

This sentiment and the sometimes saccharine editorializing that happened via websites like Buzzfeed and Mashable is nice. It’s warm and fuzzy. But it’s also not realistic, as evidenced by studies like Van Ausdale’s and Feagin’s as well as the many studies cited in a recent Medium post by Andrew Grant-Thomas titled Your 5-year-old is already racially biased. Here’s what you can do about it. As Grant-Thomas notes both here and in the wider work of EmbraceRace, of which he is a co-founder, children are not clean slates of innocence that racism can eventually tarnish. They live in the same system that we do, constructed in the same invisible but constant regulation by whiteness that Todd Honma and many others have described. The question is not one of keeping children away from racism, but rather of actively engaging them in learning how to navigate, and eventually challenge, an inherently racist world.

Perhaps the more representative viral story, then, is that of the young black boy who in 2009 asked a relatively new President Obama about his haircut because it looked so much like his own. A picture of the moment circulated widely throughout the Obama presidency, and both the family and former First Lady Michelle Obama acknowledged the role of race even in such a young boy’s life:  https://youtu.be/qKNsZOYFoy4?t=97.

This is just one of many concepts that information professionals must rethink in order to more effectively perform their respective roles. The implications for a children’s or school librarian may be clearest here: they might choose to take Grant-Thomas’s suggestions, some of which have direct ties to the media children are presented with or encouraged to consume. However, many of his suggestions are also good practice for allyship at any age.

In order to lead children in critical and constructive thought about race (or gender, sexuality, or other modes of marginalization), we have to first do the work ourselves. And because we have a blind spot for children’s lack of innocence, a lot of this learning still needs to be encouraged among our young adults, college students, and adult patrons as well. As professionals, the decided lack of innocence among children regarding race can also be a reminder that systemic racism is prevalent, and we who hold the privileges that render whiteness invisible to us need to go looking for it in order to dismantle it.

 

[i] Van Ausdale, D., & Feagin, J. R. (1996). The Critical case of very young children. In S. J. Ferguson (Ed.), Race, gender, sexuality, and social class: Dimensions of inequality and identity (2^nd ed., pp. 194-202). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.