SDI Productions/Getty Images
SDI Productions/Getty Images
Scientists know that black people are at higher risk for health problems such as heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease than white people. A growing body of research shows that racism in health care and everyday life contributes to long-standing health disparities in Black communities.
Some researchers now wonder if part of the explanation may include how racism physically changes the brain, both in individual interactions and in systems as a whole.
“It could be a behavior, like a woman clutching her purse while a black man walks next to her. Or it could be a verbal behavior, like someone saying, 'You know what? I never thought that would be so obvious,'' says Negar Fani, a clinical neuroscientist at Emory University who studies people experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Fani recently collaborated with Nate Harnett, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, to study how the brain responds to traumatic events and extreme stress, including those related to racism. I researched what to do.
Personal insight into systemic problems
So how do we measure the impact of zoomed-out societal-scale problems on individuals?
Harnett is the first to admit it's not the simplest job.
“It's very difficult to look specifically at the red line with neuroimaging,” Harnett points out.
But he can do it indirectly.
for example, Harnett has used inequality in neighborhood resources as a way to track or measure structural racism.
“We are looking at these types of proxy measures of the consequences of structural racism, correlating them with both brain and behavioral responses to stress and trauma, and how they interact with various mental disorders such as PTSD. “We can see if it's related to that,” Harnett said.
In another study, Harnett and Fani examined the correlation between racial discrimination and threat responses in black women who had experienced trauma. Fani says patients who experience PTSD tend to be more alert, hyperarousal, and easily startled. Their bodies are constantly in a state of fight or flight, Fani said, even when they're in a safe situation.
But Fani says the opposite effect is seen in patients who have also experienced racism. In other words, activation of areas associated with emotional regulation increases.
In some ways, Fani says, this activation may be adaptive. For example, someone may experience microaggressions or discrimination at work and need to adjust their emotional responses to move past the moment. But if people have to use this strategy for long periods of time, Fani and Harnett think it could contribute to the deterioration seen in other areas of the brain.
“There's no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to the brain,” Harnett says. “Energy has to come from somewhere, and what we think ultimately happens is that energy that was reserved for other processes is taken away.”
Harnett said some people call this process “weathering,” in which stress from repeated exposure to traumatic experiences erodes parts of the brain.
“Over time, it can lead to other health problems such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes,” he says.
Social issues reflected in publishing
Fani and Harnett said they faced challenges in presenting their research that may reflect the medical field's reluctance to acknowledge health disparities in minority communities.
As part of her research, Fani said she has been conducting trauma inventories for decades, asking patients to detail instances of physical or psychological harm. When she used these inventories in her paper, she was “never criticized for their content.” But she says that when she tried to publish her paper using the Racism Inventory, she noticed skepticism and double standards.
“There are other standards that we adhere to,” she says. “For example, 'How do we know that people have actually experienced racism? How do we know that they're not just people who are sensitive to disrespect?'
Both she and Harnett say they've seen improvements in their fields, but their research will give other institutions more insight into how racism can change the brain. I hope we can move towards better understanding.
“The medical community often doesn't recognize racism as a potentially harmful stressor,” Fani says. “The hope is that this kind of brain research can lend some legitimacy to racism as a powerful social stressor that has very clear and pronounced effects on the brain.”
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Today's episode was produced by Rachel Carlson. Edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Rebecca also checked the facts with Rachel. Maggie Luther was an audio engineer.
