Systemic+Racism+and+its+Effects+on+The+Deaths+of+Black+People

Systemic racism is like a plague that has threatened the citizens of the United States since the introduction of slavery in the 17th Century. It has led to the deaths of thousands of people, specifically black people, through racially motivated homicides and extreme poverty, which has led to inadequate living conditions, crime and lack of access to proper healthcare.
 * Systemic Racism **

When most people think of blacks dying at that hands of racism, it’s usually associated with a homicide. This notion is even carried into mainstream activism that is meant to combat racism such as Black Lives Matter. However, people overlook that systemic racism also kills blacks through other means as well.

1. Racially Motivated Homicides
The most obvious cause of death for blacks from racism involves racially motivated homicides. Racially motivated homicides are going to be referred as murders that are carried out against blacks solely due to perception, discrimination and bias based on skin color.

Historically, lynching was perhaps the most prevalent and well known forms of these racially motivated homicides. Lynch mobs would hunt down blacks who they deemed were dangerous criminals, with little to no evidence or logic. Then they would gather in large groups of hundreds of attendants who would hang black men, women and even children on trees with dirty nooses as they took turns burning and mutilating the bodies. The hanging, completely mutilated corpses were also left publicly displayed for weeks with signs in order to humiliate and intimidate blacks and establish white dominance. In some instances, people would even return to the corpses and desecrate them even more. The bodies became so decayed and battered that they became unrecognizable. These acts were protected by law under the Jim Crow Laws that gripped the American south after the Civil War. This led to very little police intervention in lynch mobs.



Lynching is often compared to the shooting deaths of unarmed black people in current times in the rhetoric of activist groups such as Black Lives Matter. There has been stagnant racial violence in America which has been reflected in the media coverage of the police murders and brutal beatings of unarmed blacks such as Emmitt Till, Rodney King, Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown and Tamir Rice. The cause of these shootings were often racial profiling which profiles young black men as criminals. The chilling fact is that often nobody was indicted in these murders. This opens up for speculation, distrust and critique of the fairness of our criminal justice system.



Even in the Charleston Church mass shooting carried out by Dylann Roof, he specifically mentions that he targeted the African Methodist church because he hated black people. Upon his arrest, Roof was armed but was given a bulletproof vest and even food before he was fully restrained.Unlike the other murderers, Dylann Roof was indicted and given the first death sentence for a hate crime in American history. Still, many people believe that due to the lack of justice in these shootings that it is reflective of America’s past with systemic racism, and the notion that there are people who don’t believe that black lives matter; hence the name of the multinational, social media movement.

2. Lack of Access to Proper Healthcare and Education due to Disproportional Poverty and Mass Incarceration
Aside from homicides against blacks, racial injustice also plays a role in public health concerns. Yeonjin’s research on how racial attitudes lead to higher mortality rates helps to explain this. Over a course of 9 years from 1993 to 2002, Yeonjin conducted a sample survey of several communities of blacks and whites in order to see how varying levels of racial discrimination is linked to higher mortality rates. The results of the research found that the more negative racial issues that each race harbored for each other, the higher the mortality rate was for both races. However, the mortality rate for blacks was almost 2x higher than that of whites due to several factors such as disproportional poverty and therefore lack of access to proper education, living conditions, and healthcare opportunities.

The majority of citizens living in poverty in America are disproportionately black, and thus have a lack of access to healthcare due to the inability to afford it. Additionally, blacks are disproportionately placed in prisons for long periods of time for non-violent offenses such as drug possession. As an effect of this, African Americans are usually unable to find employment and housing after being released because they are ineligible to apply for government assistance programs to help them transition from being incarcerated to being a part of society. . This furthers poverty in black communities which lead to even more crime, more deaths, more incarcerations and the cycle repeating itself over and over again.

3. Environmental Racism
The places where blacks are financially forced to live in are also bi-products of racism in the quality (or lack thereof) of the areas in which they inhabit. These are mainly areas of higher concentrations of pollution levels and hazardous wastes. Environmental racism is a topic that not too many scholars are reporting on despite the history it has with minority populations in America. The most recent and relevant example of this is the Flint Water crisis. Upon changing the water source of Flint, Michigan from the Great Lakes to the polluted Flint River in order to cut government costs, it led to the complete deterioration of the water pipes in people’s homes and hindered their access to clean water due to the high concentrations of toxic lead in the water. This had been going on for years and now the water is rendered completely useless.

Urban areas tend to have higher concentrations of blacks and minorities living there than whites. These areas also are more susceptible to hazardous health conditions that can lead to death such as air pollution, high concentrations of lead and other pollutants in water, and tobacco smoke.

Air pollution leads to higher asthma deaths and other respiratory diseases. It was found that although blacks smoke less than whites, the effects of tobacco are more lethal for blacks than whites. Also, black children are 4x more likely to have higher blood pressure and seek treatment for lead poisoning than for white children. This statistic directly correlates with areas such as Atlanta and Flint, which are places where the majority population is black and water toxicity and other environmental health concerns has been an issue.

Citation


 * Brundage, W. Fitzhugh. "The Ultimate Shame: Lynch-Law In Post-Civil War American South." Social Alternatives 25.1 (2006): 28-32. MasterFILE Elite. Web. 16 Feb. 2016


 * American Public Health Association. Impactofpoliceviolenceonpublichealth. 1998. Available at: http://www.apha.org/policies-and-advocacy/public-healthpolicy-statements/policy-database/ 2016/04/04/16/impact-of-policeviolence-on-public-health


 * García, Jennifer Jee-Lyn, and Mienah Zulfacar Sharif. "Black Lives Matter: A Commentary On Racism And Public Health." American Journal Of Public Health 105.8 (2015): e27-30 1p. CINAHL Plus with Full Text. Web. 11 Feb. 2016.e.


 * Olden, K., Ramos, R., & Freudenberg, N. (2009, December). To Reduce Urban Disparities in Health, Strengthen and Enforce Equitably Environmental and Consumer Laws. Journal of Urban Health. p. 819. doi:10.1007/s11524-009-9380-5.


 * Yeonjin, Lee, lyeonjin@sas.upenn.edu, et al. "Effects Of Racial Prejudice On The Health Of


 * Communities: A Multilevel Survival Analysis." American Journal Of Public Health 105.11 (2015): 2349-2355. Education Source. Web. 11 Feb. 2016.

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