Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine, 636 Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA, 02111, USA.
J Racial Ethn Health Disparities. 2024 Aug;11(4):2271-2283. doi: 10.1007/s40615-023-01695-2. Epub 2023 Jun 29.
Although structural racism is strongly related to racial health disparities, we are not aware of any composite, multidimensional measure of structural racism at the city level in the United States. However, many of the policies, programs, and institutions that create and maintain structural racism are located at the city level. To expand upon previous research, this paper uses a novel measure to measure structural racism at the city level for the non-Hispanic Black population.
We used confirmatory factor analysis to model the latent construct of structural racism for 776 U.S. cities. The model included six indicators across five dimensions: racial segregation, incarceration, educational attainment, employment, and economic status. We generated factor scores that weighted the indicators in order to produce the best model fit. The resulting factor scores represented the level of structural racism in each city. We demonstrated the utility of this measure by demonstrating its strong correlation with Black-White disparities in firearm homicide rates.
There were profound differences in the magnitude of structural racism across cities. There were also striking differences in the magnitude of the racial disparity in firearm homicide across cities. Structural racism was a significant predictor of the magnitude of these racial disparities in firearm homicide. Each one standard deviation increase in the structural racism factor score increased the firearm homicide rate ratio by a factor of approximately 1.2 (95% confidence interval, 1.1-1.3).
These new measures can be utilized by researchers to relate structural racism to racial health disparities at the city level.
尽管结构性种族主义与种族健康差距密切相关，但我们不知道在美国城市层面上有任何综合的、多维的结构性种族主义衡量标准。然而，许多造成和维持结构性种族主义的政策、计划和机构都位于城市层面。为了扩展先前的研究，本文使用一种新的方法来衡量非西班牙裔黑人人口的城市层面的结构性种族主义。
我们使用验证性因子分析来对 776 个美国城市的结构性种族主义潜在结构进行建模。该模型包括五个维度的六个指标：种族隔离、监禁、受教育程度、就业和经济地位。我们生成了加权指标的因子得分，以获得最佳模型拟合。由此产生的因子得分代表了每个城市的结构性种族主义水平。我们通过证明该指标与黑人和白人在枪支凶杀率方面的差异有很强的相关性，展示了该指标的实用性。
城市之间结构性种族主义的程度存在显著差异。城市之间枪支凶杀率的种族差异程度也存在显著差异。结构性种族主义是这些枪支凶杀率种族差异程度的一个重要预测因素。结构性种族主义因子得分每增加一个标准差，枪支凶杀率比就会增加约 1.2 倍（95%置信区间，1.1-1.3）。
这些新的衡量标准可以被研究人员用来将结构性种族主义与城市层面的种族健康差距联系起来。
