Dressler W W
Department of Behavioral and Community Medicine, University of Alabama School of Medicine, Tuscaloosa 35487-0326, USA.
Ethn Dis. 1996 Winter-Spring;6(1-2):176-89.
It has been suggested that racism may account in part for health inequalities between African Americans and other ethnic groups in the United States. While there is a strong plausibility to this suggestion, specifying the causal pathways through which enduring patterns of prejudice and discrimination affect pathophysiologic processes has proven difficult. The aim of this paper is to suggest just such a specification of this effect, building on prior work locating this process in social interaction. It is argued that, in mundane social interaction, African-American ethnicity as a status attribute overrides the other social attributes through which individuals structure the social identities that mediate mundane social interaction. Three specific variables that influence social identity are examined: lifestyle incongruity, stressful life events, and identity accumulation. Using data collected in an African-American community in the rural South, it was found that these three variables are related to blood pressure in interaction with socioeconomic status. Additionally, each of the three variables is related to individuals' perceptions of racism in mundane interactions. This pattern of results suggests that the attribution of lower social status to African-American ethnicity within the color-conscious society of the U.S., and the subsequent effect of this attribution on social interaction, in part account for observed health inequalities.
有人认为，种族主义可能部分解释了美国非裔美国人和其他族裔群体之间的健康不平等现象。虽然这一观点很有合理性，但要明确持久的偏见和歧视模式影响病理生理过程的因果途径却很困难。本文的目的是在先前将这一过程定位在社会互动中的工作基础上，提出对这种影响的具体说明。本文认为，在日常社会互动中，非裔美国人的种族作为一种身份属性，会凌驾于其他社会属性之上，而个体正是通过这些社会属性构建起介导日常社会互动的社会身份。本文考察了影响社会身份的三个具体变量：生活方式不一致、压力性生活事件和身份积累。利用在美国南部农村一个非裔美国人社区收集的数据，研究发现这三个变量与血压之间的关系会因社会经济地位而相互作用。此外，这三个变量中的每一个都与个体在日常互动中对种族主义的认知有关。这种结果模式表明，在美国这个注重肤色的社会中，将较低的社会地位归因于非裔美国人的种族，以及这种归因随后对社会互动产生的影响，在一定程度上解释了所观察到的健康不平等现象。
