WEBVTT

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In 2019 Milwaukee County Department of Health and Human Services

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became the first locality to declare racism a Public Health crisis.

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Since then, over 200 state and local officials

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have also declared racism as a Public Health crisis.

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But what is racism? And what does it have to do with health?

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Welcome to Course 4.

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In this course we will delve into two major root causes of health inequity,

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racism and white supremacy.

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Today racism is a widely used term.

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Dr Camara Jones defines it as a system of structuring opportunity

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and assigning value based on how someone looks. Which is what we call race.

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This system unfairly disadvantages some individuals and communities.

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Unfairly advantages other individuals and communities,

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and saps the strength of the whole society through the waste of human resources.

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As a system of value, racism in the United States

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has created a hierarchy that primarily advantages white people

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and disadvantages everyone else.

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As European explorers of the 17th and 18th centuries encountered more people,

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scientists of the Enlightenment period sought to classify

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all human beings into distinct categories they came to call races.

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The scientists argued that different races not only looked different,

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but were biologically different, and had their own unique characteristics.

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But in truth these classifications had no scientific bases.

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Today we know that there is actually more biological variation

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within races, than across them.

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In fact, our differences have far more to do with

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culture and environment than biology.

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Because ideas about race were still evolving during the establishment of the United States,

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they are deeply woven into our social fabric.

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Race as a concept was used to justify the inhumane treatment

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of the Indigenous people and enslaved African peoples.

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European settlers argued that both groups were of an inferior race,

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and therefore not worthy of citizenship or rights.

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The US Census is a great way to understand how race

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and race relations have evolved here over time.

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The very first US Census in 1790 took account of race specifically

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to limit the amount of people who could vote, to white men only.

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That first census identified racial categories as:

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white males, white females, and a number of other free,

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meaning not white, persons and slaves.

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In 1890 categories like mulatto and quadroon were added

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at the behest of Race scientists

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to further prove theories about racial difference

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that couldn't be confirmed.

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By the 1930 Census those categories were dropped.

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In another instance Mexican became a racial category on the US Census in 1930,

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but before then Mexicans were racialized as White.

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Up until the 1920s, Indian-Americans were considered by racial theorists

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as Aryan or Caucasian. So were classified as White.

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The 1920 Census is the first time that the term Hindu, for Indian-Americans,

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was included as a racial classification on the Census.

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In the 1923 Thind versus United States case however

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the Supreme Court ruled that Bhagat Singh Thind,

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who'd come to the US for higher education,

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was not eligible for citizenship.

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This led to the denaturalization of over 50 Indian-Americans,

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who were previously granted citizenship as free White persons.

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In each of these instances we see many of these changes in racial categories

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prompted by concerns around immigration and citizenship.

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Who is allowed to be a US citizen?

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But more importantly what rights are they entitled to?

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We can see from these examples that what began as false scientific beliefs,

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became codified into law, culture and society.

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Racism is now a key element in our everyday lives, our interactions,

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the stories we tell or don't tell and the decisions that we make.

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Structural racism refers to the interconnected systems in society

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that work to normalize and legitimize racial advantages and disadvantages.

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White supremacy is a system that ensured those advantages

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are concentrated among people who are White.

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We see how each of these systems is embedded in our Health Care system,

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with many people of color lacking access to quality care,

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mistreated by physicians or misdiagnosed.

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We see how each of these systems is embedded in our legal system.

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With people of color frequently targeted for arrest, falsely accused of crimes,

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and given stronger sentences than white people for the same crime.

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And we see each of these systems embedded in how we treat people

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from different cultural backgrounds as if they don't belong.

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Or how we characterize White immigrants versus immigrants of color.

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All of this has detrimental impacts on public health.

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With less access to resources and political power,

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many people of color cannot get what they need to optimize their health.

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And in the face of frequent racial discrimination,

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many people of color experience constant stress.

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Making it difficult to not think about racism.

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Which is why we in public health need to be thinking about it too.

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Racism informs many of the decisions we make,

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whether we recognize it or not.

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The only way we can address racism, is by addressing it head on

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and centering the voices and experiences of people of color

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that have been most disadvantaged by this root cause.

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We'll explore some specific strategies in this course

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and we'll hear from some experts in the field about what we need to do

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and how we can get there.

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But the most important thing is, that we start.

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Let's jump in