Racism in the Structure of Everyday Worlds: A Cultural-Psychological Perspective.

- Purpose: In this review, they highlight examples of historically derived ideas and cultural
patterns that maintain present-day racial inequalities. This discuss three key insights on the
psychology of racism derived from utilizing a cultural-psychology framework. First, one can find
racism embedded in our everyday worlds. Second, through our preferences and selections, we
maintain racialized contexts in everyday action. Third, they inhabit cultural worlds that, in turn,
promote racialized ways of seeing, being in, and acting in the world. This perspective directs
attempts at intervention away from individual tendencies and instead focuses on changing the
structures of mind in context that reflect and reproduce racial domination.

Racism as a Determinant of Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

- Purpose: This meta-analysis reviewed the literature focusing on the relationship between
reported racism and mental and physical health outcomes. Ethnicity significantly moderated the
effect of racism on negative mental health and physical health: the association between racism
and negative mental health was significantly stronger for Asian American and Latino(a) American
participants compared with African American participants, and the association between racism
and physical health was significantly stronger for Latino(a) American participants compared with
African American participants.

What is Racism?
- Conventional understandings of racism typically locate the driving force in the attitudes, beliefs,
and behaviors of biased and prejudiced individuals. Individualist ideologies that prevail in
Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and Democratic (WEIRD; Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan,
2010) settings inform both laypersons’ (particularly White Americans in this case) and
psychological science’s conception of racism as individual-level phenomena (e.g., Adams, Edkins,
Lacka, Pickett, & Cheryan, 2008; Sommers & Norton, 2006).
- The term racism is often used synonymously with prejudice (biased feelings or affect),
stereotyping (biased thoughts and beliefs, flawed generalizations), discrimination (differential
treatment or the absence of equal treatment), and bigotry (intolerance or hatred). This practice
implicitly conceptualizes racism as a set of basic social-psychological processes underlying the
psychologies of individuals (i.e., stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination) merely applied to
the context of race.
- Summary, Racism can be defined as organized systems within societies that cause avoidable and
unfair inequalities in power, resources, capacities and opportunities across racial or ethnic
groups. Racism can manifest through beliefs, stereotypes, prejudices or discrimination. This
encompasses everything from open threats and insults to phenomena deeply embedded in
social systems and structures [1]. Racism can occur at multiple levels, including: internalized (the
incorporation of racist attitudes, beliefs or ideologies into one’s worldview), interpersonal
(interactions between individuals) and systemic (for example, the racist control of and access to
labor, material and symbolic resources within a society). Racism persists as a cause of exclusion,
conflict and disadvantage on a global scale, and existing data suggests racism is increasing in
many national contexts.

Research question:
Racism in the Structure of Everyday Worlds: A Cultural-Psychological Perspective.
 - Where do the psychological consequences and precursors of racism originate? Though
sometimes specified, the context of race is not necessarily treated as distinctive in social-
psychological research; instead, the psychological consequences and antecedents for racism
are typically extrapolated from minority (vs. majority), low-status (vs. high status),
subordinate (vs. dominant), and out-group (vs. in-group) research paradigms. This approach
can obscure the particular role that race, embedded in historical and cultural contexts, has
played in organizing which persons and identities recurrently compose marginalized and
dominant groups.
- How does the world view racism? Many White Americans believe that the average Black
American fares about the same or better than most White Americans (Morin, 2001, Norton
& Sommers, 2011). White Americans also tend to see less racism in contemporary U.S.
society than do people from many racial minority groups…
- How should the world view racism? Taken together, the empirical evidence suggests that
measuring racism only as overt individual bias may systematically understate the ongoing
significance of racism. A cultural-psychology approach adds to this discussion by considering
racism as a set of ideas, practices, and materials embedded in the structure of everyday
cultural worlds.
- How important is a psycho-cultural approach to understanding the topic of racism? Taking a
cultural-psychology approach has important implications for understanding the topic of
racism beyond individual bias. The power undergirding racism is that although race, too, is
manufactured, there is constant cultural reinforcement and selection of “race” as a
meaningful construct in American society. Outside of the laboratory, there are many
historical and contemporary cues conferring advantages and disadvantages to various racial
groups.

Racism as a Determinant of Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

- How can Racism impact health? Racism can impact health via several recognized pathways:
(1) reduced access to employment, housing and education and/or increased exposure to risk
factors (e.g., avoidable contact with police); (2) adverse cognitive/emotional processes and
associated psychopathology; (3) allostatic load and concomitant patho-physiological
processes; (4) diminished participation in healthy behaviors (e.g., sleep and exercise) and/or
increased engagement in unhealthy behaviors (e.g., alcohol consumption) either directly as
stress coping, or indirectly, via reduced self-regulation; and (5) physical injury as a result of
racially-motivated violence.
- Which health aspect is more related to racism, mental health or physical health?
Consistently related to poor mental health, but less consistently related to poor physical
health.
- What is the role of moderators in racism? Many scholars have noted the important role that
moderators may play in understanding the differential health-related outcomes among
individuals experiencing racism and associated stress. Clark et al. hypothesized that
moderators may first influence perceiving the environmental stimulus as a type of racism,
and, second, impact processes via which racism affects the individual.