Opinion: The Overlooked Reason Reparations Make Sense In California And Elsewhere

While Californians publicly support the idea of ​​reparations for Black Americans, the State Reparations Task Force has until July 1 to make its recommendations. The initiative builds on smaller efforts like my hometown of Evanston, Illinois, which in 2021 became the first city in the United States to engage in limited financial compensation for the city's slavery and discriminatory housing policies.

Across the country, much of the reparations talk revolves around the financial burden of slavery and the apartheid government's subsequent policies. As a direct result of these factors, the average wealth of white households today is about eight times that of black households in the United States.

This racial disparity in wealth alone is a strong argument for compensation. But it boils down to an equally serious and often lesser-known health gap: Black people in the United States live fewer years, on average, than white people. And like the wealth gap, racism is to blame.

I am an anthropologist and epidemiologist who studies health inequalities, and last year I began testifying before the California Compensation Task Force, citing a stark statistic compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics: Black women in the United States have an expectation of life three years shorter than their white counterparts. . For men, the difference is less than five years.

This breed health gap is largely related to stress-related illnesses such as heart attack and stroke and is not related to genetic differences. In fact, ethnic groups don't exactly match our genes. Rather, they are flexible categories that society creates in response to cultural norms defined and maintained by those in power to maintain social control.

An example in the United States is the arbitrary "One Drop System" of the Jim Crow era, which aimed to preserve the purity of the white race in some former slave states. It ruled that Americans could only be considered white if they had no evidence of intermarriage with non-European ancestry. This means that an American can have a majority of European ancestry and still be considered black, and this is still true today.

The study of human genetic diversity teaches us that humans evolved in Africa and then migrated to other continents relatively recently. As a result, virtually all human populations outside Africa, including Europeans and Asians, are a slightly modified subset of the native African genetic diversity of the human species. While we may differ in superficial traits such as skin color or hair type, all humans share most of the same genes.

Genetics do not explain the huge gap in racial health in America. But there is the experience of black life in America. Decades of public health research, in particular, show that racism is a major factor. Racism makes daily interactions more stressful and affects many other factors that influence disease, including health care quality and access, educational opportunities, and neighborhood characteristics such as air quality, exposure to industrial pollutants and access to healthy food.

Or consider the prevalence of cardiovascular disease among black Americans, which contributes more to the black-white mortality gap than any other cause of death. A 2015 review in the American Journal of Epidemiology looking at related studies found "almost no" evidence that genes explain these differences. Instead, studies attribute this gap to social inequality. For example, an analysis of the 2020 Jackson Heart Study, which tracked the health of thousands over the age of 25, found that life-course inequality significantly increased the likelihood of heart disease among black participants. . A separate 2021 study found that black participants had higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which affects conditions like blood pressure and heart disease, on days they reported experiencing racial discrimination.

The health gap widens when Black babies are born in the United States. Black Americans are more likely to have low birth weight, which can lead to health problems in childhood, high blood pressure, stroke and heart disease later in life. A landmark 1997 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the weight of African immigrants in Illinois was close to that of white mothers, but subsequent studies showed that after a generation or two in the United States, society began to perceive it likewise. . The low birth weight is similar to that of African Americans whose families have lived here for generations.

The low birth weight of these mothers has nothing to do with genetics, it has everything to do with the growing oppression of black people in America.

While my testimony to the California Reparations Task Force began with dismal statistics, it ended on a hopeful note: Because the racial health gap isn't genetic, we can close it. Health improves when we reduce stress and when families have access to the right resources. In one study in the Chicago area, upward economic mobility reduced the likelihood that black mothers would give birth to a child young for their gestational age. Initial studies of the pilot programs ensure a minimum income to improve the mental health of affected communities, including depression.

Economists can calculate the wealth disparity between black and white families created by centuries of racial segregation in the United States. It is difficult to quantify the stark health inequalities caused by systemic racism, but this is another historic injustice that deserves to be corrected. The material resources provided through reimbursement programs will also help close the health gap. Lost years of black life matters.

Christopher Kozawa is a professor of anthropology and research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies at Northwestern University and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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