(Press-News.org) URBANA, Ill. – Black Americans experience racial discrimination as a chronic stressor that influences their quality of life. But it exists in conjunction with other social factors that may modify the impact in various ways. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign explores how discrimination, gender, and social class affect individual well-being and relationship quality for Black Americans.
“It’s well documented that discrimination negatively impacts individual quality of life, but research on how it affects relationships is mixed. Some studies find it has a negative effect, others that it has no effect, and some even find a positive effect, such as more partner support. We were interested in how intersecting dimensions of sexism and classism could provide more insights,” said lead author TeKisha Rice, now an assistant professor at Virginia Tech. Rice conducted the research as a doctoral student at the U. of I. Brian Ogolsky, professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at U. of I., is a co-author on the paper, which is published in the Journal of Family Psychology.
Rice and Ogolsky found that racial discrimination and financial strain were associated with lower levels of psychological well-being. However, the anticipated interaction between factors varied by gender.
“We found that among women who had higher levels of financial strain, racial discrimination predicted lower levels of quality of life, but this association did not show up for men in the study,” Rice said. “There is a gender dynamic in the way discrimination affects psychological and relational well-being. This aligns with other research indicating that Black women, in particular, may take on more of the emotional labor of their relationships.”
The researchers used data from the Survey of Midlife in the United States (MIDUS), a large-scale, longitudinal study that measures health and psychological well-being in individuals across the U.S. They included respondents who identified as Black or African American, and who were married or cohabitating. Participants ranged from 27 to 83 years old, with an average age of 53, and all were in heterosexual relationships.
The findings also speak to the potential resilience of Black individuals in the face of discrimination, the researchers said.
“One of the theories we use to understand the results is the Mundane Extreme Environmental Stress (MEES) model, which states that racial discrimination is mundane because it is common, but also extreme because of the negative impact that it can have on people's lives,” Rice noted. “As people get older, the way they respond to discrimination may be different. Perhaps they have gotten used to ignoring it, or they have effective coping mechanisms in place already.”
This can help explain the non-significant findings for Black men in this dataset, which had a large proportion of middle-aged respondents.
In addition, there are different types and levels of discrimination, Ogolsky added. “A single, major discriminatory event could influence well-being differently than low-level chronic discrimination. We need to think about these events with a fine-toothed comb, looking at both frequency and salience of discrimination.”
As the MEES theory indicates, Black Americans may come to expect discrimination as a part of life. But the chronic stress of financial strain might be felt in material ways that impact relationship experiences.
“For example, a couple may have to talk about bills and figure out how to ration expenses. It’s not that financial strain is more negative than discrimination, but it may be felt more directly on a day-to-day basis,” Ogolsky stated.
Future studies should explore the gender differences in how Black Americans are navigating or experiencing racial discrimination. For practitioners who work with couples, it’s important to be attentive to how each partner might be responding differently to discrimination and the ways it can generate potential distress, the researchers concluded.
The paper, “Discrimination, Gender, and Class: An Intersectional Investigation of Black Americans’ Personal and Relational Well-Being,” is published in the Journal of Family Psychology [DOI: 10.1037/fam0001173].
This research was completed as a part of the first author’s dissertation, funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (Grant No. DGE -1144245).
END
How discrimination, class, and gender intersect to affect Black Americans’ well-being
2024-02-22
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Compound vital for all life likely played a role in life’s origin
2024-02-22
Compound vital for all life likely played a role in life’s origin
A chemical compound essential to all living things has been synthesised in a lab in conditions that could have occurred on early Earth, suggesting it played a role at the outset of life, finds a new study led by UCL researchers.
The compound, pantetheine, is the active fragment of Coenzyme A. It is important for metabolism - the chemical processes that maintain life. Earlier studies failed to synthesise pantetheine effectively, leading to suggestions that it was absent at life’s origin.
In the new ...
Study reveals new insights into immune system role in lung cancer risk
2024-02-22
New York, NY (February 22, 2024)—Recent developments in cancer research have highlighted the vital role of the immune system, particularly in the notable successes of cancer immunotherapy.
Now, a paradigm-shifting study led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York in collaboration with the University of Helsinki and Massachusetts General Hospital sheds light on how variations in immune genetics influence lung cancer risk, potentially paving the way for enhanced prevention strategies and screening.
The findings were described in the February 22 online issue of Science [DOI number: 10.1126/science.adi3808].
The investigators ...
New Cedars-Sinai study pinpoints why some injured kidneys do not heal
2024-02-22
Cedars-Sinai investigators have discovered why some injured kidneys heal while others develop scarring that can lead to kidney failure. Their findings, detailed in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Science, could lead to the development of noninvasive tests to detect kidney scarring and, eventually, new therapies to reverse the condition.
“The key to this discovery was our ability to directly compare injured kidney cells that successfully regenerated with those that did not,” said Sanjeev Kumar, MD, PhD, a nephrologist-scientist in the Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute and the Department of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai and senior author ...
Moving “beyond Mendel” in genetics education can reduce racism, new study suggests
2024-02-22
Data from a series of randomized trials in the United States suggests that if teachers move genetics instruction toward more complex genomics concepts, they can help students have a more scientifically accurate understanding of race. This can protect students from believing in unscientific notions of genetic essentialism, including the idea that inequality is genetic. People who believe in genetic essentialism believe – among other ideas – that most racial differences are determined by genes. Essentialist ...
Uncovered with JWST: A neutron star in the remnant of Supernova 1987A
2024-02-22
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have found conclusive evidence of a neutron star in the remnant of Supernova 1987A, the only supernova visible to the naked eye in the last 400 years and the most studied supernova in history. Although Supernova 1987A has been observed for more than three decades, scientists have not seen the compact object expected to have been produced during the explosion. Some indirect evidence had suggested that the supernova produced a neutron star, but a black hole wasn’t ruled ...
Chemistry and albedo feedbacks offset forestation’s net climate benefits
2024-02-22
Roughly a third of the climate cooling that forests achieve by removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere is offset through changes to atmospheric composition and decreased surface reflectivity, researchers report. The findings suggest that the benefits of wide-scale forestation efforts may be overestimated and do not represent a single solution for addressing climate change. They also highlight the urgency of simultaneously focusing on emissions reductions. Planting trees has been widely promoted as a nature-based solution to remove anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere to help mitigate ...
Snakes do it faster, better: How a group of scaly, legless lizards hit the evolutionary jackpot
2024-02-22
More than 100 million years ago, the ancestors of the first snakes were small lizards that lived alongside other small, nondescript lizards in the shadow of the dinosaurs.
Then, in a burst of innovation in form and function, the ancestors of snakes evolved legless bodies that could slither across the ground, highly sophisticated chemical detection systems to find and track prey, and flexible skulls that enabled them to swallow large animals.
Those changes set the stage for the spectacular diversification of snakes over the past 66 million years, allowing them to quickly exploit new opportunities ...
Side effects of wide scale forestation could reduce carbon removal benefits by up to a third
2024-02-22
The side effects of large-scale forestation initiatives could reduce the CO2 removal benefits by up to a third
Researchers at the University of Sheffield used computer models, which simulate the land, ocean and atmosphere, to investigate the impact of forestation under future climate scenarios
While forestation increases atmospheric CO2 removal, it also changes atmospheric composition and darkens the land surface, reducing its potential to tackle climate change
Combining forestation with other climate mitigation ...
Yale chemists synthesize unique anticancer molecules using novel approach
2024-02-22
New Haven, Conn. — Nearly 30 years ago, scientists discovered a unique class of anticancer molecules in a family of bryozoans, a phylum of marine invertebrates found in tropical waters.
The chemical structures of these molecules, which consist of a dense, highly complex knot of oxidized rings and nitrogen atoms, has attracted the interest of organic chemists worldwide, who aimed to recreate these structures from scratch in the laboratory. However, despite considerable effort, it has remained an elusive task. Until now, that is.
A team of Yale chemists, writing in the journal Science, ...
Maynooth University partners in study published in Science that finds evidence of elusive neutron star
2024-02-22
A new study, published in Science and co-authored by Dr Patrick Kavanagh of Maynooth University’s Department of Experimental Physics in Ireland, has provided the first conclusive evidence for the presence of the elusive neutron star produced in the supernova SN 1987A.
Supernovae are the spectacular end result of the collapse of stars more massive than eight to ten times the mass of the sun. Besides being the main sources of chemical elements such as the carbon, oxygen, silicon, and iron that make life possible, they are also responsible for creating the ...