Exam 10: Health Inequalities, Environmental Racism, and Environmental Justice

In the early to mid-twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of Black women were subjected to involuntary sterilization on the basis that:

The adoption of the Nuremberg Code successfully brought an era of involuntary experimentation on Blacks to an end.

African American coping strategies for dealing with the stress of individual racism protect them from poor physical health.

African Americans have an average life expectancy six years shorter than Whites, have a 32 percent higher age-adjusted death rate than Whites, and more likely than Whites to contract a host of medical illnesses. Compare and contrast the following theoretical explanations of these health disparities: socioeconomic status, segregation, individual racism, and life-course.

How does racial residential segregation lead to poor health outcomes for African Americans in under-resourced neighborhoods?

What aspects of non-Whites' living conditions contribute to their poor health outcomes?

In the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, poor Black men with syphilis were left untreated in order to understand the progression of the disease.

How does Edna Viruell-Fuentes explain the difference in health outcomes between Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants?

The prevailing racial ideologies of the early 1900s resulted in severe mistreatment of African Americans. One famous case of medical mistreatment was the:

Most social scientists agree that there is no biological basis for separating people into racial groups, yet medical researchers still attempt to identify genetic causes of racial disparities in health. Explain the argument that race, in this medical research, is a proxy for genetics. Why are medical researches motivated to make race a proxy for genetics?

Which group is the most likely to have low-birthweight babies?

On a range of measures, African Americans experience worse health than their White counterparts. Use the concept of "pathogenic residential conditions" to explain this racial disparity in health.

Black children are equally likely as White children to have lead poisoning.

American doctors such as James Marion Sims used Black slaves to conduct:

In addition to disparities in wealth, housing, and education, systematic racism has significantly impacted non-Whites':

Even today, Native American, Latina, and Black women are more likely to be sterilized than White women. Thomas Volscho suggests that this disparity is due to:

Involuntary experimentation on Blacks continued well into the twentieth century.

According to David Williams and Chiquita Collins, what is the primary cause of Black/White health disparities?

Discuss how the cases of John Brown and the Ebb Cade illustrate the effects of racial ideology on medical research.

What was the primary cause of the Flint water crisis?