RACISM AND PUBLIC HEALTH – LEXICON Allostatic Load The cost of chronic exposure to elevated or fluctuating endocrine or neural responses resulting from chronic or repeated challenges that the individual experiences as stressful.
Desensitization To make less likely to feel shock or distress at scenes of cruelty, violence, or suffering by overexposure to such images.
Ethnoviolence An act or attempted act that is motivated by group prejudice and intended to cause physical or psychological injury.
Health Equity The absence of avoidable, unfair, or remediable differences in health among groups of people, whether those groups are defined socially, economically, demographically or geographically or by other means of stratification.
Health Inequities Barriers preventing individuals and communities from accessing and reaching their full potential of health.
Implicit bias The attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner.
Jim Crow Laws A collection of state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation (learn more).
Microaggressions A statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group such as a racial or ethnic minority.
Multi-Generational Trauma The concept that trauma can be passed down from generation to generation. This trauma is related to major events that oppress a particular group of people because of their status as oppressed (e.g. slavery, the Holocaust, forced migration, etc.). Many in the group may not experience any effects of this trauma, but others may experience poor overall physical and behavioral health, and factors stemming from this.
Recidivism The tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend.
SOP An acronym meaning Standard Operating Procedure
Structural Racism Also known as: institutional racism. A system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. It identifies dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with ‘whiteness’ and disadvantages associated with ‘color’ to endure and adapt over time.
Trail of Tears A series of forced relocations of approximately 60,000 Native Americans between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government. The relocated peoples suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation while en route; thousands died before reaching their destinations or shortly after from disease (learn more).
White Privilege A system of benefits, advantages, and opportunities experienced by White persons in society simply because of their skin color.
102 Delaware Journal of Public Health – November 2020
