Racism and Public Health - LEXICON

Allostatic Load

e cost of chronic exposure to elevated or uctuating 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 su ering 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

e absence of avoidable, unfair, or remediable di erences in health among groups of people, whether those groups are de ned socially, economically, demographically or geographically or by other means of strati cation.

Health Inequities

Barriers preventing individuals and communities from accessing and reaching their full potential of health.

Implicit bias

e attitudes or stereotypes that a ect 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

e concept that trauma can be passed down from generation to generation. is 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 e ects of this trauma, but others may experience poor overall physical and behavioral health, and factors stemming from this.

Recidivism

e tendency of a convicted criminal to reo end.

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, o en reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. It identi es 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. e relocated peoples su ered from exposure, disease, and starvation while en route; thousands died before reaching their destinations or shortly a er from disease (learn more).

White Privilege

A system of bene ts, advantages, and opportunities experienced by White persons in society simply because of their skin color.