Racial And Socioeconomic Factors
Racial and socioeconomic factors, however, are not independent of each other, as we have seen. Minorities, and in this paper I discuss African Americans mostly, have less access to jobs and education, thereby reducing their access to adequate or good health insurance, which then limits the type and amount of health care they can receive. Additionally, as we discussed in class, individuals classified as minorities have less opportunities than the White majority in part, at the very least, due to racial discrimination, implicit or explicit. The data and research indicate that health and equal treatment has become (or has always been) secondary to an individual’s physical and cultural characteristics. None of this is an attempt at minimizing
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This kind of rigidity is pervasive throughout all types of research. I assume that having certain groups to choose from, like White or Black or Asian reduces statistical confusion; it is easier to group people together and observe them as a whole. However, through grouping, we reduce individuals to characteristics that the whole represents. It would be most beneficial if “new approaches to breast cancer research…reflect the diversity of women living and dying with the disease”(Anglin, 2006). Researching people and their lives outside of their socially dictated labels, as Mary Anglin suggests doing in her chapter on breast cancer in Gender, Race, Class, and Health, would provide more comprehensive research and would most likely show us even greater disparities in cancer diagnosis and treatment because people are incredibly complex beings, racially and socioeconomically. For instance, what qualified as “White” one hundred years ago is now even harder to define, but surveys and research continue to try and reduce people into these incredibly difficult to define categories. Even though grouping is problematic, the research studies in this paper are still helpful in the identification of a problem; the data clearly show that health gradients correspond with racial and socioeconomic gradients. It is true that the results may be too simplistic, but they are a good place to begin the discussion of a health issue. Flexibility is desired and necessary, but until research reflects more fluid definitions, I cannot make an argument in this paper including more
This kind of rigidity is pervasive throughout all types of research. I assume that having certain groups to choose from, like White or Black or Asian reduces statistical confusion; it is easier to group people together and observe them as a whole. However, through grouping, we reduce individuals to characteristics that the whole represents. It would be most beneficial if “new approaches to breast cancer research…reflect the diversity of women living and dying with the disease”(Anglin, 2006). Researching people and their lives outside of their socially dictated labels, as Mary Anglin suggests doing in her chapter on breast cancer in Gender, Race, Class, and Health, would provide more comprehensive research and would most likely show us even greater disparities in cancer diagnosis and treatment because people are incredibly complex beings, racially and socioeconomically. For instance, what qualified as “White” one hundred years ago is now even harder to define, but surveys and research continue to try and reduce people into these incredibly difficult to define categories. Even though grouping is problematic, the research studies in this paper are still helpful in the identification of a problem; the data clearly show that health gradients correspond with racial and socioeconomic gradients. It is true that the results may be too simplistic, but they are a good place to begin the discussion of a health issue. Flexibility is desired and necessary, but until research reflects more fluid definitions, I cannot make an argument in this paper including more