How Racism Affects Your Health as a Black American

Writer George Johnson has watched his grandmother fight multiple bouts of cancers, as well as diabetes and other health conditions throughout her life. Health challenges have always played a large role in his family. But in his recent VICE Magazine story, Johnson explains that this is not simply because of bad luck. Rather, it may be a result of what race disparities scholar Arline Geronimus calls “weathering,” a term that describes the deterioration of health as a result of the chronic stress caused by being exposed to systemic racism over a lifetime.