Chunk #42 — Explanations for Greater Negative Social Consequences of Alcohol Use among African Americans Compared to European Americans — Environmental Influences — Racial discrimination
At the core of being immersed in a “racialized social system” is the influence of racial discrimination. Among all other ethnic minorities within the United States, African Americans tend to report experiencing markedly higher incidences of discrimination compared to the other groups (Landrine, Klonoff, Corral, Fernandez, & Roesch, 2006). Landrine and Klonoff (1996) found that 98% of the African American adults sampled reported that they had experienced a racist event during the past year. Racism has been conceptualized as a chronic stressor in the lives of African Americans (Clark, Anderson, Clark, & Williams, 1999), with racial discrimination being documented in almost every aspect of African American life, from home mortgage lending, to housing discrimination and residential segregation, to employment practices, to health care access and responsiveness (Smedley & Smedley, 2005).
