Internalized racism or self-stereotyping is another mechanism by which negative stereotypes about race in the larger society can adversely affect health. Cultural racism has led to pervasive negative racial stereotypes of racial groups regarded as inferior.79 One response of stigmatized racial populations to the societal beliefs about their biological and/or cultural inferiority is to accept as true the dominant society’s ideology about them. This acceptance of negative cultural images by stigmatized groups appears to create expectations, anxieties and reactions that can adversely affect social and psychological functioning.87, 88 U.S. research indicates that when a stigma of inferiority was activated under experimental conditions, performance on an examination was adversely affected.87 African Americans who were told in advance that blacks perform more poorly on exams than whites, women who were told that they perform more poorly than men, and white men who were told that they usually do worse than Asians, all had lower scores on an examination than control groups who were not confronted with a stigma of inferiority.87, 88 Some evidence indicates that in addition to adversely affecting academic performance,
