Dayna Bowen Matthew, Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America

Abstract

Structural racism in the United States has been normalized by those who have profited and continue to profit from it in a variety of ways. Intentionally or not, structural racism has been deeply integrated into the system on economic, political, social, and cultural levels to such an extent that eliminating structural racism in the U.S. would require dramatic, yet vitally necessary changes in the system itself. Dayna Bowen Matthew's Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America is an important and timely book that explores structural racism and some of the steps that should be made to rid America of it and facilitate equality among all Americans.

Ethnic-Racial Socialization of White Children by White Parents: A Systematic Review

“…Although a substantial amount of research has examined transracial socialization, such as socialization of biracial children (e.g., Robinson-Wood et al, 2021;Rollins, 2019) or socialization by white parents of adoptive children of color (e.g., Langrehr et al, 2016;Zhang & Pinderhughes, 2019), relatively little research has examined white parents' socialization of white children (Loyd and Gaither, 2018;Seaton, 2022). Furthermore, socialization about whites/whiteness is qualitatively different than other socialization, given whites' dominant position in the U.S. racial hierarchy (Bowen Matthew, 2022;Brown, 2021). Therefore, the works selected for this review had to address ERS in white families, defined as white-only children and parents.…”

“…We note that the review shows that white parents employ some of the same strategies that parents of color employ, even though the strategies have potentially different meanings and effects for white children. For example, the studies show that some white parents engage in preparation for bias, meaning they prepare their children to experience discrimination, despite the broad advantages whites enjoy in society (Bowen Matthew, 2022;Brown, 2021). Furthermore, the studies show that many white parents engage in cultural socialization; however, the quantitative measures of this strategy generally did not capture the very different potential meanings of parents' messages: one should be proud of one's ethnic culture versus one should be proud of the white race.…”

“…White Americans occupy a privileged position in American society; they enjoy advantages in nearly every sector of society: education, housing, employment, health, etc., (Bowen Matthew, 2022;Brown, 2021). Whites are central to structural racism which produces and maintains this privilege (Feagin and Elias, 2013).…”