Scientific Rhetorical Analysis

Abstract

The article, “Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Effects of Racism on Mental Health Among Residents of Black Neighborhoods of New York City” was written by two black female writers on the topic of everyday racism affecting the mental health of African Americans. This study was conducted because racism is a very prominent and dehumanizing way of perceiving people based on false biases. There are many different levels of racism such as aversive racism which includes more micro-aggressions and avoidance than overt racism, color-blindness is when people act like color doesn’t exist when it very much does and affects the lives of people with darker skin every day, turning a blind eye to color is like disregarding their issues and the issues of America’s systematic oppression. Another form of racism is Economic racism, through years of miseducation and lack of resources, African Americans are set up by our educational system to not succeed.

Introduction

Author Naa Oyo A. Kwate is a trained psychologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Africana Studies and the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University. Her interests surround how racism affects the mental health of African Americans and other racial matters. Co-Author Dr. Melody Goodman got her Ph.D. in biostatistics with a double minor in Social Determinants of Health Disparities and Theoretical Statistics. Dr. Goodman’s interests include trying to understand the social factors that can predict mental health disparities in black communities. These two have similar focuses in that they both surround racism and its effects on mental health. I believe their goal in writing this piece was to contribute to the lack of research on this matter so researchers after them can extend their ideas to an even bigger sample size to make it a known fact that racism does indeed affect the mental health of African Americans.

This study is written using logos but the study performed was measured using ethos. This text is very scientific and informative but the study was measured based on the way the individual feels when they receive racist comments or actions. The audience of this text is most likely students and other educated people such as researchers because this is a very data-heavy text that is only available to access through scholarly databases. This text can be used as a resource for an article that is put in a more simple context for the general public because this article is very scientific and data-based. The setting of this study took place in two predominantly middle-class black neighborhoods in New York City, Central Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Conclusion

The authors conducted this study to try to better understand how racism affects the mental health of African Americans. The potential impact this article could have is a good basis to build off on for further research as this is an understudied issue but a very prominent one. The reason why this issue is understudied is that America likes to turn a blind eye to racism to cover up our dirty history as a country but this further promotes trauma in our African American communities because their issues are neglected. The more we learn about the different forms of racism the easier we can spot it if we see it happening and put an end to it. Systematic racism, on the other hand, is too deeply ingrained into America’s system and will take many more years and a process of dismantling in order to change the ways that we’ve had since slavery. For example, police in America evolved from slave patrol, people who would make sure slaves didn’t run away from the plantation. The fact that our justice system was built off making sure that specifically, African Americans weren’t doing something wrong, we have to change the basis and function of the whole policing system entirely. This could include sending social workers to non-lethal crime scenes to deescalate the situation instead of sending a police officer immediately to arrest right away. With this knowledge, society can work toward bettering the mental health of African Americans by fighting racism and stopping it whenever it is spotted.

References

Kwate, N. O. A., & Goodman, M. S. (2015). Cross-sectional and longitudinal effects of racism on mental health among residents of Black neighborhoods in New York City. American Journal of Public Health, 105(4), 711–718. https://doi-org.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302243