Roland Martin teaches creative and cultural industries at Rutgers University. He says studies show black folk have higher rates of high blood pressure, heart disease than white folks and some other groups. Other research suggests that a lot of these health differences come about because of the stress of being a black person in the U.S., he says.
Scientists weren’t the first to divide humanity along racial – and and racist – lines. But for hundreds of years, racial scientists claimed to provide proof for those racist hierarchies – and some still do.
Resources for this episode:
Fatal Invention, by Dorothy Roberts
The History of White People, by Nell Irvin Painter