Violations of people's dignity: Relationships of unfairness with the metabolic syndrome

Abstract

The metabolic syndrome (MS) is a cluster of synergistic up [8]. Importantly, these racial health disparities persist at risk factors that predicts cardiovascular disease/diabetes. In this issue, De Vogli et al. [1] argued that the MS is more likely to develop in people of low socioeconomic status (SES) because they are at greater risk for frequent unfair treatment than are persons of high SES. They observed that after adjusting for SES, psychosocial and health behaviors, the association of unfairness and the MS was still significant, and unfairness was of similar importance to established psychobehavioral factors as an intervening variable between SES and the MS. The fact that SES did not fully explain variability in health problems and that unfair treatment is predictive of health problems independent of SES has great implications, especially when seen in the broader context of discrimination research. People are discriminated against because of race, religion, sexual orientation, as well as social position. Racial/ ethnic minorities and poor people who persistently experience discrimination have poorer health than people with greater power [2–4]. Black women are a prototypic group because they are targets of racial, gender, and economic discrimination. Indeed, the prevalence of lifetime racial discrimination, workplace abuse, and sexual harassment is generally low for all low-income ethnic groups, but 20–30% of black women report all three experiences [5]. Hypertension is one of several diseases associated with racism in Black women [6]. Moreover, black women who make race attributions during a racial stressor (e.g., being accused of shoplifting) have greater systolic blood pressure reactivity to that stressor than do those who do not make racial attributions [7]. Black women who report more incidents of discrimination (e.g., being treated unjustly by the police) also have a higher risk for breast cancer after a 6-year follow-