ABSTRACT
Racism can be life-shortening for African Americans. For example, there are the cardiovascular stressors of racist interactions. There is racism in health care leading relatively often to poor, delayed, or no care at all for life-threatening illnesses. There is the damage done to bodies by racist location of African American housing near toxic waste dumps or industrial facilities that poison the environment. In fact, some interviewees saw racism as contributing to or a primary cause of the death they focused on in the interview—for example, deaths caused in part or entirely by racist assignment to hazardous work or by medical racism leading to dreadful medical care. Although not every interviewee saw the death they focused on as caused by racism, some talked about efforts to circumvent racism as necessary to avoid the life-shortening dangers of racism, for example, seeing to it that a family member went to a hospital run by African Americans. There were also deaths seen as caused by poverty rooted in racism—for example, a family not being able to afford a telephone so there was a long delay in getting a family member who had a stroke to the hospital.
