Close your eyes for a moment and think about going to a doctor for health concerns. As you are sitting in the examining room the doctor opens the door and you begin to explain your symptoms. The doctor checks your vital signs, looks in your throat, nasal cavities and ears. As you sit there you realize that the doctor is avoiding eye contact with you, doesn’t seem very concerned and is focused on your chart. There is awkward silence after anything you say as if you aren’t even speaking. The doctor doesn’t seem to acknowledge what you are verbalizing. Before you know it, you’re being rushed out of the room without any medication, no resolution, no suggestions and a feeling that you don’t even matter.
What did you do? Was it something you said? Does your health even matter to this doctor? What does this doctor think of you? Who are you going to turn to for help now? You experience a feeling of being dismissed and discarded. How can you make this doctor listen to you? Is it because you are not a doctor that you’ve been treated as if your health concerns are not valid? You feel frustrated, disappointed, hurt, scared, unsafe and powerless.
You might try to attribute the doctor’s behavior to poor bedside manner. Ok, well if that’s the case, then why did he walk into the room next door with a big smile and warmly greet the next patient? If you were to tell that patient how you were treated by the same doctor the other patient might think you are exaggerating. Maybe you are the problem and maybe you are just very sensitive. After all, the doctor was great to them.
Well, then why were you treated this way? The doctor wouldn’t even look at you and seemed to barely acknowledge you. It was as if he walked in the room to do what he was mandated to do then left. Were you just discriminated against? A study done on older patients with chronic illnesses between 2008 and 2014 reported that 1 in 5 of these patients experienced healthcare discrimination (Kurtzman, 2017).
Discrimination is defined as the way a person behaves towards another person based on their identified group (Schneider, Gruman & Coutts, 2012). Discrimination is often based on prejudices or attitudes toward others based on their group (Schneider, Gruman & Coutts, 2012). It’s a horrible thing to experience, yet many experience this daily. For some people, the experiences like the example above has been a lifelong norm. This is a generalized example of what it might be like to feel discriminated against.
What effect does this have on a person? Mays (2007) describes the importance of recognizing discrimination as a chronic health risk because it creates an unhealthy level of stress on the body. African Americans tend to experience the most disproportionate rate of illness as a result of discrimination (Mays, 2007). Among first generation Latino youth, an elevated risk of depression was associated with experiences of discrimination in the U.S. (Potochnick & Perreira, 2010).
Discrimination is toxic yet, it is still prevalent in our society. Systemic discrimination is defined as, “a pattern or practice, policy, or class case where the alleged discrimination has a broad impact on an industry, profession, company or geographic area” (Systemic Discrimination). This definition comes from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It is an effort to ensure that people working in all places are not discriminating against people, but it is still happening.
Despite laws, despite being exposed and shamed on social media, despite the many seminars and statements made by people day in and day out, these situations exist. How is it that in our society, with laws and guidelines in place, does this still exist? One of the biggest problems around discrimination is that it is not always easy to prove. In the example of the doctor’s visit, how would you prove that the doctor treated you different than the patient in the next room? How can you prove that the level of care you received was less than the level of care the next patient received? The burden of proof falls on the victims of discrimination who often have to rely on social systems that may not act in their favor. Even when discrimination can be proven, the psychological trauma left behind by discrimination is something that cannot be erased.
Hofstede’s cultural taxonomy mentions power distance as a way that people might accept inequality based on differences including social status, power or physical characteristics (Shneider, Gruman and Coutts, 2012). Schwartz’s (2012) values framework describes power as a value that people must accept and this includes social status or dominance over a resource. In the scenario above, the doctor is in a position of power while the patient is not. There is a separation of sorts that causes one person to have authority over another and even have the ability to impact another person’s life for better or worse.
The social dominance theory suggests that we live in a world of hierarchies where a dominant group of people who are deemed to have more social value are placed at the top and less dominant people with less social value are placed on the bottom. The idea of who is more valuable or who is more powerful in society or in the world could have a powerful impact on the persistence of discriminatory behaviors.
At our doctor’s visit, we were placed on the bottom of the social hierarchy and the doctor was at the top. The doctor was in the position of power, with a higher social status. We were just his patient. In this scenario, we might choose never to go to that doctor again. There might be options to find another doctor. Unfortunately, not everyone has an option to find a place of acceptance. For people who are discriminated against every day by individuals, institutions and society in general, where is the safe zone?
Where is our power? What can we do? How can we make a difference in this vicious cycle of conflict? Using applied social psychology and what we learned in this course we can better understand social and practical problems to create intervention strategies that can help individuals, groups and society (Schneider, Gruman and Coutts, 2012).
We can also look within ourselves and look outside of ourselves with vigilance, as individuals, for discriminatory situations. It’s not always easy to recognize discrimination when it’s not something we are experiencing. It’s important to listen to the experience of others, validate their experience and what they feel about their experience, so we can better understand each other. Each one of us as individuals make up this society that still practices discrimination. Our own participation in society can be a powerful source of resolution to break cycles of discrimination.
References:
Kurtzman, L. (2017, December 14). 1 in 5 Older Patients with Chronic Disease Report Health Care Discrimination. Retrieved from https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2017/12/409386/one-five-patients-report-discrimination-health-care
Mays, V. M., Cochran, S. D., & Barnes, N. W. (2007). Race, race-based discrimination, and health outcomes among African Americans. Annual review of psychology, 58, 201-25.
Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2019). PSYCH 424 Lesson 6: Intergroup Relations/Diversity Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1973019/modules/items/25635693
Potochnick, S. R., & Perreira, K. M. (2010). Depression and anxiety among first-generation immigrant Latino youth: key correlates and implications for future research. The Journal of nervous and mental disease, 198(7), 470-7.
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Los Angeles: Sage.
Schwartz, S. H. (2012). An Overview of the Schwartz Theory of Basic Values. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1116
Sommers, Samuel R. and Babbitt, Laura G.(2010) ‘On the Perils of Misplaced Assumptions: Appreciating the Need for Diversity Science’, Psychological Inquiry, 21: 2, 164 — 167
Systemic Discrimination. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/systemic/