The Center for Collaborative Study of Trauma, Health Equity, and Neurobiology

Historical - Structural Discrimination

STRUCTURAL RACISM and STRUCTURAL HOMOPHOBIA-TRANSPHOBIA are major root causes of HEALTH DISPARITY 

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The concepts of HISTORICAL and STRUCTURAL RACISM and DISCRIMINATION are a recognition that the experience of DISCRIMINATION is not just an individual perception of inequity but public policies, institutional practices, cultural images and behaviors which are built into the structure of the dominant culture and which reinforce social inequity.

Examples include discrimination in:
    o  access to healthcare
    o  economic opportunity and employment
    o  education
    o  housing
    o  the right to marry

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Structural Discrimination can extend to outright brutality such as:

  • separation of children from parents - including forcing families to send children away to residential schools
  • predatory policing and excessive incarceration
  • abusive treatment of indigenous peoples including dispossession of land, desecration of sacred land, penalties for reading or speaking indigenous language
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RESOURCES

Paul Farmer et al (2006) Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine.  PLOS Medicine. 

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