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"Race‐Based Stress and the Health of Black Americans: Evaluating Resilience and Risk" - Courtney S. Thomas, PhD UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow, UCLA

In this presentation Thomas demonstrates that the country’s changing racial climate necessitates an examination of a broader array of race-based stress and coping processes, beyond experiences of blatant, more traditional forms of discrimination. To evaluate this hypothesis, she utilizes a subsample of Black adults from a representative community study in Nashville, Tennessee. Specifically, Thomas assesses the prevalence and health-related consequences of “ambiguous discrimination stress”, which may occur when individuals try to discern whether differential treatment is due to racial bias.

By examining the ways in which this common, yet often distressing experience shapes psychological and physiological well-being among Black Americans, this study provides a more nuanced understanding of the health implications of living in a racialized society. She then concludes by discussing how these findings contribute to my ongoing work to develop the “racial self-awareness” framework, within which we may better conceptualize the complex relationships between the structural, social, and psychological processes that characterize resilience and risk among Black Americans.