Research shows that negative reactions to discrimination erodes relationships.
By The Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research
KEY POINTS
- Racism leads to a stress response that has negative health effects.
- New research shows that racism also reduces partners’ satisfaction with their relationships.
- Over time, this can lead to relationship instability.
Research clearly establishes that racism takes a toll on the mental and physical health of African-Americans.
This occurs because racist interactions elicit an automatic physical stress reaction that includes increased heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure, along with a release of stress hormones. This stress response, often referred to as the flight-or-flight response, leads to inflammatory reactions in the body.
Research has found that repeated activation of this stress response contributes to high blood pressure, leads to heart disease, and causes brain changes that may contribute to anxiety, depression, and addiction. There is also evidence showing that chronic stress may contribute to obesity by causing people to eat more along with affecting sleeping and exercise patterns.
A new and growing body of evidence also shows that everyday experiences of racism can harm relationships.
Researchers from the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research (BCTR) wanted to find out more about this phenomenon. For their study, they recruited 98 African-American couples in committed relationships and asked them to document their daily experiences of discrimination and moods for three weeks.
They found that participants’ feelings about their relationships changed based on their partners’ reactions to day-to-day racial discrimination. That is, when one partner had a negative reaction to experiencing discrimination, the other was more likely to feel the relationship was suffering, and, specifically, to feel less passion for their partner. Over time, people with partners who had strong reactions to racial discrimination experienced lower levels of satisfaction with their long-term relationships.
An earlier study by BCTR researcher Anthony Ong yielded similar results. Ong used data that followed married couples over the course of 10 years, assessing how they reacted to daily stressors and how they felt about their marriages. (This study wasn’t specifically about racial discrimination, but all types of daily stressors.)
Related: Why Most Relationships Fail
Ong found that when stress led to feelings of emotional distress – such as anxiety, sadness, fear, anger, guilt, shame, and irritability – participants experienced lower marital satisfaction. Over the course of 10 years, participants who reacted more negatively to daily stress were more likely to get divorced.
“These findings suggest more attention should be paid to the interpersonal effects of racism-related stress in African American couples,” Ong said, “Heightened affective reactivity to daily encounters of racial discrimination – essentially irritability in response to racism – may reflect an embedded history of racism.”
What’s the take-home message? Racism is harmful in many ways, including to the long-term relationships of people who experience discrimination. Evidence shows this harm is amplified when racial discrimination affects a person’s daily mood.
Jeff Thomas
Publisher • Opinion Columnist • Licensed General Contractor • Real Estate Appraiser • New Orleans
Jeff Thomas is the publisher of Black Source Media and one of New Orleans’ most direct voices on civic affairs, economic justice, and Louisiana politics. He writes from the intersection of experience and accountability — as a licensed general contractor,a tech company founder and executive with over 30 years experience, and a businessman who has worked across the city’s civic, media, and construction ecosystems for decades.
His Sunday column covers Louisiana legislative politics, insurance discrimination, housing policy, and the forces shaping Black community life in New Orleans and across the state. Thomas writes in the tradition of Black journalists who hold power accountable without apology — building arguments from data, delivering verdicts from evidence, and speaking to Black New Orleans with the directness the moment demands.
He is also the principal of EA Inspection Services, LLC, a government inspection services company. Black Source Media is his platform for the civic conversation New Orleans has needed and too rarely had.
Selected Articles by Jeff Thomas
Black Neighborhoods Pay the Highest Insurance Rates in Louisiana. Here’s What They Don’t Want You to Know.
They Didn’t Yell the N-Word. They Went to Law School, Bided Their Time, and Rewrote the Constitution Instead.
Vappie vs. Morrell: Why Does Justice Look Different in New Orleans?
The State Has the Money. New Orleans East Just Needs Them to Use It.
The Failure of Mitch Landrieu
Publisher — Black Source Media
Jeff Thomas
Publisher • Opinion Columnist • Licensed General Contractor • Real Estate Appraiser • New Orleans
Jeff Thomas is the publisher of Black Source Media and one of New Orleans’ most direct voices on civic affairs, economic justice, and Louisiana politics. He writes from the intersection of experience and accountability — as a licensed general contractor,a tech company founder and executive with over 30 years experience, and a businessman who has worked across the city’s civic, media, and construction ecosystems for decades.
His Sunday column covers Louisiana legislative politics, insurance discrimination, housing policy, and the forces shaping Black community life in New Orleans and across the state. Thomas writes in the tradition of Black journalists who hold power accountable without apology — building arguments from data, delivering verdicts from evidence, and speaking to Black New Orleans with the directness the moment demands.
He is also the principal of EA Inspection Services, LLC, a government inspection services company. Black Source Media is his platform for the civic conversation New Orleans has needed and too rarely had.
Selected Articles by Jeff Thomas
Black Neighborhoods Pay the Highest Insurance Rates in Louisiana. Here’s What They Don’t Want You to Know.
They Didn’t Yell the N-Word. They Went to Law School, Bided Their Time, and Rewrote the Constitution Instead.
Vappie vs. Morrell: Why Does Justice Look Different in New Orleans?
The State Has the Money. New Orleans East Just Needs Them to Use It.
The Failure of Mitch Landrieu