Racism Harms the Racist

Besides dampening the spirit, when a person experiences racist thoughts and feelings, stress hormones rush the body, the heart pumps harder and the blood vessels constrict. The long term consequences of frequent racist feelings could be dire for the racist. “These types of bodily reactions are helpful in truly dangerous situations, but a number of recent studies have found that racially prejudiced people experience them even during benign social interactions with people of different races. This means that just navigating the supermarket, coffee shop, or modern workplace can be stressful for them. And if the racist person then has to go through this every single day, the repeated stress can become a chronic problem, which places them at heightened risk for disease in later life.”