Listen: How Racism Kills Black Americans
After the killing of George Floyd, some leaders have suggested that racism should be declared a public-health crisis. Sherman James, a professor emeritus at Duke University, has made this case for decades. He’s studied the connection between health and discrimination since the 1970s, and he coined the concept of “John Henryism” through years of research in social epidemiology.
He joins staff writer James Hamblin and executive producer Katherine Wells on the podcast Social Distance:
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What follows is an edited and condensed transcript of their conversation.
James Hamblin: One of the things that we’re hearing right now is the idea that racism is a public-health issue. And I felt like, for you, that has been a defining theme of your work for many years, and for other people, this is kind of a moment where they’re realizing it for the first time.
My first position right out of graduate school was in the school of public health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And that department had a long-standing interest in racial differences in cardiovascular disease, particularly high blood pressure. The faculty there became
