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 Combined with a cultural preference for tolerance, instead of
fighting back, “Discrimination may operate as a stressor that
decreases older adults’ self-esteem and increases the risk of
psychological distress, social isolation, thus leading to poorer
health status,” said Dr. Xinqui Dong, who led the study.
“This study highlights that U.S. Chinese older adults still
experienced considerable discrimination, with the majority of older
adults tending to have passive responses to unfair treatment,” said
Dong, a professor at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and
director of its Chinese Health, Aging and Policy Program.
The researchers used data from a survey of 3,159 Chinese adults in
Chicago who were over age 60 and living in their own homes or with
family.
Survey participants reported any experiences where they were
prevented from doing something, were hassled or were made to feel
inferior because of their race. They also described their responses
in those situations.
The researchers found that 21 percent of the participants had
experienced racial discrimination. The most common setting was in
public, where 10 percent of people were treated unfairly. This was
followed by the work setting, where 8 percent of people experienced
discrimination.
Older adults living in places other than Chicago’s Chinatown, those
with higher socioeconomic status and those with poorer health were
more likely to report discrimination.
David Chae warned that the true rates of discrimination are likely
higher than these numbers suggest. Chae, who studies racial
discrimination and its impacts on health at the University of
Maryland, College Park, said that this treatment can often be subtle
and “people may not recognize the social insults they experience as
being instances of discrimination.”
For example, Chae said in an email, such instances can take the form
of something commonplace like poorer service at a restaurant or
store.
Almost 75 percent of participants said that they accept unfair
treatment as a fact of life and about half also kept it to
themselves.
About 29 percent had a moderate response to the discrimination,
meaning that they either took action or talked to others about the
experience. Only 23 percent both took action and spoke to others
about the incidents.
Dong’s team notes that these results are very different from studies
with white and black adults, who are much more likely to take action
and speak to others when facing unfair treatment. Over 80 percent of
white people and almost 70 percent of black people responded
actively to discrimination in past studies, he said.
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Dong said this mostly passive response is partly influenced by “the
traditional Chinese cultural value of collectivism and the belief
that tolerance is a ‘key moral virtue.’” He also cited language
barriers and lower socioeconomic status as reasons that participants
may not be aware of services available to help them cope with
discrimination.
Discrimination has been associated with “a wide range of health
problems, including depressive disorders, substance use,
cardiovascular diseases,” according to Gilbert Gee at the University
of California, Los Angeles, who studies the links between
discrimination and health.
Dong and his colleagues caution that because their study did not
track the participants’ health over time, they cannot say that
discrimination was the cause of poor health.
Gee noted that passive coping strategies in the face of
discrimination, if they’re consistent with a person’s worldview, may
not be a problem. “Some research in psychology suggests that such
‘passive’ strategies among Asians may be protective because of this
cultural alignment,” he told Reuters in an email.
Dong, however, said “Community, social services and health care
organizations should improve older adults’ awareness on
discrimination, promote coping strategies and improve the
availability of coping resources related to discrimination.”
He added, “Healthcare and other service providers should improve the
cultural competence of services provided to Chinese older adults.
This would likely involve greater resources and training to work
through language barriers.”
Dong also stressed the importance of family support, which has great
cultural significance to older Chinese adults.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1x80FPJ The Journal of Gerontology: Medical
Sciences, online October 29, 2014.
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