The Schedule of Racist Events: A Measure of Racial Discrimination and a Study of Its Negative Physical and Mental Health Consequences

Abstract

In this article, the authors develop a brief questionnaire that assesses racist discrimination in the lives ofAfricanAmericans, and conduct preliminary studies with it. The Schedule of Racist Events (SRE) is an 18-item self-report inventory that assesses the frequency of racist discrimination (specific, stressful racist events) in the past year (recent racist events) and in one's entire life (lifetime racist events), and measures the extent to which this discrimination was evaluated (appraised) as stressful (appraised racist events). Results revealed that the SRE has extremely high internal consistency and split-half reliability. Racist discrimination is rampant in the lives of African Americans and is strongly related to psychiatric symptoms and to cigarette smoking. These findings highlight the negative consequences of racismandprovide evidencefor the validity of the SRE as a measure of (culturally specific) stress.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bell, D. (1992). Faces at the bottom of the well: The permanence of racism. New York: Basic Books.

Billings, A. G. , & Moos, R. (1981). The role of coping responses and social resources in attenuating the stress of life events. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 4, 139-157.

Chunn, J. , Dunston, P. , & Ross-Sheriff, F. (1983). Mental health andpeople of color. Washington, DC: Howard University Press.

Cohen, S. (1986). Contrasting the Hassles scale and the Perceived Stress Scale: Who's really measuring appraised stress? American Psychologist, 41, 716-718.

Cohen, S. , Kamarck, T. , & Mermelstein, R. (1983). Aglobal measure of perceived stress. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 24, 385-396.

Cohen, S. , & Wills, T. A. (1985). Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 98, 310-357.

Cose, E. (1993). The rage of the privileged class. New York: Harper Collins.

Derogatis, L. R. , Lipman, R. S. , Rickles, K. , Uhlenhuth, E. , & Covi, L. (1994). The Hopkins Symptom Checklist: A self-report symptom inventory. Behavioral Science, 19, 1-15.

Dohrenwend, B. S. , Krasnoff, L. , Askenasy, A. R. , & Dohrenwend, B. P. (1978). Exemplification of a method for scaling life events: The PERI Life Events S cale. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 19, 205-229.

10.

Dovidio, J. F. , & Gaertner, S. (1986). Prejudice, discrimination, and racism. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.

11.

Feagin, J. R. , & Feagin, C. B. (1978). Discrimination American Style: Institutional racism and sexism. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

12.

Idson, T. L. , & Price, H. F. (1992). An analysis of wage differentials by gender and ethnicity in the public sector. Review of Black Political Economy, 20, 75-97.

13.

Jones, E. E. , & Korchin, S. J. (1982). Minority mental health. New York: Praeger.

14.

Kanner, A. D. , Coyne, J. C. , Schaeffer, C. , & Lazarus, R. S. (1981). Comparison of two modes of stress measurement: Daily hassles and uplifts versus major life events. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 4,1-39.

15.

Kobasa, S. C. (1979). Stressful life events, personality and health: An inquiry into hardiness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1-11.

16.

Krieger, N. (1990). Racial and gender discrimination: Risk factors for high blood pressure? Social Science and Medicine, 30, 1273-1281.

17.

Landrine, H. , & Klonoff, E. A. (1994). The African AmericanAcculturationScale: Development, reliability, validity. Journal of Black Psychology, 20, 104-127.

18.

Landrine, H. , & Klonoff, E. A. (1996). African American acculturation: Deconstructing race and reviving culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

19.

Landrine, H. , Klonoff, E. , Alcaraz, R. , Scott, J. , & Wilkins, P. (1995). Multiple variables in discrimination. In B. Lott & D. Maluso (Eds.), The social psychology of interpersonal discrimination (pp. 183-224). New York: Guilford.

20.

Lazarus, R. S. (1966). Psychological stress and the coping process. New York: McGraw-Hill.

21.

Lazarus, R. S. , DeLongis, A. , Folkman, S. , & Gruen, R. (1985). Stress and adaptational outcomes: The problem of confounded measures. American Psychologist, 40, 770-779.

22.

Lazarus, R. S. , & Folkman, S. (1986). Reply to Cohen. American Psychologist, 41, 718-719.

23.

Lazarus, R. S. , & Launier, R. (1978). Stress-related transactions between person and environment. In L. A. Pervin & M. Lewis (Eds.), Perspectives in interactional psychology (pp. 287-327). New York: Plenum.

24.

National Institute of Mental Health . (1983). Research highlights: Extramural research. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

25.

U.S. Bureau of the Census . (1991). Money income of households, families and persons in the United States 1988 and 1989 (Current Population Reports Series P-60, No. 172). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.