The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness

by Meghan O'Rourke

The weathering hypothesis theorizes that African American women have more illness in early adulthood as a result of the constant stress of systemic racism and, for some, the challenges of facing socioeconomic disadvantages. Further research suggests that socioeconomic disadvantages and structural insecurity lead to telomere shortening—a key measure of aging—and a higher allostatic load (wear and tear caused by stress). While conservatives like to put the focus for health on individual responsibility and “lifestyle,” a term they use as a weapon, Geronimus’s research reminds us of the social, interconnected nature of our bodies and our health, and the way that racism exacts debilitating vigilance from Black bodies. That vigilance has an invisible physical cost. The calamity here is not one of personal failure but of societal failure: the conditions of insecurity that systemic racism not only perpetuates but actively fosters. The state of a person’s immune system is, among other things, a reflection of that person’s socioeconomic status and their history as a citizen of a flawed polis,