Understanding African American Women’s Resilience in the Face of Allostatic Load

On the tombstone of Fannie Lou Hamer, a leader in the Civil Rights Movement who died of complications from hypertension and breast cancer, it says “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Although Mrs. Hamer’s famous quote was in the context of living under the tyranny of the South’s Jim Crow, her sentiments are salient for African American women today. Oddly enough, the twentieth century issues that Fannie Lou Hamer and other civil rights leaders fought and shed their blood for are ever present in the twenty-first century. Issues such as voting rights, job discrimination, and housing continue to impact the quality of life among African American women and in turn affect their health. Today, African American women find themselves in unwanted leadership positions, where they have almost double the rates of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension compared with White women, resulting in higher mortality rates for these women. The persistence of disparity requires reexamining this complex phenomenon. As researchers and scholars, we will need to reframe our questions. We will need to move beyond the pedestrian questions that emanate from a single lens. We will need to challenge ourselves to using multiple lenses simultaneously, with the understanding that African American women are more than negative health statistics. Moreover, we will need to keep in mind that African American women are not monolithic but diverse as pointed out by poet Mona Lake Jones, they are “…Jugglers of profession, managers of lives; Mothers of children, lovers and wives; Good hearted, reaching out to others; Giving back to the community and supporting their brothers; All these sisters struggled through the path they had come….”