
By Eisa Nefertari Ulen — Racism enters Black bodies. Enduring racial discrimination lowers heart rate variability and increases heart rates. Racism is fight or flight. The internalization of anti-Black racism accelerates biological aging by shortening telomeres, the protein DNA structures at the end of each chromosome, and so racism causes early death. Black folk carry the allostatic load of racism, meaning the stress of racism is a burden so great, it disrupts the immune, endocrine…