A Studied ApproachUSC PROFESSOR TACKLES CONTROVERSIAL,

PERSONAL SUBJECTBY EMILY STEVENSON

PHOTOGRAPHY BY K. CAMPBELL PHOTOGRAPHY

FEBRUARY 2016 GREATER COLUMBIA BUSINESS MONTHLY | 27

Some professors worry about tenure. Dr. Cheryl Armstead has bigger concerns.

“As a professor, now it’s almost scary to give a lecture not knowing if there is another gunman wanting to shoot me because he doesn’t agree with what I teach,” she says. “Things were changing ever so slightly, but now history is repeating.”

You see, Armstead studies racism. And that’s not always a popular subject.

She has researched the topic of racism since 1989, and has been with the University of South Carolina for the past 21 years. She is currently a professor in the department of psychology, as well as an adjunct professor with the Arnold School of Public Health.

HEALTH CONCERNSOne of the main focal points of

Armstead’s research is the effect of racism on stress and health outcomes. She previ-ously led a study in 1996, but is currently updating the questionnaire to do another study.

“I’m attempting to make it fit what’s going on in the workplace and what’s going on in South Carolina with some of the viewpoints and changes that have occurred,” she explains. “Racism has moved into something that’s more subtle but also more violent.”

It’s something that bears studying. While Armstead has learned that exposure to institutionalized and beneficent racism cause higher rates of depression and stress, it can also lead to biological health issues, often with severe consequences.

According to statistics provided by the American Heart Association/Amer-ican Stroke Association, cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death for African-American women, killing more than 48,000 annually. African-Americans also have nearly two times the risk of stroke as white people, and have a signifi-cantly higher stroke mortality rate.

In a study previously done by Armstead, she showed African-Americans neutral images, such as a photo of someone cooking bread pudding, followed by an image of someone being mistreated by racism. When seeing the images of racism, Armstead says, the subjects’ blood pressure shot up about 15 points.

“If something in a laboratory is

stressful and can increase blood pressure, what is it doing on a day-to-day basis?” she asks.

ON THE JOBOne of the biggest culprits for day-

to-day stressors is experiencing racism on the job.

Ironically, racism is what led Armstead to her job. As a psychology student, her interest lay in an area called physi-ological psychology, which deals with animals, behavior, and brain mechanisms. However, her advisor told her she shouldn’t go to graduate school in that area, but instead should study clinical therapy because that’s what most African-Americans were doing. Her advisor’s comments simply fueled her desire to succeed in her chosen field.

“I was doing rat research on stress and happened to read an article on blood pressure, stress, and racism by a professor at Howard University,” she explains. “From that day, I put down the rat research and changed to human beings, blood pressure, and stress.”

Armstead is quick to explain that racism in the workplace often isn’t as overt as that she experienced in her early career.

“Tolerance,” a buzzword often tossed around by corporate leadership and HR teams, is actually perceived as highly negative to African-Americans, according to Armstead. Instead of “tolerating” those who are different from the typical business culture, she suggests instead that companies embrace and benefit from the diversity that African-Americans and other minorities bring to the table.

“Creativity can come from some of these sources if you just listen and foster some of the ideas,” she says. “This person may not be the norm for your organi-zation, but they may be a solution to many of the ideas and challenges you’ve encountered.”

Mentorship, a typical business prac-tice, could be another answer to certain racial issues in the workplace. Armstead

suggests that having at least two mentors (at least one of whom is black) is key for African-Americans to succeed in both academia and the workforce.

“Mentors may not be perfect in terms of diversity or race relations, but they can give you an insider’s point of view about how you’re being viewed,” she says. “They can provide a framework of how the system works.”

Armstead emphasized that mentor-ship should be horizontal as well as vertical. Even CEOs and other high-level employees should have mentors to help them connect with African-Americans and other minorities to develop a wider view of what they’re doing in their company.

FORGIVENESSFor her current study, Armstead is

deviating from her standard protocol. Because of the nature of what’s happened in South Carolina in the past year, she plans to run the final results of her study past a community of local African-Americans she’s gathered, and ask for their blessing on the results.

“I may interpret my findings from a viewpoint as a scientist that is not how the community would have seen it at all,” she explains. “I want to get a community perspective.”

Armstead also plans to utilize her community to help develop solutions. Based on the results of the study and the community’s feedback, an intervention could take on a number of modalities, such as town hall meetings to foster dialogue about topics such as police mistreatment. Other approaches could be at a more individual level. One example is creating small groups who study the psychology of racism and identify people who are at risk for a high level of racism, such as white individuals who feel they have been marginalized out of jobs.

One of the most crucial topics in the study she’s currently undertaking is that of forgiveness. The new questionnaire features an entry about forgiveness, an addition that Armstead felt compelled to include after the massacre at the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston.

“I wanted to include [that question] because I truly didn’t fully understand all of the dimensions of forgiveness,” she says. “I wanted to see if people who were away from the Charleston massacre situation really felt forgiveness.”

“Racism has moved into some-thing that’s more subtle but also more violent.”

28 | COLUMBIABUSINESSMONTHLY.COM FEBRUARY 2016

HEART DISEASE & STROKE PREVALENCE AMONG AFRICAN AMERICANS

• Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death for African-American women, killing over 48,000 annually.

• Only 36% of African American women and 34% of Hispanic women know that heart disease is their greatest health risk, compared with 65% of Caucasian women.

• Of African-American women ages 20 and older, 48.3% have cardiovascular disease. Yet, only 14% believe that cardiovas- cular disease is their greatest health problem.

• Only about 50% of African-American women are aware of the signs and symptoms of a heart attack.

• African Americans have nearly 2x the risk for a first-ever stroke than white people, and a much higher death rate from stroke.

• African-Americans have the highest stroke mortality and are less likely than whites to arrive within 3 hours and receive the clot-busting drug tPA.

More stats can be found on the 2015 African Americas & Cardiovascular Disease Statistical Fact Sheet:

 www.heart.org/idc/groups/heart-public/@wcm/@sop/@

smd/documents/downloadable/ucm_472910.pdf

HITTING CLOSE TO HOMEAs for herself, Armstead acknowledges that

she sometimes has to take a break from her research to keep from becoming so embroiled in it that she loses perspective. She has a research team, comprised of students of several nationalities, as well as white individuals, that she can call upon to receive honest feedback about what needs to go and what is too much a part of her identity.

“You are trained as a scientist to learn to detach your emotions from your work,” she explains. “You develop a passion for the outcome, but the details of the work become just that – work. That’s how I’ve been able to survive doing racism work for so long.

Despite her years of often-negative research, Armstead remains optimistic that most indi-viduals don’t purposely intend to be racist to others. Her location at a university campus has given her hope for future generations.

She notes that while students still have conflicts with other students, racism isn’t the primary reason they’re angry with each other anymore. Instead, it’s personality conflicts or other more tangible events.

“I see my students on campus, and they’re getting to know each other,” she says. “It’s going to take time and probably generations to completely achieve what we’re looking for in terms of a peaceful society, but I think it will happen.”