title: Racial discrimination and cigarette smoking among Blacks: findings from two studies.
abstract: We present the first studies to explore the relationship between racial discrimination and cigarette smoking among Blacks. One hundred fifty-three (Study 1) and 300 (Study 2) Black adults completed a survey on their experiences with discrimination and their smoking. Logistic regressions revealed that racial discrimination was the best predictor of smoking among Blacks in both studies, and was a better predictor than status variables. Smoking prevalence rates for Blacks who experience frequent vs infrequent discrimination were 26.7% and 6.4%, respectively; and for those who experience racial discrimination as extremely vs mildly stressful, rates were 42.2% and 20.8%, respectively. We conclude that the stress of racial discrimination may play an important role in smoking among Blacks and, therefore, warrants further investigation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, California 92182-4611, USA. HLandrine@msn.com
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Landrine
authors.forename: E A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Klonoff
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011287:Prejudice; D012907:Smoking / Q000523:psychology*; D013315:Stress, Psychological