The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

Maté talks about growing up as a Jewish boy in Hungary in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the antisemitic racism he endured. This experience has allowed Maté to sympathize with racism suffered by African Americans in the US and Indigenous peoples in Canada. He borrows the term “biological embedding” (312) from Canadian physician Clyde Hertzman to explain how our social circumstances and experience of race and social status effect our development and biology. As such, this chapter looks at how race and socioeconomic status influence our health by becoming biologically embedded. Maté explains how this question relates to the concept of “intersectionality” (313) or how different elements of our identity, principally race, gender, sexuality and socioeconomic status, interconnect to determine our opportunities in life and how others perceive us.

Looking at the issue of race, Maté argues that to be subject to racism is equivalent to having “an assaulted sense of self” (315) since one is being defined and constrained by another's conception. Such forms of racism, and the attack on the self they represent, have detrimental health effects on those subjected to them. For example, “Black people in the United States suffer more diabetes, obesity, and hypertension, along with life-threatening complications such as strokes, for which their risk is doubled” (317).