A concomitant examination of the relations of perceived racist and sexist events to psychological distress for African American women

Conceptualizations of the role of racism and sexism in African American women's lives suggest that racism and sexism may have unique and interactive links to psychological distress. Path analysis was used to examine concomitantly these links for a sample of 133 African American university and community women. Respondents' self-reported experiences of perceived racist and sexist events and psychological distress were gathered. Results indicated that perceived racist and sexist events correlated positively, and comparably, with psychological distress; but when examined concomitantly, only perceived sexist events accounted for unique variance in psychological distress. Furthermore, racist and sexist events did not interact to predict distress. The substantial correlation between reports of racist and sexist events and the overlap in their relations to psychological distress suggest that the constructs of racism and sexism may, at least in part, be fused for African American women.