Daily Bruin – Page 231

Comedy duo creates bizarre world with new and familiar characters in offbeat show

Self-improvement advertisements occasionally will interrupt The Ian and Austin “Show.”

The series of preplanned interludes within the comedy show are meant to imitate short commercials from YouTube or television. Ian Michaels and alumnus Austin Nasso, the show’s namesakes, will host the variety show Thursday at The Improv Space, incorporating stand-up, character bits and impressions. Nasso said the show, which the duo aims to put on once per month, plays with experimental forms of comedy, such as the use of short sketches to transition between bits without straying from the typical content audiences can relate to.

“It’s not a traditional stand-up comedy show or a traditional improv show,” Nasso said. “We’re doing super experimental comedy things and sketches where the audience doesn’t know if it’s part of the show or not part of the show.”

The short sketches between other parts of the variety shows were inspired by YouTube ads from Tai Lopez, an entrepreneur known for showing off his riches – including a Lamborghini that led to multiple memes. As Nasso and Michaels perform comedy, one of them will suddenly switch tracks to act as if they were in an advertisement pop-up in the middle of a live stream, Michaels said, becoming characters such as “Chai Lopez,” a take on the entrepreneur. They also plan to show countdowns on The Improv Space’s screens during their “advertisements” to further parallel the comparison to streaming.

Other interruptions also make their way into the show. Michaels said sometimes he or Nasso plans to don a new character and engage with the one currently on stage, kicking him off and beginning a new bit in a way that blends them together. For instance, one character – a confident drunk – will randomly wander into the venue, interrupt the sketch being performed, and ask to perform stand-up for the crowd after getting lost after a party. The interruptions will also act as transitions into guest acts by alumna Avalon Penrose and comedy group Probably a Cult, he said.

Penrose is a musical guest for The Ian and Austin “Show” and will also be involved in improvised scenes. The avant-garde nature of the Thursday show also allows her to take on new personas, including “Kim the biohacker,” who is obsessed with gene-splicing her own DNA for health reasons and taking 80 vitamins on stage.

“Every time I play a character, I tend to fully immerse myself in what that character’s reality would be, and for me, comedy is just drama taken way too seriously,” she said. “I take (a character’s) mentality to the extreme and I do it to the point that it gets wacky.”

Acting isn’t the only extreme in her performance. Penrose said she also writes her music in an extremely personal, offbeat manner, basing the ideas off real scenarios. As opposed to radio-friendly songs about love or breakups, she said she experimented with the concept of a dysfunctional relationship she was in with a man in his 30s during her college years. The song, “Hank, The Corporate Lawyer,” complete with the lines, “part-time pussy destroyer, full-time destroyer of my heart,” is meant to be a blunt callout of her experiences with an abnormal age gap, she said.

“I consider myself a singing storyteller more than I consider myself a musical comedian,” Penrose said. “I’m just so truthful that it’s almost jarring and can be uncomfortable at points because people can see I don’t shy away from any subject.”

Though the stand-up usually will be performed by Nasso or Michaels while they’re embodying a persona, Nasso said the audience is meant to sometimes question whether or not they are in character. Doctor Magic, an unfunny stand-up comic played by Nasso, will teach a master class on low-quality comedy to Michaels, who will impersonate the list of comics attending the class – from Gilbert Gottfried to Sarah Silverman.

The many dimensions and aspects of the show, Michaels said, are the combination of the duo’s interests within comedy, such as “Seinfeld,” which will be the topic of one of the improvised sketches Thursday. The Ian and Austin “Show” will combine multiple comedic forms and experimental transitions to make the performances feel cohesive, he said.

“When we have a new character, we’ll try to slide it in like it is part of the show,” Michaels said. “I think we’re trying to put together something that seems complete unto itself – a world that’s consistent in itself, in its bizarreness.”

Restaurant review: Jon & Vinny’s fine Italian dining entices, but for a price

An industrial stone pizza oven, chefs gracefully tossing salt into their pasta and a glass of Cabernet make for a quintessential Italian dining experience at Jon & Vinny’s.

The restaurant on San Vicente Boulevard opened mid-January, offering the same diverse Italian menu as Jon & Vinny’s original location in Fairfax, which opened in 2015 and garnered widespread attention. The crowded but dynamic restaurant offers a menu full of pizzas, pastas, meats and wines, but at fairly steep prices.

Jon & Vinny’s maintains a minimalist exterior, decorated with wood panels and a lit-up green neon sign. The restaurant boasts a white oak aesthetic across its walls, tables and chairs, creating a casual night scene with a dimly lit interior, save for the kitchen and counter seats. Customers have a full view of chefs spinning pizza dough, toasting garlic bread over a wood fire and skillfully seasoning various dishes. Those who sit at the counter seat can feel the heat emanating from the pizza oven and from the flambeed dishes across from them.

With packed seating and an open kitchen, the place is naturally a bit loud. Jon & Vinny’s is packed during dinner hours – customers without reservations must give their names and numbers to the hostess to test their luck. Those who can snag a seat, however, will be greeted by friendly and efficient staff.

The chefs, donning aprons over their Jon & Vinny’s T-shirts, enthusiastically voiced orders to each other with dashes of casual conversation sprinkled in, as if they were trying to give customers an exciting glimpse into a gourmet kitchen. Their enthusiasm, combined with purple ambient lighting, encouraged a social, yet classy atmosphere. The service kept up with the liveliness as well, as servers promptly passed out dishes and refilled drinks for customers.

As expected of any Italian restaurant, Jon & Vinny’s offers 10 varieties of pastas made in-house. The ricotta ravioli, served with generous amounts of marinara sauce and Parmesan, provided a tasty and mostly balanced dish. The ravioli were a tad larger than bite-sized and packed with appropriate amounts of ricotta, achieving a Goldilocks balance on both accounts. Though a bit salty, the marinara sauce was smooth and provided a flavorful dipping sauce for garlic bread, served separately. For $16, the serving size was decent, but not generous, with Jon & Vinny’s establishing itself as a restaurant that prioritizes quality over quantity.

Though they also stand fine on their own, the marinara braised meatballs make an excellent addition to any pasta dish. Served with two pieces of garlic bread and a scoop of ricotta, the entree is a treat for the eyes, with chunky marinara sauce nearly flowing off the edges of the plate. Unlike the sauce of the ravioli, the marinara sauce accompanying the meatballs provides a tasty and subtle flavor, while the ricotta adds a complementary tinge of creaminess.

The garlic bread, being a side item, was an unexpected highlight – toasted just enough to give the thick pieces a crispy outside while maintaining a soft inside. The well-seasoned garlic butter was spread generously and gave the bread a savory flavor. At $17.50, the dish is in line with the rest of Jon & Vinny’s expensive menu, but is one that can live up to its price tag.

For dessert, Jon & Vinny’s offers a variety of cookies, soft serve and other Italian desserts such as cannoli and budini, many of which are displayed in a two-shelf glass box next to the counter seating. The snickerdoodle is a reasonably sized serving at $2.50, with a chewy texture that delivers a subtle cinnamon flavor without being overly sweet. Having cracks throughout its surface and a light, even coat of cinnamon, the coaster-sized cookie is a short and sweet way to end a meal.

With an energetic vibe and a tasty selection of Italian food, Jon & Vinny’s is the perfect place for anyone in search of an upscale location to savor a good meal with friends. As with any high-end restaurant in Los Angeles, however, the prices of multiple dishes can easily add up, and an automatic 18 percent service charge makes the bill an even tougher pill to swallow. Jon & Vinny’s certainly is the place for a special occasion, but not the one for casual eating. Though I will inevitably crave more of Jon & Vinny’s Italian dishes in the future, my wallet and I might just have to settle for Covel.

Piano trio to perform unique take on traditional tango for Fowler Out Loud

People usually associate tango music with uptightness and strictness, but two members of Trio Escarlata said the ensemble will use classical instruments to convey passion.

Trio Escarlata – a piano trio composed of UCLA graduate students Killian Kelly, Valerie Stern and Priyanka Venkatesh – will perform Wednesday at the Fowler Museum at UCLA. One of the songs the group covers is “Cuatro Estaciones Portenas (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires),” by Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla. Kelly said traditionalists didn’t consider Piazzolla’s music to be tango at the time of its creation because of its fast and feisty nature. Despite its distinct qualities, however, Venkatesh said Piazzolla’s music still can be included in the genre because it contains a hallmark tango rhythm. As a classical performance group, Trio Escarlata will break the boundaries of the traditional tango music from its school courses by using its instruments to convey the four seasons along with sensuality, Venkatesh said.

“(The instruments are) more intensified and dramatic than in music such as Beethoven or Bach,” Kelly said. “We get a little grittier and dirtier in the sound – it’s not all neat and proper like what people are used to … (and) there’s a lot of room to be a little messy and dark.”

The name Trio Escarlata, which translates to “Scarlet Trio”, was chosen by violinist Venkatesh. The name is a nod to the association of the color red with sensuality and the tango music genre because of its evocative nature. Venkatesh said the colorful harmonies within the music can be associated with a fantasy because of its free-flowing rhythmic freedom.

“Tango is all about love and passion,” Venkatesh said. “It’s like a sensory overload in a good way.”

Kelly said the provocative nature of Piazzolla’s works made them controversial at the time of their creation in the twentieth century. Purists didn’t consider Piazzolla’s music to be tango, Venkatesh said. But Piazzolla turned the previously slow and sultry tango into something fast-paced and thrilling, creating a gratifying sensation in the audience, Kelly said.

Venkatesh said many associate classical music with strict, rigid structures. But the structure of the music performed by the piano trio is different because there is room for creativity and freedom for each instrument, Kelly said. Pianist Stern said Piazzolla’s musical piece needed some transformation in order to be played by Trio Escarlata’s piano trio instead of a traditional group. This is because the music was originally performed by different instruments, such as a bass, and not necessarily those in a piano trio, Venkatesh said.

The four movements in “Cuatro Estaciones Portenas” – “Invierno”, “Otono”, “Verano” and “Primavera” – are meant to represent each season of the year. “Cuatro Estaciones Portenas” starts with the summer season and continues in a chronological order. Each season has different rhythmic aspects, Venkatesh said. For summer, Venkatesh said there are instrumental imitations of the summertime sound of crickets. In Piazzolla’s portion of winter, Venkatesh said high piano notes and short, percussive sounds give an icy feeling. The music for spring is rhythmically buoyant and upbeat, which Venkatesh said can be associated with the season.

Musicology lecturer Benjamin Court, who first met Kelly and Stern as students in his course, Music 204: “Music Bibliography for Performers,” witnessed the group perform Piazzolla’s composition in person. Court said audiences have the potential to hear how Trio Escarlata is not a typical tango ensemble because their rhythmic groove and musical feel is different from traditional types of music. The piano trio interprets the musical piece in its own way, which can be heard in its harmonies and how its rhythmically diverse sound strays from classical traditions, Court said.

“You can really hear the voice of the instruments so clearly … (There is) energy and passion that goes into it, which you may not typically hear in contemporaneous classical types of pieces,” Court said.

Flux screening series promotes creativity by straying from traditional video art

The Flux screening series has been the source of creative collaborations and romantic relationships alike.

Flux, an organization that curates film and art festivals, conferences and museum exhibitions, partnered with the Hammer Museum 12 years ago to create the Flux screening series. The event has been the source of collaborations between filmmakers and even brought together a couple who later married. The screening series aims to highlight filmmakers from various cultural backgrounds whom co-curators Jonathan Wells and Meg Grey Wells thought utilized innovative cinematic techniques. The upcoming winter screening on Wednesday will include short films from Kim Gehrig, Renee Mao and more, as well as music videos from artists such as Mitski, LANY and Vince Staples. Flux brings filmmakers together in order to spur inspiration and welcome a collaborative creative environment at the event’s courtyard after-party, Wells said.

“My partner and I decided that we wanted to do something a little bit nontraditional when we started the series,” Wells said. “I think that with the types of work that we show there’s an element of surprise or something unique in how it was made that’s different than maybe what you would see in a regular short film or music video.”

The projects included in the Flux screening series employ distinctive direction to transcend traditional music videos and short films, Wells said. The co-curators try to choose music videos that are more reminiscent of short films than traditional performance-based music videos, Wells said. For example, Flux will screen the music video for “A Pearl” by Mitski which was created by first printing out 3D animations from director Saad Moosajee. The video’s co-director Danaé Gosset then applied hand-drawn animation on top of the still images to add dimension. The stills were then scanned and uploaded back into the computer in order to finish edits, resulting in the final product. Thus, the animation of “A Pearl” is more cinematically inclined and represents the artist without physically seeing them, Wells said. Both Gosset and Moosajee will be in attendance Wednesday night to present their work.

“We took a risk and it played in our favor in the end. We really were experimenting at heart and just keeping a childlike mentality towards it,” Gosset said. “I think that people can look at it and be inspired to just play around more and try to do things creatively.”

Returning Flux filmmaker Isaac Ravishankara directed the music video for “Thick and Thin” by indie pop band LANY which also will be screened. Though most videos are filmed in multiple shots, “Thick and Thin” was created in a single, uninterrupted take. The video’s fluid camera movement is intended to create a connection to its subjects and elicit a personal, emotional response from the audience, Ravishankara said.

“People are watching (music videos) on iPhones, iPads, laptops and maybe a television sometimes. So the goal of the video is to use the gimmick of not cutting to just put you in (the) moment and take you on a journey without the artifice of the edits and of the filmmaking,” Ravishankara said. “I’m really excited to see it in the theater on a big screen and see how that affects the experience of watching it.”

First-time Flux filmmaker CALMATIC also explored new forms of the film medium while directing the music video for “FUN!” by rapper Vince Staples. The video is shot from the perspective of Google Maps and virtually, instead of physically, follows a day in the life of Staples within his neighborhood of Long Beach, California, CALMATIC said. The video’s visuals aim to create meta-commentary on white audiences viewing African-American performers, CALMATIC added, saying audiences may try to fit in with the rapper’s lifestyle but will never truly know what it’s like.

“What’s entertainment to most people is our reality. So while other people are able to just be entertained by (African-American performers), … this is our everyday life and this is the way we live,” CALMATIC said. “It just shows you how connected, yet disconnected we are from each other.”

The music videos are among the 14 projects screening at Flux on Wednesday evening. In addition, filmmakers in attendance are given five minutes between screenings to give a presentation that represents the creative spirit of their project. The performances can be anything from a song to a magic trick or even an interactive game show. These presentations stray from the typical film screening Q&A, Wells said, and allows the filmmakers to express their creativity onstage, in person.

“We all kind of live in our bubbles,” Wells said. “I think that’s one of the things that’s special about the event is having a communal experience of seeing these films in a beautiful cinema. Then, also being able to discuss the works afterwards in our reception … hopefully, it inspires people.”

The Hill must break endless cycle of broken washers and inefficient dryers

It’s the iconic Hill experience: You put off laundry for weeks and muster up the initiative to lug a hamper full of clothes down four flights to an available washing machine. You come back 45 minutes later and frantically transfer the wet clothes to an open dryer. You swipe your BruinCard a second time and head out, confident your clothes will be dry and ready to fold in an hour.

How mistaken you were.

You come back an hour later, only to find your clothes are dank and your wallet short $1.50. You resign to your fate and proceed to dry your clothes in your dorm room, happy the sun won’t charge you money for doing what the dryers couldn’t.

Laundry on the Hill is a nightmare. Although most machines in the dorms tend to work pretty well, some are close to 10 years old. This causes dryers to stop drying or washers to leave clothes dirtier than before. Although there is a system in place for reimbursing students who use broken machines, few know of the process, so many are forced to accept the losses.

While a load of laundry doesn’t cost more than $5, having to constantly pay double for broken machines can add up over time. Students already have so many things to pay for, so spending a few extra dollars hurts in the long term. Housing has excused its lack of solutions by providing students with inefficient ways of getting their money back.

For a university that prides itself on being the best, UCLA seems to have very little pride for its laundry services. Students should be able to rely on the university’s staff to meet basic needs if they’re paying to live on campus. Residents need laundry machines that work, and it’s on Housing to meet that demand.

Barbara Wilson, director of the rooms division at UCLA Housing & Hospitality Services, said the machines’ provider, WASH Multifamily Laundry Systems, LLC, comes in every week to check machines that have been reported broken.

“WASH will provide a new piece of equipment if the machine is broken. Some of the machines are brand-new to 10 years old,” Wilson said.

Although having someone come in to fix machines whenever students complain seems like a solution, it’s a cop-out for the university to avoid taking the initiative to maintain its machines. Students shouldn’t have to complain for things to get fixed; they should work from the get-go. And despite maintenance’s work, the machines can still end up having issues.

Jack Li, a third-year mathematics of computation student, said the constantly broken machines in the laundry rooms are a hassle for him.

“It’s annoying (enough) just walking down there, but when I went down there after drying my clothes for an hour, everything was still wet,” he said. “I spent two more hours waiting for my clothes to dry. We pay for this stuff to work.”

Students already pay an estimated $15,900 for housing, and laundry further adds to that expense. Although students have a way to get their money back for broken machines, it’s an archaic and inconvenient process: Students need go to a residence hall’s front desk, fill out a form from WASH, somehow submit it to the company – the details are left to students to figure out – and wait to be reimbursed. Not only is this solution generally unknown, it’s untimely and not worth the effort. This is especially true for students who live in residential buildings without front desks.

Varun Sriram, a first-year biology student, said paying for the laundry machines is an extra unnecessary cost that adds to outrageously high tuition and housing fees.

“We should at least be refunded, but I also think that paying for washers and dryers should be put into our housing,” Sriram added.

You’d think replacing machines more than 10 years old would be easy for a university that receives billions of dollars each year. Instead, UCLA is building new residential halls when the ones we already have aren’t functioning properly.

The university needs to come up with an efficient system to make sure laundry machines are working before students come to live on the Hill, be it proactively replacing the oldest machines or fixing broken parts of the ones already in place.

For its part, WASH seems to be trying to come up with an easier method of communicating with its customers. Wilson said the company is developing an app that would allow students to pay directly for laundry and communicate concerns with company representatives.

But Bruins shouldn’t expect that to come anytime soon, Wilson said. And although the app provides useful features like being able to pay for the machines via your phone, it doesn’t actually solve the issue of quickly reimbursing students for broken machines.

The upside is that at least WASH, unlike the university, is trying to do something to make students’ lives easier.

Just ask me when I end up air-drying my clothes tonight.

Possibility of defunding history departments emerges with decline in majors

“So what are you going to do with a history degree?”

My realtor recently asked me this when I went to sign my lease for an apartment. When I told him I wanted to work at a nonprofit or a think tank, he shook his head.

“You need a path,” he told me. “You should become a lawyer.”

Most people don’t understand why I’ve decided to dedicate my four years of college to a degree that supposedly gets you nowhere in life.

It wasn’t always like this. The 2008 financial crisis pushed parents and students to pick majors with a clear and secure path. The interest in STEM and social science increased, and history stopped being seen as a practical major. Universities shifted from institutions of diverse learning to training schools. The economic pressure to find a reliable career after college has pushed long-standing and versatile majors like history out the window.

In other words, the history major was on the verge of being history.

The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, for example, will eliminate history along with other liberal arts programs in favor of classes with a greater emphasis on profit-making jobs. The number of students studying history at UCLA is lower than it has been in the past, drawing into question the department’s future.

History departments across the U.S. are in decline. As a leading university with one of the top history departments in the country, UCLA should be doing more to support its department and raise its enrollment numbers to pre-2008 levels. History is more than just cracking open archives. It has wide applications in a variety of fields, and losing out on the study is detrimental not just to UCLA, but to the broader community.

UCLA’s history department has experienced a significant reduction in history students, though the trend seems to be moving in a more positive direction in recent years, said Andrea Goldman, associate professor and vice chair for undergraduate affairs.

“When I arrived fall 2007, our majors were at the highest numbers we’ve had, at around 1,500. As of this fall, we have 830,” Goldman said. “At our lowest, we were down to 700 majors. 830 is an uptick from around four or five years ago.”

Goldman said UCLA’s broader curriculum changes around the financial crisis left the history department strapped for students.

The College of Letters and Science implemented Challenge 45 in 2009, an initiative that refocused attention on core courses in each department and a target of 45 upper-division units. This means departments across UCLA trimmed down their units and altered prerequisites, which consequently changed the requirements for many different majors. History classes once included in a variety of majors – the main way the department brought in prospective students – were removed.

But that was 10 years ago, and historical literacy is all the more necessary a skill for a functioning society. A history degree teaches people advanced critical thinking and research skills necessary to dissect important events in today’s world. Studying history informs students how authorities make decisions and affects our politics, judicial system, businesses and even medical practitioners.

Carla Pestana, chair of the history department, said the study of history is essential to a functioning society.

“The way we learn through the study of history to assess sources of info and documentation to support assertions – those are fundamental skills for functioning in society as an informed citizen,” Pestana said. “The lack of those skills has an impact that is easy to see.”

The department has launched new initiatives to combat the decline in the number of students. It is now easier to declare the history major: a student only needs to take two general education history courses to declare it. In addition, a new history minor has opened up to encourage students who want to pursue a more technical degree while studying history. Quarterly newsletters, yearly conferences for history students and an advisory board made up of history majors have created a sense of community in this tightly knit department.

These changes are great for the students who are in the major already, but they don’t do anything to bring in new students.

There should be more workshops and panels that change the narrative surrounding history and allow history majors to find out about careers, especially considering students are led to believe history isn’t a viable degree for a career.

But history can be just that. For example, Patrick Yu, a third-year history student, said he hopes to go into dentistry and is using his history background to examine the medical field and the 200-year stagnation of dentistry tools.

“Even though stereotypically history majors don’t have the job security, a lot of it has to do not with the major,” he said. “A lot of students don’t have the resources to understand what it means to market themselves and spin the major into the career.”

It might seem like the decline in history students is something that will naturally level out. However, if universities continue to let history students drop like flies, we could end up with more situations similar to UW-Stevens Point and more history departments across the country being defunded, de-staffed and deleted. If we stop caring about a decline in history students, we stop caring about the department’s future.

And if that does happen, there won’t be any history students to help you understand how we got here.

The Quad: Negative effects of racism, discrimination on mental health

Health problems don’t discriminate, but people certainly can.

While race-based discrimination is an extensively researched issue, we seldom discuss an equally pressing effect: its consequences on physiological health. To many, racism may be assumed to be blatant and purposely malicious. However, it can manifest in a number of small ways that build up and ultimately impact an individual’s health negatively.

Evidence demonstrating the effect of racism on mental health has indicated serious discrepancies in mental health outcomes among ethnic groups, such as depression and a general difficulty in recovering from emotional trauma. Post-traumatic stress, hallucinations, depression and anxiety are only a few of the health disorders that may arise. Researchers use the term allostasis to refer to the process of physiological change that occurs due to psychological, physical or social stress.

Vickie M. Mays, a professor in UCLA’s Department of Psychology said racism is often subtle, with microaggressions such as being the only person called on in class to answer the question regarding ethnic minorities. Such instances of less overt racism are more commonly experienced on a daily basis and can become sources of stress.

“As an organism, what you’re trying to do is to be pretty consistent, and stress is something that causes you to go into this state of allostasis,” Mays said.

Just as allostasis works to bring the body back to its consistent state, failure to reach that state can lead to allostatic load, which is when the physiological systems are no longer able to adapt to stressors, thus leading to a variety of health outcomes like high blood pressure, a weakened immune system and increased stress.

Mays said discrimination, being a chronic stressor, disrupts the state of consistency humans aim for, thus causing allostatic load. Therefore, looking at how repeated experiences of allostasis contribute to the body’s ability to fend off stress provides insight into the stressors that discrimination can have on both mental and physiological processes.

When experiencing discrimination, one may begin to ruminate about the event, and being exposed to chronic racism can be associated with the aforementioned physiological effects. These physical outcomes can thus play a part in mental health such as increasing stress levels, impacting self-esteem, increasing feelings of anxiety or depression, and leading to a lack of sleep, Mays said.

Mays and the rest of her team at the BRITE Center for Science, Research and Policy, a center for research focused on eliminating health disparities in traditionally underserved communities, have findings that indicate the effects of discrimination in educational environments.

Some of the center’s research includes current studies regarding discrimination and mental health regarding African-American males between the ages of 18 to 24, as well as investigations on how discrimination affects neuro-cognitive ability.

Through these studies, Mays and her team are able to connect health outcomes related to stress with race-based discrimination. Through her research, Mays said experiences of discrimination can cause the brain to not be able to plan, think and respond in spheres like a school setting, which ultimately disrupts student learning in an area intended to provide equal educational opportunity.

“Think about it: You’re on your way to class and somebody slights you, or in class they slight you, then the next thing you know you have a quiz,” said Mays. “Your mind may have a very difficult time.”

Regardless of the extremity, when instances of discrimination occur, the person experiencing it is often left distressed and their concentration and focus is disrupted. In settings like a classroom, people who experience racism may often find it difficult to focus on classroom tasks, thus impeding on their external activities and interactions.

Gilbert Gee, a professor at UCLA’s Department of Community Health Sciences, said encountering specific stresses like racism can cause an indirect toll on negative coping mechanisms like alcohol use. Gee’s research accounts for a diverse group of ethnic minorities, with a specific interest in studying Asian-American people.

Gee said the model minority stereotype commonly associated with Asian-Americans, has led to a broader generalization within American society that Asian people are not impacted by racism – however, that’s not the case at all. The stereotype oftentimes places extremely unrealistic expectations on Asian-Americans, which can ultimately have a negative impact on an individual’s self-image.

By focusing on Asian-American people and studying the connection between discrimination and health, Gee said he aims to see if the ideas often associated with African-Americans – like health discrepancies and the effects of discrimination – may be generalized as a more universal issue amongst ethnic minorities.

Analyzing the roots of racism and its influence on health can help researchers and the general public alike to combat negative stigmas associated with psychological disorders, Gee said.

“Commonly, we think of discrimination as occurring on the individual level; racial slurs, hate crime those kinds of things, but they are just the tip of the iceberg,” Gee said. “Beneath the surface – in a level that’s much harder to see – is structural racism … and when you think of discrimination and racism as occurring in multiple levels, then the solution would have to occur in multiple levels.”

Reducing acts of discrimination on an interpersonal level, like in the workplace or at schools, can have spillover effects in improving mental health for the community at large. Students play an important role in dismantling and recognizing inequality, as some can be unaware of the way that their previous exposures have influenced their attitudes.

“I think first and foremost on the college campus the students have to realize that you come here with a set of experiences, and sometimes those experiences are not like the lived experiences of other people and so you need to really try to have an openness of other experiences,” Mays said.

At a larger, more institutional level, spillover effects through changes in public policy have also proven to help with dismantling inequality and health disparities due to race based discrimination.

Research done by Douglas Almond, a professor at Columbia, Kenneth Chay, a professor at UC Berkeley and Michael Greenstone, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tracked rates of post neonatal mortality between black and white infants before and after the enactment of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. The findings indicated a widening gap in infant mortality rates between black and white babies before 1965; however post Civil Rights Act, the gap in mortality rates began to reduce, suggesting a connection between public policy and health trends.

Alternative explanations to the research point to changes in public health and social welfare programs as the reducer for mortality rates rather than changes in Civil Rights. However, the research takes into account these program changes, but deems them unviable as the changes in welfare and health programs do not coincide with the mortality rate trends. Ultimately then, it may be possible to account for at least some of these major iniquities through improving public policy.

“On the micro level, the interpersonal level, there are things we can do in terms of fostering environments where microaggressions and things like that are less likely to happen,” Gee said. “(And) if we move all the way up to the policy level, policies that improve civil rights can also have spillover effects on mental health.”