- We've known for many years that there are major disparities in stroke incidence and mortality across race ethnic groups. And in particular, black people in the United States have nearly twice the mortality from stroke, and most of this is driven by an increase in stroke incidents, or stroke occurring. So in other words, in the United States, black people are having twice as many strokes as white people. And while we know that this occurs, we know it exists, it's been less clear what the reasons for this are. And more recently we've come to appreciate that these disparities are not biological, they're not driven by some innate genetic or other differences between black people and white people. But they're due to structural differences in our society, what we've come to call structural racism, that certain ways in which society is set up to advantage one group over another, lead to fundamental, underlying problems that make disease, including stroke, more likely to occur among one group or another.