The game goes like this:

A bigoted white person under the guise of friendship tells a black person a mild racist joke. The black person laughs nervously. That the black person laughs gives the bigot license to tell another and more overtly racist joke. Each time the black person laughs, the bigot ups the ante. Each joke being more racist than the last.

Of course at any point in the game, the black person can bail out by saying that he or she was offended. But then, he or she will no doubt be labeled overly sensitive or an angry black by the bigot. And if the black person loses his temper at any point in the game, he still gets labeled.

Of course, another option is that the black person can keep laughing. But this laughing through clenched teeth causes stress, which can lead to heart disease and other ailments. The black person winds up losing again.

Now all this is not to say that friendships can’t be forged from this curious enterprise. But nevertheless, it’s a stressful game and too many people know how it’s played.

I didn’t know this game had a name until a young black man in Nashville, Tenn., told me a few years ago. He said it was called “Taking your temperature.”

Racist poker might be a better name. And it’s just another thing that makes some blacks mistrustful of whites.

When you add racial profiling, harassments, discrimination and other slights of the past and present into the equation, it’s no wonder some blacks are suspicious.

Now some experts are saying this mistrust might be killing some of us, too.

According to a Duke University researcher’s study as reported in a recent USA Today article, blacks who have cynical and mistrustful personalities have higher rates of heart disease. While hostile whites, on the other hand, had no more blood pressure fluctuations than less hostile whites or blacks.

In the article, Duke psychologist James Lane claims that large variations in systolic blood pressure have been linked to the development of heart disease. A suspicious, hostile personality contributes to this condition. And blacks, overall, he said, tend to score higher on tests for such hostility.

“Hostility may be a more important heart disease risk factor for blacks than whites,” Mr. Lane said in the article.

Mr. Lane and study co-author Redford Williams discovered these findings after testing the blood pressure of 152 healthy whites and blacks over a 24-hour period. From the tests they found that the most hostile blacks had a higher systolic blood pressure reading than others in the study.

“Suspicious, cynical blacks may be perceiving more threats around them than whites or other blacks who are less hostile,” Mr. Lane said in the article.

Vickie Mays, a UCLA psychologist, countered that many things that alarm blacks aren’t as innocuous as they may seem to others.

“A white person could walk down the street and see a policeman and think he’s just directing traffic, but an African-American may feel less safe because of what’s happened to him in the past,” Ms. Mays said in the same article.

After reading about this study, I came away feeling unsure about its intent. Is it to scare blacks into being less cynical and mistrustful? Is it asking blacks to ignore those things that make them cynical and mistrustful?

Somehow I have trouble believing that hostility doesn’t adversely affect everyone, both black and white.

Alonzo Weston can be reached

at alonzow@npgco.com.