Obesity: Slavery's Legacy?

My most recent reparations article
Obesity, one legacy of slavery?

By: Regina F. Brown 11/14/06

In the article, ‘Obesity prevalent in Southern States, Study’ from October 16, 2006’s Jet Magazine, the research pointed out that people living in the Southern states have a higher prevalence of obesity. I’m sure I’m not the only Ebony/Jet reader that noticed the correlation of obesity prevalence and former slave statehood.

According to the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) report entitled ‘U.S. Obesity trends in Adults from 1991-2001’, the prevalence of obesity among U.S. adults was broken down by population characteristics, including race. Blacks had a disproportionately high occurrence of obesity at 31.1% obesity rate. This compares to an obesity rate of 19.6% for whites and a rate of 23.7 for Hispanics. If the rate is disproportionately high, as it is for African-Americans, the rate is not closely related to the percentage of African-Americans compared to the population as a whole, in fact it is more than double the percentage of African-Americans in the population, 12.8 % in 2004 (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html). The White population comprised 67.4% of the United States in 2004 with Hispanics accounting for 14.1%.

One of the Jet Obesity article’s main points was that poverty increases the chances that a person will be obese. This is partly due to the lack of availability of more nutritious, more expensive foods available in neighborhoods where real supermarkets exist. Almost one-third of African American children lived in poverty in 1999, compared with 27 percent of other minorities and nine percent of non-Hispanic Whites. (http://www.prcd.org/summaries/blacks/blacks.html). The White population comprised 67.4% of the United States in 2004 with Hispanics accounting for 14.1%. So if you live in the South, as 53.6% of black people do, are affected by poverty and also happen to be black, is there a good chance that you will have a higher prevalence of obesity? Is this so, and if so, why?

In ‘Rethinking Weight’ by Amanda Spake the story of the offspring of women who survived the Dutch winter famine of 1944-45 is noted. The article points out that “Babies born to women who suffered severe malnutrition early in their pregnancies tended to have more fat and become obese more readily as adults.” Are these findings exclusive to the Dutch of that year or could these findings, on human beings, be related to the experiences of others, human beings as well.

This is essentially what this paper is all about. Are we humans? Because if we are, and I know we are because if white is human, and I am that also, then black is human because you cannot (no matter how hard they try to beat you in the head with this concept) be half human unless your name is Jesus! If we are, then where is the outrage? Am I the only one outraged, me and Farrakhan? If we are, where are the revolutionaries? All murdered? Ron Brown?

On the United States Department of Veterans Affairs’ website in the section entitled ‘National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in an article called ‘As Survivors Age: Part II’, Yael Danieli, Ph.D. argues that “victimization/trauma” causes a rupture, a possible regression, and a state of being “stuck”, called fixity.” Danieli states, “The Holocaust not only ruptured continuity but also destroyed all the individual’s existing supports. The ensuing pervasive conspiracy of silence between survivors and society including mental health professionals, deprived them and their children of potential supports.’

Dr. Danieli’s article contends that survivors of the Nazi Holocaust suffer from Post Traumatic Stress and pass it to their offspring. It also mentions a study done by Matussek where “survivors in the USA and Israel… have been more successful in coping with their concentration camp past than …in Germany which for them, is still the land of their persecutors.”

Can slavery have predisposed blacks to obesity and other Post Traumatic stress symptoms? If the Nazi Holocaust could have done that to future generations of Jews, then certainly an argument can be made for this assertion. Is obesity more prevalent for blacks living in the South because the South is technically “still the country of their persecutors”? Or even more broadly, is coping with intergenerational Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for African-Americans more difficult in an entire nation which is essentially, “still the country of their persecutors’?

In her new book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing, Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary tackles this most important topic. On inthesetimes.com Dr. Leary is interviewed by Silja J.A. Talvi. Dr. Leary effectively countered the argument that whites often give for ignoring the problems passed down intergenerationally from slavery. The argument is that they weren’t alive then and therefore do not deserve to be blamed or be made to feel guilty about any of the circumstances that occur today in the African-American community because of the existence of the Slavery Holocaust. She states “It’s irrelevant that you weren’t alive during slavery days. I wasn’t there either. But what we as a nation face today has been heavily impacted by our history, whether we’re talking in the gulf between the haves and have-nots; education gaps between white and black children; or the racial disparities in our prisons.” How about the disparities in health problems like obesity? I would further add to her argument the fact that whites as a group derive benefit from inclusion in the upper echelons of the racial hierarchy which exist in this country whether they saw the institution which gave birth (LITERALLY) to this hierarchy with their own two eyes or not.

This is provable statistically with the data that their prevalence toward poverty is less than their normal, statistically expected rate…correlated with percentage of the population they hold. A whopping 67.4% of the U.S. population is white in 2004 (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html), yet only 9% of Non-Hispanic whites live in poverty. It is actually negatively correlated, meaning it would be expected to be 67.4 % of the cases of poverty, ceteris parabis or all things being equal and there’s probably a really interesting reason why the actual rates of white poverty are over 7 times less likely than they should be. If this is true, that whites derive a benefit from their race, how can anyone in good conscience (key) refuse to entertain the concept that the converse of their reality does not also exist?

In the October 16th, 2006 edition of Jet Magazine, ‘Black Plaintiffs Push for Federal Appeal of Slave Reparations Lawsuit in Chicago’ divulged that “lawyers for slave descendents are asking for federal appeals court to revive a landmark reparations case that demands 17 of the nation’s insurers and banks (including JP Morgan Chase & Co., Aetna Inc., Bank of America and Lehman Brothers) publicize and pay for their roles in the country’s slave trade.”

A dollar figure is mentioned for the current day “market value” of the company-owned slaves at $850 million. What about the current day “market value” of the non company-owned slaves? Are only corporate enslavers responsible to remedy their victims?

Given the evidence on multigenerational inheritance of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Nazi Holocaust victims, information discussed in Dr. Leavy’s book, the incidence of disproportionately high levels of obesity and the Dutch study which suggests that malnourishment of a mother can cause obesity in a child it follows that a new outlook on slavery reparations lawsuits should be adopted. We should not be singularly focused in our reparations lawsuits. Corporations….fair game. Individuals…(genealogical research required, possible denied inheritance, DNA tests?) fair game. If they can dig up Jefferson for his currently white descendents to claim their presidential burial plot by alleging relation to his black children, they can dig up anybody. Government…(which enacted laws both condoning and outlawing the Black Holocaust and up until today has not formally even apologized to African-Americans for the crime against humanity that slavery was and that its intergenerational consequences continue to be)…you see the direction in which this is headed.

To even mention a dollar figure associated with the worst crime against humanity that has ever occurred is pointless because there is no dollar figure that can quantify this obstruction of justice, which continues. Until this concept is accepted by reparations advocates and those hell-bent on denying even the prospect of reparations, consideration of reparations to the descendents of slavery will be less than comprehensive in scope.
Visit http://www.prcdc.org/summaries/blacks/blacks.html