Removing the Veil: Health Report - You are Dying
A critical analysis into the morbid state of black American health
By Royal Banks, Jessica Leonard, Lindsey Lunsford and Barry Seawright
A critical analysis into the morbid state of black American health
By Royal Banks, Jessica Leonard, Lindsey Lunsford and Barry Seawright
Editor's note: Health care is a concern for all Americans. However, for the black American community it is an issue of extreme importance. Many black Americans are threatened by a multitude of healthcare concerns and challenges such as obesity, STDs and violence. Under the auspices of Dr. Clyde C. Robertson, associate professor of History at Tuskegee University, Tuskegee students probe the precarious state of black American health care in this week’s Removing the Veil:
President Barack Obama made history on March 21, 2010 when the U.S. House of Representatives passed a historic health care bill. Suddenly, every man and woman was entitled to a better means of health care. But does a government-issued bill really guarantee a safe passage towards a better tomorrow?
Overwhelming instances of black obesity, rampant STD infections and violence are the three major causes of death in the black American community. Does this mean black Americans are slothful violent sexual beings? Or, are they being bred by unnatural conditions to do unnatural things?
The black community is saturated with obesity-related diseases from high blood pressure to type-2 diabetes. In Macon County, there are disproportionately high percentages of obesity. In 2008 the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducted a study that listed Alabama as having the highest rate of obesity in the nation. Macon County has one of the highest obesity levels in the state, with a 40.2 percent rate.
Yet, this is not the way it always was.
“In 1965, there were large differences among groups in dietary quality, with whites of high socioeconomic status eating the least healthful diet, as measured by the index, and blacks of low socioeconomic status the most healthful,” as stated by the New England Journal of Medicine in 1996.
So what’s changed? The article states possible factors such as, “the greater market availability of packaged and processed foods; the high cost of fresh fruit, vegetables, and lean cuts of meat.” It is no mystery that in today’s society organic foods are more expensive and less accessible. Blacks of low socioeconomic status cannot afford to pay more for organic foods, leaving them to overindulge in cheaply packaged commercial foods.
Makeishea Lee, a nationally-recognized author, columnist and black health consultant, chronicles the causes of black obesity in her article, “Obesity, Lifestyles and Black Americans — What are the Correlations?”
Lee states, “In [black] neighborhoods, we have these fast food carry-outs on nearly every corner and mini markets that only offer us fried fatty foods laden with sodium.”
The issue of STDs also disproportionately affects the black American community. Joyce Vaughan states in the Louisville HIV and AIDS Examiner, “The main reason to call the statistics disproportional for black Americans is because they account for 12 percent of the U.S. population, but they account for 51 percent of all HIV/AIDS cases diagnosed in 2007.”
These numbers lead only to self destruction. Such a small population can not possibly sustain such large numbers of contraction and illness. The ability to procreate and produce becomes limited as STDs and HIV ravages a race.
Vaughan continues in her article to state, “Fifteen percent of all the teenagers (ages 13-19) in the U.S. are black American, but in 2007 they accounted for 68 percent of new AIDS cases reported.”
The children are the future, but with these numbers, one wonders if there will be a future for African-Americans? Promiscuity, homosexuality, and intravenous drug use are some of the acknowledged culprits for HIV/AIDS. However, rarely do people charge one true perpetrator — poverty. At www.CDC.gov, the organization reports it observes a relationship between higher AIDS rates and lower incomes. Socioeconomic issues influence the rates of HIV among black Americans.
Based upon the previously mentioned statistics, some may reason that for a number of impoverished black children, it is more likely that they will contract HIV/AIDS than go to college. Due to the large infection rates among young black American adults and children, poverty is essentially hindering future generations and in some cases destroying all hopes for tomorrow.
Some children are also being raised in homes that resemble war zones. Domestic violence is also prominent in black America. In 2000 the U.S. Department of Justice stated, “Approximately one in three black American women are abused by a husband or partner in the course of a lifetime.”
This means more and more children are watching their mothers being brutalized. Where the aforementioned is applicable, violence sometimes becomes the norm. Some black American children are being woven into a fabric of co-victimization, which is the process of witnessing crimes of violence towards another individual.
Bambade Shakoor and Deborah Chambers chronicle the adverse effects of co-victimization on black youth in the1991 Journal of the National Medical Association. “They are struggling to cope in a hostile environment over which they have very little control, and the options available lead to drug abuse, violence and poverty.”
In the year 2004, 6,632 black Americans were murdered, according to the Department of Justice FBI Crime Statistics. Putting this in perspective, the year 2004 alone overcompensates for the 3,446 black lynchings that occurred at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan between 1882 and 1965, as archived by Tuskegee University.
For many years, scholars have produced theories explaining black-on-black crime. One scholar, Na’im Akbar, developed the black self destruction theory. In the text Handbook of black American Psychology Akbar states that self-destructive disorders are only a manifestation of the limits society puts on an individual. He continues to say that, “Individuals engage in behaviors that are not only self-destructive but also destructive to the black American community.”
Obesity, STDs and violence are all preventable, yet they still wreak havoc in some black American communities. Which leaves us to ask if the black American race is on the brink of suicide, or genocide?
All three travesties have been directly related to the low socioeconomic status and oppression of a large number of black people. Does extreme poverty create conditions unsuitable for human life? Americans would expect such dastardly conditions to exist only in far off third-world countries. Instead, if they were to look deep, they would find islands of illness, like Tuskegee, right in their own backyards.
If black American adults, especially in Tuskegee, took a moment to gage their surroundings, they might realize that if they escape the bullet, the obesity, and/or the HIV, their children might not be so lucky.
Look forward to more articles by these students at www.thetuskegeenews.com
This selected group of students produce a page worth of articles each month for The Tuskegee News.
President Barack Obama made history on March 21, 2010 when the U.S. House of Representatives passed a historic health care bill. Suddenly, every man and woman was entitled to a better means of health care. But does a government-issued bill really guarantee a safe passage towards a better tomorrow?
Overwhelming instances of black obesity, rampant STD infections and violence are the three major causes of death in the black American community. Does this mean black Americans are slothful violent sexual beings? Or, are they being bred by unnatural conditions to do unnatural things?
The black community is saturated with obesity-related diseases from high blood pressure to type-2 diabetes. In Macon County, there are disproportionately high percentages of obesity. In 2008 the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducted a study that listed Alabama as having the highest rate of obesity in the nation. Macon County has one of the highest obesity levels in the state, with a 40.2 percent rate.
Yet, this is not the way it always was.
“In 1965, there were large differences among groups in dietary quality, with whites of high socioeconomic status eating the least healthful diet, as measured by the index, and blacks of low socioeconomic status the most healthful,” as stated by the New England Journal of Medicine in 1996.
So what’s changed? The article states possible factors such as, “the greater market availability of packaged and processed foods; the high cost of fresh fruit, vegetables, and lean cuts of meat.” It is no mystery that in today’s society organic foods are more expensive and less accessible. Blacks of low socioeconomic status cannot afford to pay more for organic foods, leaving them to overindulge in cheaply packaged commercial foods.
Makeishea Lee, a nationally-recognized author, columnist and black health consultant, chronicles the causes of black obesity in her article, “Obesity, Lifestyles and Black Americans — What are the Correlations?”
Lee states, “In [black] neighborhoods, we have these fast food carry-outs on nearly every corner and mini markets that only offer us fried fatty foods laden with sodium.”
The issue of STDs also disproportionately affects the black American community. Joyce Vaughan states in the Louisville HIV and AIDS Examiner, “The main reason to call the statistics disproportional for black Americans is because they account for 12 percent of the U.S. population, but they account for 51 percent of all HIV/AIDS cases diagnosed in 2007.”
These numbers lead only to self destruction. Such a small population can not possibly sustain such large numbers of contraction and illness. The ability to procreate and produce becomes limited as STDs and HIV ravages a race.
Vaughan continues in her article to state, “Fifteen percent of all the teenagers (ages 13-19) in the U.S. are black American, but in 2007 they accounted for 68 percent of new AIDS cases reported.”
The children are the future, but with these numbers, one wonders if there will be a future for African-Americans? Promiscuity, homosexuality, and intravenous drug use are some of the acknowledged culprits for HIV/AIDS. However, rarely do people charge one true perpetrator — poverty. At www.CDC.gov, the organization reports it observes a relationship between higher AIDS rates and lower incomes. Socioeconomic issues influence the rates of HIV among black Americans.
Based upon the previously mentioned statistics, some may reason that for a number of impoverished black children, it is more likely that they will contract HIV/AIDS than go to college. Due to the large infection rates among young black American adults and children, poverty is essentially hindering future generations and in some cases destroying all hopes for tomorrow.
Some children are also being raised in homes that resemble war zones. Domestic violence is also prominent in black America. In 2000 the U.S. Department of Justice stated, “Approximately one in three black American women are abused by a husband or partner in the course of a lifetime.”
This means more and more children are watching their mothers being brutalized. Where the aforementioned is applicable, violence sometimes becomes the norm. Some black American children are being woven into a fabric of co-victimization, which is the process of witnessing crimes of violence towards another individual.
Bambade Shakoor and Deborah Chambers chronicle the adverse effects of co-victimization on black youth in the1991 Journal of the National Medical Association. “They are struggling to cope in a hostile environment over which they have very little control, and the options available lead to drug abuse, violence and poverty.”
In the year 2004, 6,632 black Americans were murdered, according to the Department of Justice FBI Crime Statistics. Putting this in perspective, the year 2004 alone overcompensates for the 3,446 black lynchings that occurred at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan between 1882 and 1965, as archived by Tuskegee University.
For many years, scholars have produced theories explaining black-on-black crime. One scholar, Na’im Akbar, developed the black self destruction theory. In the text Handbook of black American Psychology Akbar states that self-destructive disorders are only a manifestation of the limits society puts on an individual. He continues to say that, “Individuals engage in behaviors that are not only self-destructive but also destructive to the black American community.”
Obesity, STDs and violence are all preventable, yet they still wreak havoc in some black American communities. Which leaves us to ask if the black American race is on the brink of suicide, or genocide?
All three travesties have been directly related to the low socioeconomic status and oppression of a large number of black people. Does extreme poverty create conditions unsuitable for human life? Americans would expect such dastardly conditions to exist only in far off third-world countries. Instead, if they were to look deep, they would find islands of illness, like Tuskegee, right in their own backyards.
If black American adults, especially in Tuskegee, took a moment to gage their surroundings, they might realize that if they escape the bullet, the obesity, and/or the HIV, their children might not be so lucky.
Look forward to more articles by these students at www.thetuskegeenews.com
This selected group of students produce a page worth of articles each month for The Tuskegee News.
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