Obesity: The Correlation Between Race, Class, and Health

Recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the correlation between race, class, and health. My interest it these correlations probably stem from the courses I am taking this semester, which include: Urban Community Health, A Health Equity Internship, Organic Chemistry, and African American History. I recently discovered that obesity is extremely prevalent in Memphis, and I couldn’t help but wonder, why? While there are numerous explanations, in this blog post, I intend to outline a discussion about the relationship between race, socioeconomics and obesity.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), compared with whites, African Americans have a 51% higher obesity rate. This statistic was mind-boggling. However, I believe that statistics can be deceiving, therefor I think that multiple questions should be asked such as what is the statistic trying to tell us? Is it prompting readers to believe that blacks are more prone to obesity? While I think that this may be what the statistic implies, I find it problematic because blacks are not solely more genetically predisposed to obesity. By looking at the social determinates of health, such as access to healthy food, culture, and class, it becomes clear that genetics are not the sole cause of obesity.

Lack of access to healthy food, and lack of time due to straining work hours and low-paying jobs make it much more difficult for an individual of any race to maintain a healthy weight. Pockets of Memphis are classified as Urban Food Desserts. What is an Urban Food Dessert? According to the American Nutrition Association, ”Food deserts are defined as parts of the country vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas. This is largely due to a lack of grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and healthy food providers.” Where food desserts exist, obesity and hunger often coexist. What explains this seeming dichotomy? When individuals lack access to healthy food, they often experience nutrient deficiencies. This explains why obese individuals are often actually the hungriest, nutritionally speaking.

Memphis was recently named “America’s Hungriest City”, according to the Business Insider. Almost 13% of the states census tracks are considered urban food desserts. Discovering that Memphis is one of the leading cities of obesity and hunger was disheartening. But it also means that Memphis is a living laboratory, eager to be utilized by students such as myself who are interested in learning more about the correlations between race, socioeconomic status, and health.

Works Cited

"A Look Inside Food Deserts." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 24 Sept. 2012. Web. 31 Oct. 2013. <http://www.cdc.gov/features/fooddeserts/>.

"10 American Food Deserts Where It Is Impossible To Eat Healthily." Business Insider. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Oct. 2013. <http://www.businessinsider.com/food-deserts-urban-2011-10>.

"USDA Defines Food Deserts | American Nutrition Association." USDA Defines Food Deserts | American Nutrition Association. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Oct. 2013. <http://americannutritionassociation.org/newsletter/usda-defines-food-deserts>.

“Accidental Racist”

(You can listen to the song here.)

Last semester in Professor McKinney’s Civil Rights Movement class, we discussed the song “Accidental Racist”, as it pertained to many of the topics relevant to our course, particularly prevailing racism within our society and the Master Narrative. I decided to bring it up again with this class because we are currently studying some of the same ideas and I think that some of you may have some interesting thoughts on it.

One of my main criticisms of this song is that it continually reinforces the Master Narrative. First, it portrays these two men in a very stereotypical fashion – Brad Paisley is “a typical white Southerner” in a cowboy hat and confederate flag t-shirt, and LL Cool J is the “average black man” in saggy jeans and gold chains. Maintaining these stereotypes only serves to reinforce the Master Narrative ideal that all whites are the same and all blacks are the same, when this is obviously not the case. Also, defending the Confederate flag simply as Southern heritage completely eliminates the idea of black people as Southerners. The Master Narrative is further perpetuated with lines like “RIP Robert E. Lee, but I’ve gotta thank Abraham Lincoln for freeing me…” This makes it sound as though Abe Lincoln freed the slaves all by himself out of the goodness of his heart, and deserves endless praise for it.

Secondly, I dislike the manner in which Brad Paisley discusses his own experiences with racism. He comes across as somewhat callous and defensive, as though he feels that having to justify his accidental racism is a burden to him. In the lines, “I’m proud of where I’m from but not everything we’ve done/And it ain’t like you and me can re-write history/Our generation didn’t start this nation…” Paisley glosses over generations of slavery and oppression towards African Americans by inserting a euphemistic “We’ve done some things I’m not proud of” line. He also appears to be saying that, because he was not directly responsible for the treatment of blacks in the past, he feels no responsibility to improve racial tensions today. As we have learned, it takes an overwhelming amount of people to illicit real racial change (despite what the Master Narrative tells us), and therefore everyone is responsible for eliminating racism.

Lastly, “Accidental Racist” presents the notion that the only way we will ever reach racial equality is by forgetting the past entirely. The lyrics say things like, “The past is the past, you feel me”, “Let bygones be bygones”, and the ridiculous “If you don’t judge my gold chains, I’ll forget the iron chains.” It is as if simply ignoring generations of enslavement can completely fix all of the problems we face as a society today. This is obviously misleading - it is incredibly important to learn about our country’s history so that it doesn’t someday repeat itself.

On one hand, "Accidental Racist" has made a multitude of people think and talk about what race means to them and how it affects their lives - this is a positive step in the right direction. Unfortunately, the idea was not well executed; the song has received more negative feedback than positive due to its ignorant lyrics and notions, which are "accidentally racist" themselves.

Symbols in African American History

In a book Policy Paradox by Deborah Stone that I read for my public policy class we discussed the idea of symbols in politics. There was a story that was printed in the New York Times called “In Noose, Many see a New Trial on Race” where in 2007 several nooses were left anonymously around the New York area. They were left in various places such as a doorknob of a black professor’s office, a police stations locker room, a sanitation department garage, a highway department yard and a construction site. These places were where there was conflict over hiring and promoting a person of color. The nooses were a representation of terrorizing black people and trying to keep them in their place. “In the U.S., a noose is more than a piece of rope. It is a symbol that tells a story or rather different stories to different audiences” (Stone 157). To me it symbolizes that there is still an idea of racial hierarchy in America and that people struggle with the concept of blacks in power. America obviously still have not grasp the concept of equality that has evolved in present day. It is crazy to see that there is still a problem with blacks having power and status in the 20^th century. There will always be racism in America, opinions will always be different but making the racism known an seen with a symbol such as a noose on a black professor’s door in something that should never happen. Regarding class, this story relates to what we are learning about with Jim Crow laws where legal segregation lead to violence and lynching. A noose symbolizes whites wanting blacks to stay in their place, and it is just as prevalent as a threat letter or hate violence. Thus hanging it on a professor’s door or a black professionals offices is another way of saying that they do not belong in that position.

A symbol is anything that stands for something else such as a person, event, a place ect. It’s meaning depends on how people interpret the symbols. In class we have talked about many events that have stood for different ideas in the black community. For example, the black community establishing education for their race is a symbol of them rising out of slavery and giving themselves power. In slavery, singing a song while working in the fields were a symbol of community and having the African Americans come together through the hard times. Its very interesting to look at how the symbols through races haven’t changed and will continue to represent concepts and ideas. 

Paris: A Haven for Escaping Racism

I was browsing NPR's website today after listening to Morning Edition when I came across an older article that caught my eye. It caught my eye with the first word of the title, "Paris". I spent five weeks in Paris this summer taking art history classes, and I take advantage of every opportunity that allows me to reminisce. It wasn't until after I enthusiastically clicked on the article that I read the rest of the title - "Paris Has Been a Haven For African Americans Escaping Racism."
Eleanor Beardsley, the author of this article, emphasizes how Paris has been an escape for African Americans for longer than most of us are aware of. Although there was a mass migration to Paris from the United States during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, the first mass migration was following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Since then, Paris has been a steady save haven for African Americans. She touches upon what we have talked so much about in class, the fact that black soldiers were fighting in the world war for freedom and democracy, two elements of life that they had not experienced in America. Dissatisfied with the living conditions at home, many African American soldiers stayed in Paris or simply returned to Paris after the war.
Not only was Paris a refuge from racism, but it was a city where black musicians, writers, and artists were celebrated. Coming from America, where their talents were not recognized but mocked in forms such as Minstrel shows, Paris had an outlet from African American artists to advance society. When France discovered African American music, their jazz age was taken to the next level. Clubs would fight over African American jazz bands for their weekend shows. Beardsley references a woman by the name of Josephine Baker, the daughter of a housemaid in St. Louis. Taking her musical gifts very seriously, she knew that she had to move outside of the U.S. to pursue her life as a musician. She moved to Paris in 1925, becoming a star attraction in the nightclub scene. She was also awarded the French Legion of Honor medal for fighting in the Resistance. Life was starkly different for Josephine than it was for any black woman in America who had musical talent or a desire to be a part of war resistance.
Beardsley also interviewed an African American professor, James Emanuel, who moved to Paris from North Carolina in the 1960's. He is a well-known writer in France and his students from North Carolina claim that he has not received the recognition that he should have in America. Beardsley questioned whether or not he should have stayed in the United States despite racism, and she received a very honest answer:
"No way. No, no. Again, it's the tragedy that I never can talk about. It was too evil, too vicious. And any country that would tolerate it is a country I can't put my foot in... At last, if America ever solves its racial problem, it will be the greatest country in the world."
To compare the living conditions of African Americans in the United States and Paris during the 20th century is to further reveal the harm done within our nation. This is not a racism that America fed into and succumbed to along with the rest of the world. It is a racism that America created and perpetuated.

Do you have any reactions to the comparison of living conditions between the American South and somewhere like Paris, France?

Incredible Vimeo video

This fifteen minute video was shot in South Memphis. It captures the life of man named Chris Dean who's lived in the area for most of his life. When he was two, he had what seems to have been open heart surgery when he died and came back to life. The cameramen in this video roamed the streets of Memphis for eight weeks to get a glimpse of the poverty-stricken areas of the city. It's an incredible video.

http://vimeo.com/48312847

Slave Breeding

            An article on an upcoming Crosstown Arts event recently caught my attention. While Southern author Margaret Winkle visiting Memphis to discuss her debut novel Wash seemed intriguing, it was the novel’s central theme that I immediately wanted to learn more about—slave breeding and owning a slave (or slaves) solely for that purpose. This controversial subject was briefly mentioned in Johnson’s Soul by Soul as he tended to discuss more about the slave market itself than slaveholders breeding male and female slaves to reproduce slave children. This book about an American Revolution veteran who starts breeding his slave Wash to save his Tennessee plantation from financial ruin isn’t the only controversial matter however—one book review statement saying, “the basic notion of a white Southern woman from a privileged background taking on the voice of an antebellum male slave put out to stud” is as well (Tarkington). The author explains that her reasons for writing a book like this grew from the desire to investigate the slave breeding relationship in the early nineteenth century after hearing reports that her own ancestors may have bred slaves.

            The fact that slaves were reproduced on purpose to increase the assets and wealth of the slave masters baffles me. To a certain extent, I understand that slave owners raped their slaves and forced them to do unthinkable things. But whatever their inexcusable reason why, I never thought in terms of a potential pregnancy as the sole purpose. As slave breeding is studied further though, whether it be through scholarly research or a fictitious novel, more theories emerge about the mind of the white master, as can be seen in Johnson’s Soul by Soul. In spending free time in the future, I look forward to reading Wrinkle’s book and seeing how she portrays one of the worst degrees of chattel slavery. But until then, I encourage anyone who’s free to check out the Wash reading by local actress Jazmin Miller and following discussion moderated by University of Memphis director of African and African American Studies Ladrica Menson-Furr at 430 North Cleveland Street on October 15^th from 6:00pm to 8:00pm.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2013/oct/11/authors-to-appear-in-memphis-with-books-about/

http://www.chapter16.org/content/wash-her-debut-novel-margaret-wrinkle-explores-horrors-slave-breeding-antebellum-tennessee

Hometown Reflections

           Since the beginning of this class, I’ve begun to think more and more about the similarities between the first eighteen years of my life and those of another girl raised in a rural setting, say, about a century ago. I know that race relations have changed tremendously, thankfully, but I’m beginning to wonder about why certain things haven’t seemed to change significantly in my hometown. I’m from a very small village in South Louisiana, where I see the Swamp People at the grocery store and complain about the slow traffic caused by all the John Deere’s on the road, especially this time of year. Unlike most of my high school classmates however, I grew up on a sugarcane plantation. My dad is a farmer, and his dad farmed the same land before. It’s a small operation, a little less than 700 acres, and I love to describe how my family lives alone in the middle of the fields and have the freedom to take the 4-wheelers out whenever or go crawfishin’ in the back. But we don’t actually live alone: two full-time employees of Adolph Farms, Inc. live right down the street. To some in our community, they’re the “field hands”; to me, they’ve always been “Dad’s workers.” Ford and Joe, two older African American men, worked for my grandfather and now my dad, but I couldn’t tell you a thing about them. I also couldn’t tell you about Willa Mae, who I remember living in a house up the road until I was about twelve. She moved into town then. All I know is that she used to babysit my dad and his siblings, and she must be in her eighties now. And Ford and Joe—I couldn’t tell you what the inside of their houses look like, what they like to eat or do, or who their grandchildren are. I couldn’t tell you Willa Mae’s last name, or Ford’s first name. I know nothing about them.

            It may sound like I still live in an area that could easily be taken straight out of the late nineteenth century, and in some cases, I think I do. But as I learn more in this class about the “Mabel” figure or attempts to create human space by African Americans, I try to prove that Napoleonville, Louisiana is still heaven on Earth—a place where only the good parts of our past are preserved. There are just some things that will catch more of my attention from now on. 

Trayvon All Over Again?

OFFICER SHUT UNARMED MAN 10 TIMES

A few weeks ago, in Charlotte, North Carolina, a 24-year old man Jonathan Ferell got into a car accident on an early Saturday morning. New to the area, he crashed accidentally around 2 in the morning. He pulled himself out of the back of his car, and walked a half of a mile to the nearest house to get help. He began "banging on the door viciously", it now being around 2:30 a.m. The woman answered the door, saw him, quickly shut the door and called the police. The man did not threaten her. The man was not carrying a weapon. When police arrived on the scene later, they found him walking the other direction and tased him. When he did not go down, the officer shot him. 10 times. (Actually, they fired 12 shots, but only 10 made their mark.)

The Police Department quickly arrested the officer who shot the man on charges of voluntary manslaughter. He will face trial soon.

The problem that I have with this situation is not the same issue that so many have taken up with the Trayvon case and the verdict against Zimmerman. While the officer obviously should not have shot the man-he was unarmed, and had not threatened anyone or attempted anything, there seems to be much more of a general consensus around this case that the officer was the one in the wrong. Not the young man seeking help. My problem with this is that it happened in the first place. Obviously, there is a blanket, "Racism is wrong" statement to be made. But it goes beyond that. There are so many other factors that make this even worse. The man had just been in a serious car accident, and was most likely injured. Did the officers not notice that? Additionally, at this point it has been close to an hour since the man was in the car accident, and left his car. Are we supposed to believe that no one had passed the car in over an hour, in a populous place like Charlotte, and that the police weren't aware that their was someone missing from the scene of an accident? To reiterate other points, he also, was not armed, and the officers should have been able to tell that. Finally, he was asking for help. With all of these points combined, it makes it clear that this was entirely an issue of race.

What do you guys think about this? Do you think this could gain national attention? Will people care less because the victim is older?

"How Racism Caused the Shutdown"

This article: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/10/09/2730651/how-racism-caused-the-shutdown/   was published two days ago on ThinkProgress, a liberal political news outlet. The article argues that the reason the government shut down is because of polarization of the two political parties-because of racism-which led to the reaction of the Tea Party.

Essentially, the article says that the racism of Southern Democrats during the Civil Rights Movement is the reason the government is shut down right now. To me this argument seems a little far-fetched, even with the rationale provided. The authors argument begins pre-Civil Rights Movement with Democrats in the South advocating for anti-black policies and Northern Democrats focusing more on New Deal deals. Because of the disagreement within the party, Northern Democrats began to vote more like their Republican counterparts in the North. The parties became regionally divided when Southern whites began migrating from the Democratic party when they realized they could no longer achieve their white supremacy goals within the party. Long story short, we have the heavily Southern Republican party of today. As the party becomes more and more conservative, the Tea Party spins off. Led by Ted Cruz, we have the government shut down.

Additionally, the author states that the reason we have the government shutdown because we have a black president. So, a culmination of the fact that a new party was built because people couldn't give up their racist agenda, coupled with the fact that we have a black president-apparently a government shutdown was just BOUND TO HAPPEN.

In response, I believe there are a few things that the author needs to be reminded of. 1) This is not the first time that the government has shut down, but this is our first black president. So obviously this doesn't have an impact. (Additionally, the last time it shut down was also over Healthcare, with a Democratic president in office. Clinton & Gingrich) 2) To say that the sole cause of a huge, complicated governmental issue is race, introduces race where it doesn't need to be. It is often said that issues all become about race once it is brought up in even the slightest aspect. Do you think mentioning race tints issues that otherwise don't need to be? Additionally, do you buy the authors argument? Do you think racism caused the shutdown?

Let's See How Far We've Come

(No, I am not referring to a Matchbox 20 song, apologies if that is what you are now singing.)

In thinking of where I'll be in 12hours, and as an Urban Studies student that will spend the weekend between the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard's Parish, I've been thinking of how New Orleans reacted after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

There is a clip from Tim Wise on white privilege and its mechanism of ‘divide and conquer.’ The part I find the most relevant to my topic is the part in which he discusses the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in St. Bernard Parish, in which the local working class whites failed to recognize they had more in common with the local working class blacks than they did with the white politicians who failed to protect their interest.

I'm sure some of you may have already viewed this in one class or another but here is the clip: (the whole clip is great but feel free to fast-forward to 6:05):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3Xe1kX7Wsc

The fact that the Parrish Council meeting passed an ordinance saying that you can't rent property in St. Bernard to anyone who wasn't a blood relative was too much for me to understand at the time. I simply could not wrap my mind around this ordinance. Yes, there were repercussions afterwards. More cases have been opened in response, but we are still bringing up similar discussion of race relations in the United States. Many have written posts on the response of the Treyvon Martin, which as we all know received not only national coverage but also sparked interest of other countries. So what happens to the local ordinances, laws, and everyday interactions? It’s clear that race relations in the US are not improving, but we get such limited exposure, how are we to measure where we are today?

Here is the Matchbox 20 video just in case you actually want to hear the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9vOwc-6t-8