I Found This Article Unbelievably Overwhelming, But Then I Realized That If They Take Some Responsibility For Their Weight Things Will Improve

Well the part about the article is true, anyway. This morning I noticed a hit to HungryBlues off of a comment on Alas, A Blog, in a discussion of the new public health obsession with obesity:

You have probably said this already somewhere on your blog, Amp, so let me be the second to say: why is this our #1 public health agenda? Why aren’t our federal public health officials working on the issue of infant mortality, for example? We have one of the highest rates of infant mortality of any industrialized country. Why does fat come first? How about the lower life expectancy rates for African Americans, something that Bush has publically acknowledged? You know, it’s not like we don’t know why that is, we know very well that African Americans do not get fair medical treatment. Take a look at this article, Equality in the 1990s would have saved 900 000 black Americans. I think this all fits in with the Republican idoelogy of making all social problems the responsibility of individuals. That way, if you are sick, we can blame you for it. Gross.

I am in total agreement with the comment. But I just came across an article via The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog that presents some related statistics that are utterly chilling. The two quotes of note:

There are nearly two million more black adult women than men in America, stark testimony to how often black men die before their time. With nearly another million black men in prison or the military, the real imbalance is even greater -- a gap of 2.8 million, according to U.S. Census data for 2002. On average, then, there are 26 percent more black women than black men; among whites, women outnumber men by just 8 percent.

And:

"If white men were falling off the grid as rapidly as black men, it would be considered a national crisis," says Raymond Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University in Baltimore and author of "The Warrior Method: A Program for Rearing Black Boys."

"It would be leading all the network news shows," says Jeffries, the spokesman for East Orange and formerly a writer and producer with NBC News in New York. "It would be full-court, around-the- clock coverage on 'the gap' and all its ramifications."

WAKE UP AMERICA!

More excerpts (emphasis added):

Where have all the black men gone?
The Star Ledger
Sunday, May 08, 2005
BY JONATHAN TILOVE

Darryl Jeffries, the spokesman for East Orange, calls his city "the most densely populated community of color in the United States." The Essex County city covers less than four square miles, but it is home to more than 70,000 people. Mostly black. Some Hispanics. A few whites.

But the most salient statistic about East Orange is the number of black men who are not there. Under the age of 18, there are more black boys than girls. Among the adult population, however, there are 37 percent more women than men.

Where are these missing men? Most are dead. Many others are locked up. Some are in the military.

Worse yet, the gender imbalance in East Orange is not some grotesque anomaly. It's a vivid snapshot of a very troubling reality in black America.

There are nearly two million more black adult women than men in America, stark testimony to how often black men die before their time. With nearly another million black men in prison or the military, the real imbalance is even greater -- a gap of 2.8 million, according to U.S. Census data for 2002. On average, then, there are 26 percent more black women than black men; among whites, women outnumber men by just 8 percent.

Perhaps no single statistic so precisely measures the fateful, often fatal, price of being a black man in America, or so powerfully conveys how beset black communities are by the violence and disease that leaves them bereft of brothers, fathers, husbands and sons, and leaves whole communities reeling.

"It just distorts the fabric of African-American life," says Roland Anglin, executive director of the New Jersey Public Policy Research Institute, whose mission is research to improve the quality of life in communities of color. "It's scandalous for us as a society."

In the March/April issue of Health Affairs, Dr. David Satcher, surgeon general under former President Bill Clinton and now the interim president of the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, exposes the core of the problem: Between 1960 and 2000, the disparity between mortality rates for black and white women narrowed while the disparity between the rates for black and white men grew wider.

Exponentially higher homicide and AIDS rates play their part, especially among younger black men. Even more deadly through middle age and beyond are higher rates of cardiovascular disease and cancer.

"The degree of loss and death that people in those communities are experiencing at a young age is just unfathomable," says Arline T. Geronimus of the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan. A few years ago Geronimus led a team of researchers who calculated that in Harlem and Chicago's South Side, two- thirds of black boys and one-third of black girls who reach their 15th birthday would not make 65. . . .

STARTLING STATISTICS
The imbalance between the numbers of black men and women does not exist everywhere. There is no gap to speak of in places with relatively small black populations like Minneapolis, Minn.; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco and San Diego. And Seattle actually has more black men than women.

But it is the rule in communities with large concentrated black populations. There are, for instance, more than 30 percent more black women than men in Baltimore, New Orleans, Chicago and Cleveland, and in smaller cities like Harrisburg, Pa. There are 36 percent more black women than men in New York City, and 37 percent more in Saginaw, Mich., and Philadelphia. In Newark, the figure is 26 percent.

In East Orange, there were more black males under 18 than females in 2000. And yet, there were 29 percent more black women than men in their 20s.

WHAT LIES BENEATH
Still, there are glimmers of hope. The gender gap is in part a reflection of the improved lot of black women, as a consequence of a long-term national commitment to maternal and women's health and a Medicaid program that provided access to care for poor women and children -- access still denied to many poor men. And despite today's bleak realities, mortality rates for black men were actually worse in 1990, at the height of the crack-and-homicide epidemic in America's cities.

The enormous growth of the prison population, meanwhile, is largely the result of recent mandatory sentencing laws -- laws that could be reformed or reversed. And communities like East Orange seem astir with mentorship programs and a new conviction that self-destructive behavior will not be tolerated.

What's missing, many observers believe, is a national will to confront the problem in all its difficult dimensions.

"If white men were falling off the grid as rapidly as black men, it would be considered a national crisis," says Raymond Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University in Baltimore and author of "The Warrior Method: A Program for Rearing Black Boys."

"It would be leading all the network news shows," says Jeffries, the spokesman for East Orange and formerly a writer and producer with NBC News in New York. "It would be full-court, around-the- clock coverage on 'the gap' and all its ramifications."

(READ THE WHOLE THING.)