Black youth spend more time playing video games than other US youth. / Yan Krukov, Pexels
I tend to collect random bits of data which I parse at a later date in my quest to seek enlightenment.
Today’s candidate is a report from the American Heart Association titled 2022 Heart Disease & Stroke Statistical Update Fact Sheet Black Race & Cardiovascular Diseases .
Here are 5 things I learned:
1. The death rate from Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) is highest among Black people compared to other racial and ethnic groups.
2. Most Black men (60%) and Black women (58%) aged 20 and older have CVD.
3. Prevalence of high school students using computers 3 or more hours per day for activities other than school work (like video games or other computer games) was highest among Black students (47.8%), followed by Hispanic students (47.2%), American Indian/ Alaska Native students (44.7%), White students (45.1%), and Asian students (44.4%).
4. Among Black adults 69.9% of males and 78.4% of females were overweight or obese, 38.2% of males and 55.2% of females were obese, and 7.5% of males and 16.3% of females were extremely obese.
5. Among US youth, the incidence rate (per 100 000) of type 2 diabetes was 37.8 for Black youth, compared to 32.8 for American Indian youth, 11.9 for Asian or Pacific Islander youth, 20.9 for Hispanic youth, and 4.5 for White youth
Now I know there are many of us who tend to argue for genetic explanations for such anomalies. I’m skeptical about such arguments because they generally precede lobbying for eugenics. So, I dug deeper and found this insight:
Black adults born in the US had a higher rate of death from cardiovascular diseases and all causes compared to Black adults who were born in other countries…
Our finding that Black individuals who immigrated to the U.S. earlier (less than five years ago) and later (15 years ago and more) died at a lower rate than U.S.-born Black individuals was surprising, and our analysis could not explain this difference…
So, to my opening question, is this “systemic racism”? No, it’s not. I don’t believe such rubbish. I do think though that pussyfooting around questions of obesity because of fear of fat-shaming has real-life consequences. And Black people are disproportionately affected.
