June 23, 2023
Is diabetes “racist”? It must be, since more Black than White people have it. The latter must be responsible for it.
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The American Medical Association hasn’t made the connection, yet.
But give it time.
In the meanwhile, the AMA is focused on ignoring one of the primary correlative factors that leads to diabetes — and a host of other serious, chronic illnesses — in everyone: Being seriously overweight.
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As Michael Jackson used to sing, it doesn’t matter if you’re Black or White.
But it does matter, if your Body Mass Index (BMI) is over 29.9 — the threshold defining obesity. If, that is, you don’t want to end up with diabetes, heart disease, or cancer. All of which correlate with being heavy. Irrespective of whether you’re Black or White.
Never mind the medical facts. The AMA’s latest policy paper establishes a “correlation” between the use of the BMI scale as an objective way to identify seriously overweight people — in italics to emphasize it’s the weight of those people that’s medically relevant, not their race — and what it wokishly styles “historical harm.”
As opposed to the actual harm that will be caused to Black people, specifically, by the AMA’s apparent determination to ignore BMI. To make it a kind of offense for doctors — especially white ones — to warn their Black patients (but not White ones) about the well-known correlation between obesity and serious chronic illness.
What they don’t know can hurt them.
For example, COVID — which was a far more serious threat to heavy people than those who had a “healthy” BMI (defined as up to 24.9). A person (black or white) with a BMI over 29.9 was far more likely to die from COVID.
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But, never mind.
It is more important not to hurt the feelings of Black people who are heavyset. There is a nascent movement at the periphery of the LBGTQ+-ZYZ tsunami to add what might be styled “BBphobic” — i.e., Big and Beautiful “phobia” — to the roster of identities that must be respected.
You can see it on the cover of magazines.
For example, Vogue’s decision to put a picture of the morbidly obese singer Lizzo on the cover of its September, 2020 issue. “I am the first big black woman” to be so displayed,” she exulted. “Our time has come.”
But she may have less time left than she imagines.
It’s arguably criminal to tout her or any seriously overweight person as an example rather than a lesson. Thirty years ago, it became unacceptable to show celebrities smoking because it was said it encouraged kids to smoke — and because the correlation between smoking and cancer and other serious, chronic illnesses was well-established.
Thirty years hence, it’s righteous to pretend being fat is healthy. It is styled “body positivity.”
Makes you want to light up a Camel, doesn’t it?
The AMA says that “BMI is based primarily on data collected from previous generations of non-Hispanic White populations,” and that it “loses predictability when applied on the individual level.”
Specifically as regards Black people. Somehow. The “somehow” isn’t explained. Probably for the same reason that there is no explaining the sinking of the Titanic without mentioning the iceberg.
Are Black folks different somehow? Less likely to develop diabetes, heart disease and cancer — all correlated with obesity? Then why is diabetes, heart disease, and cancer more prevalent among blacks? And specifically, among Blacks who have a BMI above the 29.9 threshold defining obesity?
We are not supposed to observe the correlation — irrespective of causation. Irrespective of the actual harm such willful avoidance of pertinent facts is likely to cause Black people. This from the same medicos that insisted that mask mandates served to “mitigate (the) effects of structural racism in schools, including potential deepening of educational inequities.”
The AMA says BMI has been “used for racist exclusion.” Which it defines as health/life insurance companies charging heavy people higher premiums. (Italics, again, to emphasize that the metric is weight — and how it correlates with health, not race.)
I mean, do you want former NJ governor Chris Christie on the cover of Vogue? I’ll pass.
White people with BMIs over 29.9 also get charged more, for the same reason people who have accidents get charged more for car insurance.
The point is that race isn’t the relevant criteria.
Which you’d think a journal devoted to medicine would take pains to acknowledge. The fact that there are proportionately more overweight Black people than White people is not an indictment of White people. Nor does it wish away the problems associated with being too heavy that beset Black people to a greater degree than White people.
“BMI as an imperfect way to measure body fat in multiple groups,” the AMA paper says. But isn’t grouping people racist on the face of it?
Individuals are unhealthy — or overweight — not groups. It does not serve the health of any individual patient to have a doctor who is unwilling to discuss the facts of his patient’s particular condition. To pretend not to see the proverbial elephant in the examination room.
Would the AMA says that seatbelt laws are “racist” because Blacks tend to get more seatbelt tickets than White people?
Wait… That’s probably next.
A.J. Rice is President & CEO of Publius PR, Editor-in-Chief of The Publius National Post, and author of the #1 Amazon bestseller, The Woking Dead: How Society’s Vogue Virus Destroys Our Culture.
Image: Pixabay
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