Unfortunately, the focus of the class will be "...examines fatness as an area of human difference subject to privilege and discrimination that intersects with other systems of oppression based on gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and ability."
To me, that is a tragedy; an epic waste of an opportunity.
Historically, Black people have struggled with obesity and secondary syndromes like diabetes, high blood pressure, coronary disease, strokes, maternal mortality and so on. These are not trivial issues!
If University of Maryland had given me the task of developing the class, I would have discussed the climate in the parts of Africa where the progenitors of today's African-Americans came from, specifically southern Togo, Benin, Nigeria and western Cameroon. Very humid. Very hot. Grain rots or germinates in storage. Sweet potatoes have limited shelf-life. The only sure way to store calories was to save it as body-fat. It climates where famines are frequent, many people are genetically endowed with something call "the thrifty gene".
I would have discussed the food culture of America Blacks. What is soul-food? What are the least expensive sources of flavor (hint, fats, salt and spices)? What was the cuisine of poor, rural Whites in the south circa 1870?
What are the economics of present-day food distribution? What kinds of foods have the highest profit margins and how does retail theft impact an outlet's ability to deliver low-margin foods and foods with short shelf-life or require special on-shelf treatment or large "footprints"? What are those low-margin and special treatment foods?
I would discuss the exercise culture of second-generation immigrants. Typically, the primary breadwinner (first generation) worked a physically arduous job and collapse on the couch. There was a dearth of roll-models of Dad or Mom going out for a run or kayaking or playing pickle-ball after work. Sadly, Black Americans are trapped at the second generation stage.
I would survey the students in the class on what enablers would be required to make their neighborhoods safe to exercise in. Traffic? Crime? Lack of social support? No parks? Needles, broken glass and other Sharps? Then I would ask them to brainstorm solutions. If nobody has a bicycle, maybe bike-lanes should be rebranded as "running lanes".
I would also delve into the less-tangibles. Medea Benjamin, author of No Free Lunch wrote about the lingering legacy of slavery where Black Cubans found any social cue associated with slavery (imagined or real) to be repulsive. He stated that a Black Cuban would wait 20 minutes in the sun for a bus to show up rather than walk three blocks because "slaves" walked everywhere. Black Cubans would spend three times as much for rice as they would for corn grits because slaves ate corn. How much of Black Americans' aversion to sweating is related to associations of hoeing cotton in mid-summer?
There ARE positives that can be leveraged. Caribbean cultures make extensive use of vegetables in their cooking. Many cities with Black majorities are centers of fusion-cuisine where herbs and spices from many traditions are swirled together to produce novel flavors. There are many fantastic athletes from African countries and they are not all "power" athletes. The world's greatest marathon runners are from Ethiopia and Kenya.
The problem with viewing this issue through the lens of "victimology" is that it disempowers the people with the greatest incentive to make changes.
And that is a wasted opportunity.
The other thing is the amount of processed/junk foods blacks tend to consume vs. other cultures.
ReplyDeleteThat is at least partially due to the high profit margins and long shelf-life of those foods making them economically viable in high cost, high "shrinkage" retail outlets.
DeleteThose foods become the cultural norm, just like "orange drank".