A recent item on Time.com asked Do Black Women Really Want to be Fat?” The post was based on a Op-Ed written for the NYTimes by a black author, Alice Randall, who said: Yep, black women liked being fat because, essentially, their men liked them fat. Time’s answer to this was to get a different black women, Noliwe Rooks from Princeton, to give the typical black obfuscations in answer--that is,...

when it comes to dealing with a problem that is far more rampant in the black community than the white community pretend it is not.
Here is Rooks on the issue:

“…it is important to put her ch{Rooks}aracterizations and generalizations about black women and obesity in a context larger than her own personal health journey. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly one-third of all Americans are currently obese, and another third are seriously overweight. This phenomenon cuts across race, class and gender. Obesity is not just an issue for black women, nor is it only found in black culture.

And “helpfully,” Rooks linked to a CDC Page on the prevalence of Obesity in the U.S. (link below)

But if the issue at hand is rates of black women who are fat, why not link to this CDC page:
http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/templates/content.aspx?ID=6456
on Obesity and African Americans
that finds that
• African American women have the highest rates of being overweight or obese compared to other groups in the U.S. About four out of five African American women are overweight or obese.
• In 2010, African Americans were 1.4 times as likely to be obese as Non- Hispanic Whites.
• In 2010, African American women were 70% more likely to be obese than Non-Hispanic White women.
• In 2007-2010, African American girls were 80% more likely to be overweight than Non-Hispanic White girls.
Yes, that’s right, four out of five black women are overweight or obese and black women are 70% more likely to be obese than white women . When it comes to comparisons of black girls and white girls: blacks are 80% more likely to be obese!

So does it seem reasonable to point AWAY from the serious epidemic of fat that is VERY relational to being black? Why deflect? This is just one of many reasons that the Democrat party has failed society: it’s willingness to not address a problem that is far more of a problem in minority populations than white populations so they can not seem racist.

The we-want-to-feel-good-about-ourselves crowd doesn’t give a shit about solutions. In fact the tired old can’t-get-healthy-food and no-place-to-exercise- in the Bronx crap is hauled out by Missy Rooks as an excuse…excuses which have been debunked by work that shows plenty of healthy food is available in inner city areas and you don’t need a gym to exercise data.

Here is Missy Rooks saying that blacks are victims of their circumstances and if they ONLY had better access to all the nice things white richy riches have they to would be skinny—although she doesn’t ever mention the extreme disparity of fat between black and white women:

By way of an example, last year, my husband and I moved from the decidedly upper-middle class, Princeton, N.J., to a lower-income area in the South Bronx. When we lived in Princeton, we were a five-minute drive and a 15-minute walk from a number of gyms and roughly the same distance from supermarkets and health-food stores. While walking or driving to work, the supermarket or the gym, we would often see residents out walking, jogging or riding bikes. We had the time, access and opportunity to make exercise and healthy eating a consistent part of our lives.
Compare this with the area of the Bronx where we currently live. There are no gyms. And even though there is a supermarket up the street, much of the food readily available there is highly processed. We rarely see anyone out jogging, and the most accessible form of exercise is hiking up the stairs from the subway. As a result, I know firsthand the difference income and neighborhoods make in trying to stay at a healthy weight.

But....Oh, oh…from the NYTimes :

It has become an article of faith among some policy makers and advocates, including Michelle Obama, that poor urban neighborhoods are food deserts, bereft of fresh fruits and vegetables.
But two new studies have found something unexpected. Such neighborhoods not only have more fast food restaurants and convenience stores than more affluent ones, but more grocery stores, supermarkets and full-service restaurants, too. And there is no relationship between the type of food being sold in a neighborhood and obesity among its children and adolescents.

--
Now liberal nutties like Bloomberg that think you can “force people to understand” what is best for them as he recently said about his ban on large drinks with sugar, is wishful thinking borne of liberal ignorance. The ONLY proven way to decrease obesity is by educate before you procreate and to the credit of the befuddled Noliwe Rooks she did mention this in her post:

“Among men, there is no significant relationship between education and obesity, while the less education a woman is the more likely she is to be obese. This is true for white, black and Latino women.”

Again she wants to fool the reader by pretending that less-educated white women are as fat as less-educated black women….which is so NOT true.

But while blacks women who are less educated are fatter than white women with less education the the truth is that the more education a woman has the less likely she is to be very fat.

So culture plays a role in black women being fat, which is no surprise because for white women who have fat friends they are more likely to be fat.
Culture counts.

It is fair to point out the differences between groups in order to examine reasons or solutions or explainers for those differences. It is not fair to say don’t show me those differences or to cover them up in the hope that no one will notice.

Sadly this Missy Rooks thinks more of your tax dollars will end the massive problem of sky-high rates of obesity in black women.
Here Rooks talks about her fat niece gettn’ her skinny on:

“…I know …the difference income and neighborhoods make in trying to stay at a healthy weight.
That said, three years ago, my niece Deborah made a commitment to lose 180 lbs. Mostly, she did it for health reasons. In our family, many of the women are overweight and some have begun to suffer health consequences. Deborah decided she wanted something different for herself, and this past month she reached her goal.
In the process, she shrank from a size 28 down to a size 12. She didn’t have surgery or take pills. She ate well, sweated and ran her way to better health and a lower weight. The key here is that she had the educational level, financial stability and community support to reach her goal. If we want to fully address the problem of obesity in America, we need to FIRST make sure that all women, no matter their education level, income, race or location, have access to the same levels of support, security, education and knowledge that my niece had.

Translation: you skinny white spoiled brats better find time to eat right, exercise after work and work a lot more to pay for black girls 4 to have a nice apartment, a gym membership, a college education, no financial worries, and maybe…just maybe… black women will decide they should get thin in order to help themselves live longer.

We say No. Instead we say send a different message: educate before you procreate.
Pull the plug on telling young black women we will support them soup to nuts for their entire their lives so they should feel free to have babies they can’t support.

Have a baby and you loose support; that should be the message! Tell them to educate before they procreate and give them the incentive to work for those things listed above ..get them for themselves. That is the only proven way to reduce obesity in the black community of women.

This week there was an item in the NYTimes about the fact that government hand outs of high-tech gadgets to poor minority children has actually increased the chances that those kids will sit around wasting time on the computers and smart phones, etc., getting fatter and lowering the grades because all they do with the nice government hand out computers is surf the web for entertainment purposes. Giving people shit rarely makes things better for them unless it comes from within a dedicated family structure--that is parents giving kids food and clothes and college tuition doesn't turn those kids into likely government babies for life but sets them on the path to self-sufficiency.

Missy Rooks and Barack and Michele and that entire wacky take-hard-workers-money-to-buy-shit-for-non-workers set will never get it that treating blacks like children is not good for them in the long run.
NO! enough is enough. It is simple: blacks must decide when it is time to get real and loose weight. You can't force anyone to quit smoking, you can pay them to stop smoking but when the cash goes away the cigs come back. Choice is what matters here.
Then they must decide to do what anyone must do to loose weight: eat better and get off their duffs and exercise. A sidewalk will do and there is plenty of food to buy that is healthy. It boils down to CHOICE. And blacks are not children; they CAN make the right choice. And they can do so without demanding anyone else to pay them to do so. Trust me, you don't have to pay black women to shed weight, they have to WANT to loose weight.
That said, we would favor that local schools open their gyms from 5 to 9 p.m., in winter months to provide warm indoor track to walk laps. Eat right and 30 minutes of walking a day will do the trick for just about all folks.
A whole other post could be dedicated to the issue of what obese women cost the health care system. But for now let's just admit the black women have horrific rates of obesity in this country because as they say: the first step to solving a problem is to admit it exists and how severe it is.

links:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/us/new-digital-divide-seen-in-wasting-...

http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/templates/content.aspx?ID=6456

http://ideas.time.com/2012/05/14/do-black-women-really-want-to-be-fat/

http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

http://www.conservativecommune.com/2012/04/obesity-in-poor-communities-n...

http://www.drudgereportarchive.com/drudge-report-topic/desert%20claim/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/health/research/pairing-of-food-desert...