Altima-OG t1_j4qc7z0 wrote on January 17, 2023 at 3:07 PM

Reply to comment by Xolver in New study shows: Black Adults Experienced Early Signs of Brain Aging Faster Than Other Ethnic Minority Groups by PaulHasselbaink

It does actually make sense. Because in those other countries(and you'd have to be specific, because different countries have different factors), people can forced into usually high intensity farm work/manual labor which can offset the obesity, but not the hypertension, as even athletes can suffer from that. Renal failure brought on by lack of preventive care for the poor and working poor is also a problem as well. So lack of preventive care and the ability to take off work to get that care, lack of resources to have a balanced diet and time needed to make good meals, the terrible infrastructure in black neighborhoods that have tainted drinking water. So there are many factors one has to look into that, if one is just looking for confirmation bias to win an Internet argument, rather than what constitutes a focus on the cause and a solution to the problem, then we reach an impasse.

Xolver t1_j4qkmbd wrote on January 17, 2023 at 4:03 PM

Well, not to put too much focus on winning the internet argument, but I did say it makes sense only with really good proof. You wrote about a lot of different things, but not about whether there's good proof institutional racism specifically causes people to get fat. This is r/science, so science me.

ethancole97 t1_j4r7455 wrote on January 17, 2023 at 6:23 PM

Food deserts. Where depending on the racial makeup of a neighborhood access to grocery stores and healthy food is non existent but fast food/convenience stores are easily accessible on foot but getting to a grocery store would require a car or a good enough public transportation system. When you live in an area where walking to McDonald’s is easier than planning a chunk of your day getting to and from the closest grocery store you would probably cut your loses and just eat at McDonald’s.

Xolver t1_j4rjiut wrote on January 17, 2023 at 7:39 PM

I must not be articulating myself very well, although I'm not so sure how I can do better. I'll give it one last go and then if it doesn't work take the L to save everyone some time.

I understand the concept of food deserts. Now, what evidence is there that specifically institutional racism is causing it to occur more often [if it does] for black people, or to go back to the broader question, what evidence is there that institutional racism is causing obesity in the black community?

Put another way, if I were a statistician (and I am not, so give me some leeway in the terminology please), the null hypothesis should be that we don't know what's causing black obesity (or maybe that it's something much more trivial such as personal choice), and the alternative hypothesis should be that institutional racism is causing black obesity. But the null hypothesis is that we don't know, so we should cross a good enough evidentiary threshold to reject the null hypothesis to think about "accepting" our alternative hypothesis (I know we don't rigorously accept the alternative hypothesis in statistics - I'm just trying to pass a barrier here, to say that something should at least go in the direction of convincing us it's specifically institutional racism).