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Capdavil t1_j4qkbha wrote

Reply to comment by Ok_Lifeguard_6508 in New study shows: Black Adults Experienced Early Signs of Brain Aging Faster Than Other Ethnic Minority Groups by PaulHasselbaink

What are some other potential causes outside racism? The more I study racism the more I see how it’s really just a history of choices made to bar certain groups from accessing things. For example, housing and development discrimination lead a lot of black people to live in areas where there’s no access to grocery stores.

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Ok_Lifeguard_6508 t1_j4rck57 wrote

Biological differences between ethnic groups. It's something you'd want to rule out before you start attributing everything to racism.

Here's a really simple example. My ancestors were all either Scots or Scandinavian (according to one of those DNA tests I did). Because of that I'm at high risk of melanoma. There is no socioeconomic cause for that. It's just an unfortunate biological risk.

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GrumpyBearBank t1_j4rnu0u wrote

Biological factors

Cultural choice factors.

They both feel icky because they both have a racist history. But you do have to consider them.

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azazelcrowley t1_j4vhhoj wrote

Vitamin deficiency is a big one.

"Vitamin D deficiency may accelerate age-related cognitive decline."

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1404477111#:~:text=Vitamin%20D%20is%20an%20important,accelerate%20age%2Drelated%20cognitive%20decline.

"Some people may need more sun exposure because they have darker skin, which takes longer to generate vitamin D."

https://lloydspharmacy.com/blogs/vitamins-and-supplement-advice/vitamin-d-for-skin-types-and-ages#:~:text=Some%20people%20may%20need%20more,is%20more%20sensitive%20to%20burning.

We already know vitamin D deficiency causes exactly this health outcome. To not control for it before declaring "Racism did it" is ridiculous.

Different skin colors didn't arise for no reason. Europeans turned white and East Asians lighter skinned because it's best suited to the environment of the northern hemisphere and the ones who didn't died early and were less fit for survival and so on.

That didn't magically stop being true when we decided the races were equal.

Black people need vitamin D supplements or to ensure their diet has steady sources of it, or to go sunbathing a few times a year, or they're going to end up with a deficiency which causes all kinds of issues including faster brain aging and cognitive decline. That is, unless they live in a sunny clime with low cloud coverage.

This study is like looking at higher skin cancer rates for white people living in africa than black people, and going "It's racism doing it.".

Oh really now. Is it.

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moonfox1000 t1_j4s9n12 wrote

There are plenty of second order effects that may ultimately be caused by racism that would be beneficial to look for. For example, there are large populations of black people in rural areas like Alabama and Mississippi as well as large populations in high-density cities like New York and LA where they are much more likely to experience high levels of air pollution. There are historical reasons why black people would experience higher levels of air pollution, even amongst people living in the same city, but by segmenting the groups like that you can try to find a connection to air pollution and if that is the case, that changes out understanding of the effects of urban planning and we can make actionable changes from that. That to me sounds like a better outcome, then whipping ourselves about how bad racism is, a topic the people who care about that kind of thing are already aware of.

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