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Xolver t1_j4qkmbd wrote

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

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.

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ethancole97 t1_j4r7455 wrote

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.

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Xolver t1_j4rjiut wrote

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).

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