Scientific American says telling BBBW to lose weight is racist

To understand the firestorm of criticism over Scientific American's December 28th tweet promoting "The Racist Roots of Fighting Obesity" (Scientific American, 4/6/20), let's start with this.

Nooo, it's not a panel of "real people" who recently appeared as litigants on Judge Judy. Shown in the photo are Toronto-based singer TiKa Simone and four other BBBW (Big Beautiful Black Women) who took part in a photo shoot way back in 2017. 

On Instagram, this photo bore the caption "We are everything the world hates. Fat. Black. Woman. And yet, we exist. Unapologetically and without shame. F*** you. We love on ourselves. [sic]"

Right. We got it. We mustn't "fat-shame" TiKa and her friends or anyone, regardless of race, colour, or creed. But the facts remain unchanged. (1) According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity is a condition that puts adults of any race at an increased risk of severe illness. (2) Black women "have also been identified as the subgroup with the highest body mass index (BMI) in the U.S., with four out of five classified as either 'overweight' or 'obese'."

Fact No. 2 is a direct quote from "The Racist Roots of Fighting Obesity" (Scientific American, Vol. 323, No. 1), authored by Sabrina Strings, an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and Lindo (formerly Linda) Bacon, a self-proclaimed "genderqueer" who serves as an associate nutritionist at the University of California, Davis. 

Apparently the article didn't get wide readership, so two days ago SA posted the Tweet at right to gain some publicity. [Say, that might be an idea for WWW! Ed.]

According to them, [we hope that's the right pronoun. Ed.] the fight against obesity is rooted in racism. They claim that black women "consistently experience weightism in addition to sexism and racism", and the prescribing of "weight loss" has "long since proved to be ineffective." Here are some more excerpts from the article.

The heightened concern about black women's weight reflects the racist stigmatization of their bodies. It also ignores how interrelated social factors impact black women' health. 

Black people, and Black women in particular, face considerable health challenges. Compared with their rates in other racial groups, chronic cardiovascular, inflammatory and metabolic risk factors have been found to be elevated in Black women, even after controlling for behaviors such as smoking, physical exercise or dietary variables.

Many doctors have claimed that Black women’s "excess" weight is the main cause of their poor health outcomes, often without fully testing or diagnosing them. While there has been a massive public health campaign urging fat people to eat right, eat less and lose weight, Black women have been specifically targeted.

Though the heightened concern about their weight is not new, it reflects the racist stigmatization of Black women’s bodies. Nearly three centuries ago scientists studying race argued that African women were especially likely to reach dimensions that the typical European might scorn. 

Many medical practitioners in the late 19th century viewed black women as being destined to die off along with the men of their race because of their presumed inability to control their "animal appetites" -- eating, drinking and fornicating. These presumptions were not backed by scientific data but instead embodied the prevailing racial scientific logic at the time.

Later, some doctors wanted to push Black men to reform their aesthetic preferences. Valorizing voluptuousness in Black women, these physicians claimed, validated their unhealthy diets, behaviors and figures. The idea that weight is the main problem dogging Black women builds on these historically racist ideas and ignores how interrelated social factors impact Black women’s health.

Social determinants have been shown to be more consequential to health than BMI or health behaviors. Though doctors frequently tell fat people that dietary control leading to weight loss is the solution to their health problems, many studies show that the stigma associated with body weight, rather than the body weight itself, is responsible for some adverse health consequences blamed on obesity, including increased mortality risk.

[The essay declares that] black women — regardless of income — frequently experience "weightism" on top of "sexism and racism." From workplace discrimination and poor service at restaurants to rude or objectifying commentary online, the stress of these life experiences contributes to higher rates of chronic mental and physical illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes, depression and anxiety.

[It also cites an opinion piece arguing that] bias against fat people is actually a larger driver of the so-called obesity epidemic than adiposity itself.... Living in racially segregated, high-poverty areas contributes to disease risk for Black women, due to a lack of potable water and higher levels of environmental toxins and air pollution, as well as an abundance of fast-food chains and a dearth of grocery stores offering more nutritious food choices.

The authors conclude that, by "blaming Black women's health conditions on 'obesity'," [doctors and others] are ignoring "critically important sociohistorical factors." Initiatives to help people reduce weight are overwhelmingly unsuccessful."This weight-focused paradigm fails to produce thinner or healthier bodies but succeeds in fostering weight stigma.... The predominant reason Black women get sick is not because they eat the wrong things but because their lives are often stressful and their neighborhoods are often polluted."

So there. BBBW are victims, so stop pointing fingers and making mooing or oinking noises. Later todasy we'll have some reaction from the Twitterverse.