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Why Did Weight Become the Scapegoat for Health Issues?: A Q&A with Sabrina Strings, PhD

By Sabrina Strings — 2020

When the associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine examined current assumptions around body fat, she found them to be overly simplistic and lacking in evidence. For example, there are numerous examples of what the medical establishment calls overweight or obesity being associated with better health outcomes compared to underweight or normal weight. And an examination of 17 million health records revealed that the increased risk of dying from COVID-19 among Black people is not explained by obesity or diabetes. In her book, Fearing the Black Body, Strings shows how slavery and racism have shaped common views of body fat and its health consequences. Her work underscores why it’s imperative that poor health outcomes are traced to their structural and social roots and not blamed on individual choices.

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4 Ways ‘Strong Black Woman Syndrome’ Keeps Us Poor

The Strong Black Women Syndrome demands that Black women never buckle, never feel vulnerable and, most important, never, ever put their own needs above anyone else’s—not their children’s, not their community’s, not the people for whom they work—no matter how detrimental it is to their...

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Basketball Legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Is Helping to Teach STEM Skills to Black and Latino Students

For more than a decade, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has been focused on introducing underserved students to a STEM education, which is science, technology, engineering and math.

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Racism