It seems like a no-brainer that where there are racial disparities in health/weight among adults, there will also be differences among children. Science Daily reports:
Obesity is twice as common in young American Indian/Native Alaskan children as it is in white and Asian children, according to new research offering the first nationally representative analysis of obesity prevalence among preschool-aged kids in five major racial/ethnic groups.
The analysis also shows that obesity prevalence is higher in Hispanic and black children than it is in whites and Asians.
The research offers evidence that obesity prevalence differs among racial and ethnic groups in the United States in children as young as age 4. This is the first study to include national estimates of obesity prevalence among preschool children who are American Indian/Native Alaskan and Asian.
Overall, an estimated 18.4 percent of 4-year-olds in the United States are considered obese based on measures of their weight relative to their height, according to the study. Read more…
Everyone here is always on the look for diverse media and experiences for children. Thanks to a Google alert, I stumbled upon the blog, American Indians in Children’s Literature, which provides information about American Indians-children’s book reviews, educational curriculum, announcements about traveling exhibitions and more. Learn more…
Naomi Campbell is lashing out again, but this time I think she is on to something about race and beauty:
“You know, the American president may be black, but as a black woman, I am still an exception in this business. I always have to work harder to be treated equally,” she said in a Glamour interview appearing on Monday (local time) in Germany. Read more…
In an interview on NPR’s “Tell Me More,” author Minal Hajratwala explores the many paths of the Indian Diaspora, saying:
I think we do have this idea in the United States that everyone comes here for the American dream. And in fact, my parents didn’t come here for that reason. Read more…
I just read the pediatric obesity journal article in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. I found the way they categorized the children by race kind of interesting. The authors used “recommended guidelines” and cited a 1997 document from the Office of Management and Budget.
Here is a quote from the paper:
“Mothers were allowed to choose more than 1 race designation for their child. These race and ethnicity data were combined to make a single race/ethnicity variable for our analysis. We used an ordered, stepwise process to place each child in 1 of 5 mutually exclusive categories. First, children designated as American Indian/Native Alaskan by their mother were categorized as such whether or not they were also designated as white, black, Hispanic, Asian, or Pacific Islander. Next, children who were designated as Hispanic were categorized as Hispanic regardless of race. Then, children designated as black were categorized as non-Hispanic black. Following that, children designated as Asian were categorized as Asian. Then, children designated as white, and not yet captured by any of the prior 4 categories, were categorized as non-Hispanic white. ”
This sounds like a new version of the “one drop rule” to me. This isn’t a comment on the validity of the study. Hopefully some good will come out of it. I guess I just found it interesting that a new one drop rule is alive and well, federally sanctioned, and used in medical research.
My mother teaches at a tribal college and has her students work on service learning projects to encourage healthy eating and exercise, especially with children. She said the 5 or 6-year-old granddaughter of one of her students is overweight and already has Type 2 diabetes, which is strongly linked to obesity. The kids have atrocious diets — fast food, junk food — and some of her students have a hard time saying “no” to the kids because it’s hard to listen to them cry and they want them to feel loved. Diabetes is already an epidemic on the rez among older adults and young adults. It’s terrifying that children as young as first graders already have adult onset diabetes.
It seems, from all the comments, that the ultimate “good white adoptive parents” are those who adopt older African-American children nationally and all other parents are trying to “justify” their decision to not do so. We, white adoptive parents, all hold different level of racial biases. I can see now why I did or did not make some decisions. It is so mixed up with the very selfish need of “having my child” which is also very linked into white privileges.