Obesity, is it racism?

 In the United States, everything that is bad is blamed on racism.  Especially health issues.  And racism of course, is blamed on the history of African slavery and Jim Crow within the U.S.  But what about Britain? Overweight adults - GOV.UK Ethnicity facts and figures (ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk)

• in the year to November 2021, 63.5% of adults (people aged 18 and over) were overweight or living with obesity – up from 62.8% the previous year
• 72.0% of adults from black ethnic groups were overweight or living with obesity – the highest percentage out of all ethnic groups
• 37.5% of adults from the Chinese ethnic group were overweight or living with obesity – the lowest percentage out of all ethnic groups
• compared with the year ending November 2016, the percentage of adults who were overweight or living with obesity went up in the white British ethnic group (from 62.1% to 64.5%), mixed ethnic group (from 53.9% to 59.5%) and 'other' ethnic group (from 58.9% to 66.2%)
• the percentages were broadly similar to those from the year ending November 2016 for all other ethnic groups

Their ethnic census list is even more complicated than the U.S.  Our government continues to break down the country into race categories.

The UK ethnic groups for the Obesity Survey were:

Asian or Asian British

Indian
Pakistani
Bangladeshi
Chinese
Any other Asian background

Black, Black British, Caribbean or African

Caribbean
African
Any other Black, Black British, or Caribbean background

Mixed or multiple ethnic groups

White and Black Caribbean
White and Black African
White and Asian
Any other Mixed or multiple ethnic background

White

English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British
Irish
Gypsy or Irish Traveller
Roma
Any other White background

Other ethnic group

Arab
Any other ethnic group

In Wales, ‘Welsh’ is the first option in the White category. See the article for how race is recorded in Ireland.

In the USA, obesity is also a problem. 

Obesity in the United States from Statista, Obesity rates U.S. adults by race/ethnicity 2021 | Statista 

 Unless the definition of overweight/obesity is different, it looks like the Brits are fatter than the Americans! The Statista data represent adults who reported having a body mass index (BMI) greater than or equal to 25.0 kg/meters squared.

"Obesity is a present and growing problem in the United States. An astonishing 32 percent of the adult population in the U.S. is now considered obese. Obesity rates can vary substantially by state, with around 41 percent of the adult population in West Virginia reportedly obese, compared to 25 percent of adults in Hawaii. The states with the highest rates of obesity include West Virginia, Kentucky, and Alabama.

Diabetes 

Being overweight and obese can lead to a number of health problems, including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Being overweight or obese is one of the most common causes of type 2 diabetes, a condition in which the body does not use insulin properly, causing blood sugar levels to rise. It is estimated that just over eight percent of adults in the U.S. have been diagnosed with diabetes. Diabetes is now the eighth leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for three percent of all deaths.

Obesity rate by race/ethnicity

White 31.5%

Black 43.9%

Hispanic 36.7%

Asian/Pacific Islander 13.2%

Native American/Alaskan Indian 38.6%

Other 32.9%

The CDC provides additional information on obese Americans.

• The US obesity prevalence was 41.9% in 2017 – March 2020. (NHANES, 2021)
• From 1999 –2000 through 2017 –March 2020, US obesity prevalence increased from 30.5% to 41.9%. During the same time, the prevalence of severe obesity increased from 4.7% to 9.2%. (NHANES, 2021)
• Obesity-related conditions include heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer. These are among the leading causes of preventable, premature death.
• The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the United States was nearly $173 billion in 2019 dollars. Medical costs for adults who had obesity were $1,861 higher than medical costs for people with healthy weight.

Here's a shocking statistic from CDC:  "Over a ten-year period [1998-2008], the number of states with 40 percent or more of their young adults who were overweight or obese went from 1 to 39." MR_Too_Fat_to_Fight-1.pdf (missionreadiness.org)

Thoughts on diversity

A terrible sight watching the implosion of the rest of the Champlain complex in Surfside, Florida. Reporters have focused many times on the diversity of the resident community, some home owners there for 40 years. It's beautiful. But when they report on flyover country, Trump supporters and political alliances in their big money making stories, they don't comment on the beauty of Finns, Swedes, Germans, English, Irish, Poles, Serbians, Italians, Russians, Ukrainians, Afghans, Egyptians, Lebanese, Israelis, Palestinians, Croatians, Spanish, Welsh or the mosaic of nationalities that make up this great country, IF they are pale or Caucasian. The liberal media only care about skin color. Not culture, families, relationships, skills, not even history--when many of these groups were avowed enemies, yet now are united brothers and sisters under God and flag.

 
The purpose of the media is 1) to make money, and 2) divide and conquer with a dangerous political agenda.

Child murder statistics compared to Covid19

"American children 14 years and younger are more likely to be murdered than to die because of COVID-19, according to data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/03/18/more-children-14-and-under-are-murdered-than-die-of-covid-19/?

That's not a pleasant topic, but their violent deaths also didn't close down the schools. And if you scroll through all the statistics (this article is loaded), it doesn't tell you that children under 5 are in danger of homicide, but it's their parents, not strangers or neighbors. Particularly their mothers and their boyfriends, and it's not guns either. Homicide has drastically gone down in all age groups the last 25 years, but has gone up in that one, and black children are way out of proportion to their population.

Although statistics for women who murder are far lower than men, for homicides involving young children the percentage is very high, and going up the last few decades. No one knows why, but I suspect it's abortion creating a disrespect for life and breaking the mother-child bond.

Collecting My Thoughts: Do black lives matter?

Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) - Race and Ethnicity of Violent Crime Offenders and Arrestees, 2018

Critical race theory and the churches

This is the racist/Marxist target and idea behind critical race theory (CRT). If you are a member of a Christian of Jewish congregation--Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Bible only, non-denominational centered on your pastor, you are the target. If you are ethnically a distant German, Scot, Lebanese, Slovak, Spaniard, Greek, etc., you are a target. If you are ethnically an African American, middle class or higher, and college educated, you are a target. It's Marxism, and it is coming for YOU, especially you males. 

"Critical theory is a Marxist idea developed in postmodernity in which absolutes, objectivity and absolute truth are no longer accepted. Critical theory purports to explain the world in terms of power, and its proponents believe those with the least power have the most moral authority to speak. Power is, therefore, mapped through intersectionality -- race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. The white male heterosexual Christian has the most power and therefore has the least moral authority to speak in society." (Erick Erickson column in Town Hall, March 5) 

You can confess or humble yourself, cower, scrape and bow, or pay big bucks to offer CRT reeducation camps, it won't make any difference, because reconciliation isn't the goal. The intention is never forgive, never offer forgiveness and never have peace. Some liberal churches played with this when it was James Cone and Black liberation theology back in the 70s. It has simply been resurrected.

American Evangelicalism's Critical Theory Problem by Erick Erickson (townhall.com)

Let’s dump the hate crime category

I'd like to see the whole category of "hate crime" removed from the books. Assault, robbery, murder, mayhem and property crime ought to cover it. What if it's two guys fighting over a girl or a motor cycle and their ethnicities are different--someone's going to determine their mind set and decide it's race and not love?

The video of a white liberal attacking a white conservative on a college campus that's in the news today probably doesn't qualify because both are white males. With intersectionality and trans this and that, it's gotten ridiculous. And it appears to be OK to attack anyone wearing a MAGA hat, even a kid. What if a 1/2 black lesbian who wears a MAGA hat while campaigning for Trump attacks a privileged white Hispanic male who is transitioning so he can be on the girls' track team?

Even the stats about hate crimes being on the increase is questionable (aka fake) since many more law enforcement agencies are reporting who didn't in the past. Plus, of those reported, 50% of the offenders were white and over 25% were black, which are not the demographic make up of the country, and it's not reported when the MSM start giving us that preachy, holier than thou sermon they pass off as news these days.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2017

https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-releases-2017-hate-crime-statistics

Diversity, Inclusion, Multiculturalism, Microaggression, Ableism, etc.

It’s a huge industry—diversity and inclusion.  There are special reeducation camps on all college campuses, with sub-groups within departments and student organizations and this has expanded to/within corporations.   I noticed this announcement for Ohio State.  It’s like religious evangelism—in fact, it is a religion, except supported by tax dollars. Ohio State has had such an office/department since 1970—almost 50 years.  It’s almost impossible to untangle the number of staff positions and departments—there is for instance, a Council of Hispanic Organizations (UCHO) and the Hispanic Oversight Committee (HOC) at The Ohio State University. They’ve been publishing a magazine for over 25 years.

D and I essentially exists to convince people to base decisions, culture and lifestyle on how people look.

“The “Check Your Blind Spots” Tour is a series of events in partnership with CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion™. The “Check Your Blind Spots” event aims to give faculty, staff, students and community members the opportunity to learn about unconscious bias, perhaps discover some of their own and become aware of companies doing the same.

By participating, you will be empowered with the knowledge and resources needed to strip yourselves of preexisting biases and better understand the role that you can play in advancing diversity and inclusion within your communities and in your future places of work”

That so-called white privilege

Millions of Americans are designated white by the U.S. Census Bureau that perhaps you, especially on the academic left, have not recognized, such as Asian Indians, Lebanese, Syrians, Armenians, Jordanians, Iraqi, Kurds, Turkish, Egyptians, not just Irish and German ethnicity. Remember this the next time a college instructor hoping to get attention and tenure maligns or tries to "gaslight" white Americans of west or north European ancestry.

And interestingly, many of these "also white" ethnicities have higher incomes than European Americans. The highest is Indian Americans, like our current UN ambassador Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina and daughter of immigrants--their household income is over $107,000, (real U.S. median household income was $59,039 in 2016) whereas my poor Irish Americans are #48 at $64,525. Most of the Indian Americans are very entrepreneurial and focused on education, and most households are married couples. Work, education and marriage--it's a formula that can't be beat. Even Nigerian Americans are above Irish Americans, with a household income of $76,172 and 72.2% of the households are married couples. Census.gov
https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk

 Married couples with children under 18 years of age, according to the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (Table HINC-04), made an average household income of $107,054 in 2013 and a median household income of $85,087. Married couples with NO children under 18 had an average household income of $91,870 in 2013 and a median household income of $70,995. Unmarried couples with children under 18 had an average household income of $65,337 and a median of $50,031. Call me crazy, but I think marriage and children have a positive effect on income and well being. Why do married couples with children do better financially than all others? "Perhaps it is because they are not primarily driven by greed but something quite the opposite: a willingness to make sacrifices so their children may live better lives."

https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/terence-p-jeffrey/income-inequality-married-couples-kids-make-average-107054
 

And Asian Americans?

I was just reading yet another demand for racial equality--actually, I didn't even read it, just passed it over because it’s more black/white hustlers and academics making the demands.The FBI and DoJ statistics are ignored; the marriage rate is ignored.  Why not look at another demographic that does better than whites in all areas?  Asian Americans excel in almost all areas that are tracked by our census and academics--household income, education, health, marriage, lack of poverty, BMI, low crime, etc. I just can't remember a demand by whites or blacks or Hispanics that they should have what Chinese or Japanese or Korean Americans have. Have I just missed those articles?

• Only 10.8% of Asians in America are considered obese, compared with the 33% of whites, 42% of Hispanics and 48% of blacks with a BMI of 30 or higher.

• Asian Americans are a smaller percentage of the population, so perhaps they get left out of the studies, but transgendered are less than .01% and they certainly make the news in health, wealth, celebrity, etc.

And immigrants?  A higher proportion of foreign-born (55%) than native (48%) households were maintained by a married couple (US. census). Among the regions of birth, householders born in Asia (63%) and Oceania (62%) were the most likely to be in a married-couple household. Within Latin America, households with a householder born in Mexico were the most likely to be maintained by a married couple (58%).Marriage is the strongest predictor of childhood poverty and adult crime; it's a much better safety net than anything the gov't provides.

The race-based wealth gap

What happens with employees investing in 401(k)s? The investment behavior of  9,600 Alcoa workers was examined between 2003 and 2010 for racial differences.  Outcome:  Blacks and Hispanics invested differently than whites.

• Black and Hispanic employees were less likely to participate in the plans at all
• minority contributors to the plans chose safer, low-returning assets like money market accounts than riskier fare like stock or bond funds
• minority employees were more likely to make early withdrawals from their accounts, or take loans out against them
• black salaried employees were less likely to participate in the plans than Hispanic or White salaried employees

Yet, at the end of the article, despite showing investing behavior was different,  the author still concluded “it’s important to keep in mind that racial inequality can manifest itself in many different ways, including some with the potential to perpetuate the disparity in our retirement years.”

http://qz.com/343369/racial-disparities-can-be-found-even-in-our-401k-accounts/

The problem with Trump’s charges—no one knows! Not even the government

Here's the problem with Trump's charges on illegal immigrants--the statistics are kept by the federal government. "Of adults arrested for murder, 52.1 percent were black, and 45.5 percent were white." "Of all adults arrested in 2013, 69.6 percent were white, 27.6 percent were black, and 2.9 percent were of other races." You can determine male, female, black, white, adult, juvenile; not ethnicity, not illegal and legal. This is complicated by the fact that "Hispanic" is a made up, meaningless word which excludes the non-Spanish speaking Caribbean peoples like Haitians and Brazil. And it includes those 100% European race from Spain. (Like you see on Univision.)

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-43

Do narrow minded Americans need to travel more to see how others live?

We have travelled outside the U.S.—Ireland, Russia, Italy, Finland, Estonia, Germany, Austria, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Israel (and briefly Canada, but that was just airports). What we saw there in terms of little population groups disliking each other and ethnic battles that dated back for centuries should make Americans feel proud (until the last 6 years) of the way we’ve patched up centuries of ethnic battles.

I think the Lapps (Sami) in Finland have 11 different languages, wander over 4 countries, have special protections like our American Indians, and are generally not well liked by Finns who are a different ethnicity. And among the Sami the reindeer people don’t like the fish people who don’t like the forest people. The Somalis in Finland have a high crime problem among the youth who need to know both Finnish and Swedish in order to get a job and are experiencing discrimination—but were never slaves and have socialized healthcare and free college.

When we shopped in Estonia, the retail clerks were speaking Russian to each other.  Big problems there between native Estonians, and Russians who have lived there for generations—or since WWII. We were pleasantly surprised in Israel, which is another melting pot with Jews, Muslims, Christians and others like Bahai.

In Italy, which hasn’t really been a nation all that long, the light skinned, fair northerners who believe their culture is the only one that matters, look down on the dark skinned, poverty prone southerners.

In Ireland the hatred for the Brits and what they did to them during the famine is still palpable. There seems to be a monument to every battle back to the Scandinavian invaders , most of which we’ve never heard of. Also in Ireland it was the economic boom years when we were there and almost the entire service trade were foreign—Poles, Czech, and other east Europeans whose economy hadn’t yet recovered from Communism—the nannies were head covered Muslims. The Irish wouldn’t take any of those jobs in the tourist industry—except in the rural areas where they were entertainers and historical site managers. Even the restaurant managers were foreign (serving Irish food for the tourists). These people stayed to themselves, had their own churches, clubs, even trades. Meanwhile the Irish were searching for deeper roots with special schools and summer internships in Gaelic language.

The Volga Germans, invited to Russia because of their superior farming skills during Catherine the Great’s reign, are some of the most discriminated against people in Russia, and now its eastern former provinces. They speak a form of old low German, and aren’t welcome in Germany either after 3 centuries since many speak Russian. They do make it in the U.S., however.

The push for diversity and multiculturalism in the U.S. has done the opposite of what those words would seem to mean. And leading the pack in finding irritants among groups is the Obama administration, with appointments like Holder, cheered on by the likes of Sharpton,  filled with poverty and race pimps who fear a loss of their jobs or non-profits if people really were working together for a greater country and the greater good.

Update: Somalis demonstrate at the welfare office in Sweden. 14% of the population in Sweden are immigrants. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn8sdVIECo0

Life expectancy at 75, or why are Hispanics living longer?

Bob senior (b. 1913) and sons shortly before his death at 93.

Life expectancy is usually given for birth year, but you can also figure it from current age. Hispanics in the U.S. have the highest life expectancy, then white non-Hispanic, then black non-Hispanic. This applies at birth and ages 65 and 75. So something other than income and government benefits is at work. Those in the upper ranges are all pre-War on Poverty and pre-126 wealth transfer programs. Based on the CDC figures, I think I’ll go with my Mom and Dad’s ages—88 and 89. My two grandfathers were around 93.  My husband’s father was 93.

 http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2011/022.pdf

"Hispanic" is a made up word to refer to people whose families come from a Spanish speaking country--Cuba, Mexico, South America (not sure if Brazilians are called Hispanic), etc. Generally, they are of European ancestry with a mix of Indian.

Divorce rates are lower; marriage rates are higher for Hispanic households. Hispanics are less likely to co-habit. Living together without marriage does not provide the health and wealth benefits of marriage. If it is an inter-ethnic marriage, those figures hold. Hispanic families are more likely to attend church than other groups. All these factors affect health (and wealth). However, more education = higher divorce rate. Since 2001 the largest minority in the U.S. population, Hispanics now have the highest college enrollment rate for freshmen since 2012, Will we see a lower life expectancy as they take on the culture of the majority?

http://www.gallup.com/poll/17404/Where-Hispanic-Americans-Stand-Religion-Politics.aspx

http://www.care2.com/causes/hispanic-college-enrollment-rate-is-higher-than-white-enrollment.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/sunday-review/why-everyone-seems-to-have-cancer.html

http://hispanics.barna.org/hispanic-priorities-marriage-family-and-youth/

Children who are poor

“Children living in single female-headed families are especially prone to poverty. In 2013 a child living in a single female-headed family was nearly five times more likely to be poor than a child living in a married-couple family. In 2013, among all children living in single female-headed families, 45.8% were poor. In contrast, among children living in married-couple families, 9.5% were poor.

The increased share of children who live in single female-headed families has contributed to the high overall child poverty rate. In 2013, one quarter (25.0%) of children were living in single female-headed families, more than double the share who lived in such families
when the overall child poverty rate was at a historical low (1969). Among all poor children, nearly six in ten (58.7%) were living in single female-headed families in 2013.

In 2013, 38.0% of black children were poor (4.2 million), compared to 30.0% of Hispanic children (5.3 million) and 10.1% of non-Hispanic white children (3.8 million).  Among children living in single female-headed families, more than half of black children (54.0%) and Hispanic children (52.3%) were poor; in contrast, one-third of non-Hispanic white children (33.6%) were poor.

The poverty rate among Hispanic children who live in married-couple families (19.9%) was above that of black children (16.8%), and four times that of non-Hispanic white children (4.9%) who live in  such  families.  Contributing to the high rate of overall black child poverty is the large share of black children who live in single female-headed families (54.0%) compared to Hispanic children (30.1%) or non-Hispanic white children (15.7%).”

Poverty in the United States

At the bus stop on Kenny Road

The group waiting at the suburban bus stop on Kenny Road was the picture of American diversity. We don't have very good public transportation in Columbus, so I'm guessing this bus was going somewhere near the OSU campus or downtown. Without my naming gender or ethnicity, I'll just say that some were listening to music nodding their heads (at least you don't need boomboxes anymore), some were talking animatedly with their hands, one was leaning out into the street to see where the bus was, and one was sitting on the ground quietly reading a book--a real book, a print on paper book.

The one reading a book was Asian--don't know if he was Japanese or Chinese or Indonesian or Korean. But I think he is a good example of why Asian immigrants do so well in the United States. There are only 20,000 genes in the human body, and all groups are 99.9% the same in make-up, but there seems to be something about the free market and the mix if genes in Asians that works very effectively. Maybe the ones wanting hand-outs and government control of their lives stayed in the old country, I don't know, but when I look around my neighborhood, there is no shortage of small, family run businesses owned by Asian immigrants.

Ethnicity trumps everything

Ethnicity trumps nationality, religion, culture, politics, language, gender, wealth, politics, education, you name it. Scratch the surface of any national problem and you'll turn up ethnicity, whether it's Northern Ireland or Bosnia or Iraq/Iran. I won't start another blog on this topic, but I could. I'll just comment from time to time. I've maxed out my 5,000 subject headings Blogger allows, so I can't create something to keep them all together. But here's my first.

The Koran says nothing about female circumcision--the mutilation of female clitoris so there is no sexual sensation. The custom predates Islam. However, in Africa it is followed "religiously" by black African Muslims. Jeffrey Tayler observes in "An Angry Wind" that even very liberal, educated, upper caste African Muslims supported the circumcision of all women for fear they would “go wild.” I suppose they mean they might become westernized and demand some rights like driving a car, employment, or wearing revealing clothes. You might call that their culture, but I choose to say ethnicity trumps culture, because educated, health conscious, liberal African Muslims (it has contributed to the spread of AIDS and various other health problems) are a subculture too.

HT 7th decade thoughts

The Kirwin Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity

I've been looking through the programming, publications and propaganda put out by the Kirwin Institute here at Ohio State University in Columbus and find nothing but hopelessness, divisiveness, anger, and hatred. Why are we employing people to constantly be stirring the pot? Were there not enough academics in the Black Studies, Women Studies, Social Work, Public Health, etc. departments to do this? I read one heart breaking piece on the black women, forgotten, being pulled out of the Anthony Sowell property in Cleveland a year ago. No mention that the killer was a black man--just condemnation of a racist society that cares so little when a black woman disappears. No mention that a few had never been reported missing by their families.

Some samples, just in case anything were resolved, to continue the employment of the staff:

Social justice issues are never static and new challenges and issues are constantly emerging [so we can keep our grant money flowing?].

In addition to our core research areas, the Institute has several emerging research initiatives that are responsive to new issues that have profound impacts on racial and ethnic groups. . . Our work operates on the premise that opportunities exist in a complex web of interdependent factors, and that to alleviate inequities in any single area, we must first consider the entire structure that supports these inequities. [We're on a roll--let's see how far we can go with this web!]

Inequality has a geographic footprint. We have pioneered the use of maps to communicate the history and presence of discriminatory and exclusionary policies that spatially segregate people [Let's draw in academics from geography and urban planning.]

You get the idea. This is a funding scheme that will never end.

A conversation about race

A conversation about race is a 58 minute documentary by film maker, Craig Bodeker, who spent 10 years abroad living and working in different cultures who then became aware of disconnects and double standards when it came to white citizens of the United States. So he made a documentary about race, and asked some basic questions.

Why do white students score better than black students on standardized tests?
Why is the NBA nearly 90% black?
Have you ever been "racist?
Are whites better at anything than blacks?
Do blacks commit more crimes than whites?
Can you name a public figure who is "racist"?
Can you give an example of the racism you see in your daily life?
Did Native Americans ever go to war against each other?
How do you feel about immigration from Mexico?

The double standard quickly becomes apparent, as does the teaching about racism in our schools and curricula.

This would be a good film to show students, about age 14-25--or at least their teachers. No one is made to look foolish in this film; all interviewees are treated respectfully, even when you as the viewer and interviewer immediately can see the flaws in their arguments. Particularly, the beautiful blonde. Somehow, you just hope she will catch on she‘s in quick sand, but she never does. Many ethnicities are interviewed.

The film can be purchased or viewed on line.

Chavez blame game

I won't be reading his book, the one Obama accepted as a gift after listening to a despot denigrate his country for 50 minutes. Curiosity seeker-buyers have pushed it to the top of the Amazon list. Man, does this guy know how to market, or what? Too bad his politics aren't democracy and capitalism. I'm sure he's more than happy to take the profits and store them out of his country. The book appears to blame Latin America's failures on white Europeans. So what is Chavez' ethnicity? According to one census account I read (for 2000) Venezuela is 34% mulatto (African European mix), 10% black, 21% white, 34% mestizo (European Indian mix) and 2% Indian. Now, in the United States that would mean 44% black, 21% white, and 36% Indian. Also, the Venezuelans have long played loosey goosey with their own racial designations--according to the report I read (sorry I didn't note the link--I usually do). Looking at Chavez, who in photos appears to be darker than Obama, I'm guessing he's part mestizo and part mulatto, which would make him a big part European, right? So we've got one big boss, the son of a white teenager who had an affair with an older married African, hobnobbing with another big boss ridiculing his own ancestry. Where are their manners? It's not nice to dis your mama. Or your country.

Colored people

That was an OK, acceptable term when I was young. Versions of it still are. I frequently see terms like "people of color" and "communities of color." Odd that you can use the noun in a round about way to modify, but not the adjective "colored." Then there was NOLA Mayor Nagin talking about his "chocolate city," as a way to send a message about who was going to be welcome in the rebuilding. Saturday I read in the paper that we in Columbus will be treated to "the Chocolate Nutcracker." Isn't this getting a bit silly?

Hearing about the tribal killings in Kenya last year instigated by the followers of Odinga, Obama's cousin, and the genocide in Rwanda based on tribe, you see that color isn't the great divide we think it is. The Germans and the Jews were the same color; the Irish Catholics and Protestants were the same color; the Hutus and Tutsis were the same color. In Darfur you have Arab Africans killing black Africans but they are the same religion. Trying to google this topic is slogging through a swamp that wants to blame everything from 19th century imperialism to Bill Clinton to ancient tribal practices. I think it proves even sane, well educated people who have been living side by side for years in cooperation and understanding can be whiplashed into a frenzy of hatred by clever leaders. And it starts with word games.

3753

Minorities hit hard by subprime loans

is the headline of USAToday's latest article on how the poor and minorities are victimized in the U.S.A. It really makes you wonder if the journalists learned anything else in college! A closer look at the middle paragraphs:

• Minority home buyers helped fuel the housing boom--49% of the increase between 1995-2005. [Note that this trend of "empowering" minorities by burdening them with impossible debt began under Clinton, and any attempt to reverse it has brought condemnation on Bush.]
• 73% of high income ($92,000-$152,000) blacks and 70% of high income Hispanics had subprime loans, compared to 17% whites.
• Lenders were supported by politicians and "community leaders" eager to promote minority home ownership.
• When Illinois (Cook Co.) tried to establish credit counseling programs for new minority buyers by targeting ZIP codes, the program was pulled as being "racist".
• Access became a buzz word at the expense of sound lending policies.
• Buyers/borrowers with poor credit or low salaries who wanted a cheap deal is a large part of the problem.
• Investigation by a counseling group found 9% of those in trouble were victims of fraud; the rest was poor judgement and poor financial skills.
• Rather than focus on the borrowers' poor financial skills, it appears that new regulations and programs will pounce on predatory lenders.
• Government investigations of charges even before the current problem came to light showed a "good chunk" [not my term] of higher loan cost is attributed to borrower's income, not to race or ethnicity.

But this is America, where nothing happens if it isn't about poverty, race, gender or disability.

No one wants to be reminded, but here's what it took in 1968 to get a home mortgage (our third home): the monthly PMI didn't exceed one-third of the husband's income; there were married parents/in-laws to chip in on the down payment to help a young couple; most mortgages were for 20 years; typical mortgage rate was around 6.5%; the average home and what owners expected was smaller and less grand; a typical applicant for a mortgage wasn't also paying for a leased a car, or a cable bill, monthly broadband, or a cell phone bill, nor did they eat out 2 or 3 times a week and take vacations at resort spots.

Yes, I know it sounds terribly fusty and old fashioned back in the old days when the state and federal governments weren't our foster parents, overseers and field bosses, but that's just how it was.