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Posted on 10/12/2003 6:20:56 AM PDT by johnny7
October 12, 2003 -- Beverly Blagmon lives in the School Street housing projects in southwest Yonkers, a once-vibrant manufacturing area just north of New York City long mired in unemployment and poverty. Beverly has asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure, rheumatoid arthritis, gout and an enlarged heart, and her blood has a dangerous tendency to clot spontaneously. She is 48, and she had her first heart attack in her late 20's. One of her brothers died of heart failure at 50, and another died of kidney failure at 45, as did a sister who was 35. A young cousin recently died of cancer. In the past three years, at least 11 young people she knows have died, most of them not from gunshot wounds or drug overdoses, but from disease.
Monica, who asked that her last name not be used, moved to the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn from School Street a year ago. She has diabetes, arthritis and asthma. She is overweight, and the pain from a back injury that occurred four years ago makes it hard for her to walk or even bend over a stove. Her elaborately braided hair is tinged with gray. In the past year, six of her friends have died, all of them younger than she is. When asked simple questions about her life -- when she was born, where she grew up, when her three children were born -- Monica answers in short phrases, wiping tears from her eyes. She is 36.
Ebony Fasion, 22, and her friend Dominique Faulk, 17, both former residents of School Street, have asthma. Dominique's cousin Jo-Scama Wontong, 19, still lives in the School Street projects. Jo-Scama has lost so many people she loved to disease and accident recently that whenever she thinks about it, she is stricken with panic. ''My heart beats so fast, and I can't breathe, and there's just death going through my mind the whole time.''
Something is killing America's urban poor, but this is no ordinary epidemic. When diseases like AIDS, measles and polio strike, everyone's symptoms look more or less the same, but not in this case. It is as if the aging process in people like Beverly and Monica were accelerated. Even teenagers are afflicted with numerous health problems, including asthma, diabetes and high blood pressure. Poor urban blacks have the worst health of any ethnic group in America, with the possible exception of Native Americans. Some poor urban Hispanics suffer disproportionately from many health problems, too, although the groups that arrived most recently, like Dominicans, seem to be healthier, on average, than Puerto Ricans who have lived in the United States for many years. It makes you wonder whether there is something deadly in the American experience of urban poverty itself.
The neighborhoods where Beverly, Monica, Ebony, Dominique and Jo-Scama live look like poor urban areas all across the country, with bricked-up abandoned buildings, vacant storefronts, broken sidewalks and empty lots with mangy grass overgrowing the ruins of old cars, machine parts and heaps of garbage. Young men in black nylon skullcaps lurk around the pay-phones on street corners. These neighborhoods are as segregated from the more affluent, white sections of metropolitan New York as any township in South Africa under apartheid. Living in such neighborhoods as southwest Yonkers, central and East Harlem, central Brooklyn and the South Bronx is assumed to predispose the poor to a number of social ills, including drug abuse, truancy and the persistent joblessness that draws young people into a long cycle of crime and incarceration. Now it turns out these neighborhoods could be destroying people's health as well.
There are many different types of disadvantaged neighborhoods in America, but poor urban minority neighborhoods seem to be especially unhealthy. Some of these neighborhoods have the highest mortality rates in the country, but this is not, as many believe, mainly because of drug overdoses and gunshot wounds. It is because of chronic diseases -- mainly diseases of adulthood that are probably not caused by viruses, bacteria or other infections and that include stroke, diabetes, kidney disease, high blood pressure and certain types of cancer.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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All these diseases are related to one thing... OBESITY.
It's America's fault because our "poor" are TOO WELL-FED.
I know the area well. It is home to toilet cleaners and nannies for the democrat liberal elite in neighboring wealthy areas. The only thing that these two groups have in common is that they all vote democrat: First: the poor, badly educated, drug-befuddled, completely exploited blacks and hispanics, too ignorant to even know how enslaved they are....
Secondly their exploiters: the limousine liberals, lawyers, media types, the Clintons, and other left wing rich vermin who live in wealthy neighborhoods of the rest of Westchester County.
You hit the bullseye!!!!
The NY Times missed this obvious point because it is so anti-American that it can never admit that the poor are well fed!!!
Yes... and a dash of VIOLENCE and SLOTH too.
Perhaps...but the media wants to find out: What did Bush know and when did he know it?
It is because of chronic diseases -- mainly diseases of adulthood that are probably not caused by viruses, bacteria or other infections and that include stroke, diabetes, kidney disease, high blood pressure and certain types of cancer.
What a Country! Only the USA "poor" suffers in their old age from chronic overeating and a general lack of exercise. The medical community coins a new word for the disease: Diabesity.
Meanwhile, while the rest of the world's poor die from malnutrition whenever socialists use food as a weapon.
Keep in mind the source: The New York Times.
This is above all a propaganda piece with an agenda. The truth is secondary to the democrat party (Hillary national health care) line.
A perfect analysis. I totally agree with your observations.
Well it is, actually... but a certain brand of whitey. Hint: think latte, soy products, incense, co-ops...
1. "Look at these awful shacks in this part of town! Let's build them nicer places!"
2. "Wow, there's more of them than we thought and this is more expensive than we thought. Let's raise taxes!"
3. "Geez, even in these nice new brick places it looks like a slum because they have no jobs since the economy started shrinking after we raised taxes. Let's give them food stamps!"
4. "Wow, they're hungrier than I thought and there's more of them now. Let's raise taxes!"
5. "Say, they don't seem to want jobs. It must be because they're depressed about being poor. Let's give them money for clothes and entertainment!"
6. "Gosh, there's more of them than before now and they need more (and bigger) clothes. This is more expensive than I thought. Let's raise taxes!"
7. "Hey, where'd all the jobs go? Where'd all the tax-payers go? Why's the entire inner city such a wreck??"
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