[DonQ]

Because there are inherent racial differences in some diseases (e.g., people of African descent have much lower rates of malaria than people of European descent), the proper comparison for health is not African vs. European extraction but rather comparing African-Americans against people still living in Africa whose ancestors were not enslaved.

[jim35]

Oh, that's brilliant. Therefore, it will never happen.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

>> whose ancestors were not enslaved.

I don't think anyone in the world, least of all Africa, could meet that criterion.

[Republic If You Can Keep It]

Excellent analysis.

To follow their logic, we should compare the life expectancies of West Africans today to that of African Americans today. If the latter is higher than the former, we can conclude that the descendants of slaves, on the whole, have enjoyed better health and thus longer lives than the "non-descendants" whose ancestors never left Africa.

I wonder what that does to their argument.