Why Blacks Are Poor

Warning: If you are overly-sensitive about these types of issues, do not read this web page.

Author's Perspective: The following articles were extracted from several magazine articles, and do not necessarily represent my personal views. African-Americans are not the only group that is suffering economically. Other ethnic groups and some Caucasian-Americans also suffer economically. And, because of problems with the housing market, stock market, the severe recession, increased layoffs, and jobs being moved overseas, the middle class is shrinking, while the number of poor is growing very quickly. Except for the rich, most people are living paycheck to paycheck -- if they're fortunate enough to have a job. In fact, people in other countries all over the world are suffering economically.

The key message here is that most of us suffer economically for the same three reasons: (1) We live beyond our means and fail to take advantage of the money we're making while employed; (2) We lack the knowledge to significantly improve our financial position in life; and, (3) Income inequality between the haves and have-nots is a systemic problem that continues to grow.

However, if you have the drive and the passion to succeed, you can create the opportunity to improve your financial position in life.  Refer to the web links listed on the right side of this web page for web pages for information about  knowledge, wealth, success, purpose in life, and starting a small business -- it may change your life!

Sidebar 1: America became a world power very quickly and created a lot of wealth for many Caucasian-American familes, thanks to having 200 years of free labor (via slavery) to help build the roads, buildings, farms, infrastructure, etc. Unfortunately, African-American families never had the opportunity to build their wealth while America was booming. Until this issue is resolved and a more level playing field is created, there will always be tension between the races. This is not an excuse for why African-Americans are suffering financially, it's just a fact of American History that is rarely spoken, and, needs to be stated.

Sidebar 2: Income inequality has soared to the highest levels since the Great Depression and the recession has done little to reverse the trend, with the top 1 percent of earners taking 93 percent of the income gains in the first full year of the recovery, The New York Times reported in October 2012.

The growing gap between the haves and the have-nots has given rise to anti-Wall Street sentiment and animated the presidential campaign. Now, a growing body of economic research suggests that it might mean lower levels of economic growth and slower job creation in the years ahead, as well.

“Growth becomes more fragile” in countries with high levels of inequality like the United States, said Jonathan D. Ostry of the International Monetary Fund, whose research suggests that the widening disparity since the 1980s might shorten the nation’s economic expansions by as much as a third.

In the United States, since the 1980s, rich households have earned a larger and larger share of overall income. The 1 percent earns about one-sixth of all income and the top 10 percent about half, according to statistics compiled by the respected economists Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics.
The recession seems to have cemented the country’s income and wealth inequality, not reversed it. The top 10 percent earn a larger share of overall income than they have since the 1930s. The earnings of the top 1 percent took a knock during the recession, but have bounced back. In contrast, the average working family’s income has continued to decline through the anemic recovery.
The distribution of wealth has become more concentrated as well. The lower income a family earns, the more wealth they tend to hold in their housing. Housing values have plummeted, and are not expected to recover for years if not decades. At the same time, many bond prices have soared and stock prices have performed well, aiding the upper-income households that tend to hold investments.

At Risk: America’s Poor and Middle Classes
Due to the Great Recession of 2007-2009, the number of poor people has grown exponentially in the United States.  Almost 1 out of every 4 Americans is either poor or at risk of becoming poor! -- that's 75 million people!

A large and growing number of Americans are poor, or at risk of becoming poor, as a result of this recent recession and many will continue to struggle during the recovery, according to a White Paper released by broadcaster Tavis Smiley and the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

Titled “At Risk: America’s Poor During and After the Great Recession,” the White Paper was prepared at Smiley’s request as a factual foundation for the National Poverty Tour conducted last summer by Smiley and Princeton University professor Cornel West.

The White Paper reveals that the number of Americans living in poverty increased sharply during the economic downturn. The Great Recession produced not only high unemployment rates, but also record numbers of long-term unemployment, making it likely that these ranks of the “new poor” and “near poor” will continue to grow.

“Many of the ‘new poor’ are the former middle class,” Smiley noted. “Poor people are not moochers and welfare queens, as some would like you to believe. Our neighbors, colleagues, and families are all struggling. It’s a problem all of us need to solve together, right now.”

“Promoting sustained economic growth while at the same time protecting the well-being of the poor, the near poor, and the new poor is the central challenge for the leaders of the United States,” say White Paper authors Kristin Seefeldt, assistant professor in the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs, and John D. Graham, dean of the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and a former senior official with the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.

They conclude that the Great Recession has inflicted long-lasting damage to individuals, families, and communities and presents vexing challenges for policy makers.

Key White Paper findings include the following:

• The Great Recession left behind the largest number of long-term unemployed people since records were first kept in 1948. More than four million Americans report that they have been unemployed for more than 12 months. Although the official rate of unemployment is declining, much of this apparent progress is attributable to the fact that many adults are giving up on the search for a job. The more telling indicator of an economy’s job-producing performance, the ratio of the number of employed people to the number of working-age adults (the “job-to-people” ratio), has improved only slightly since the Great Recession ended in June 2009. If the long-term unemployed lose their unemployment insurance benefits before the economy produces enough well-paying jobs to approach full employment, the ranks of the “new poor” will steadily swell between now and 2017.
• Poverty has increased significantly. Some 46.2 million Americans lived below the official poverty level in 2010, about 15.1 percent of the population. The number of Americans living in poverty grew by 27 percent between 2006 and 2010, when the U.S. population increased by only 3.3 percent.
• Increases in poverty were greatest among Hispanics and African Americans, children, and households headed by women. Surprisingly, poverty also increased among working-age adults, especially people between ages 18 and 34. States with the highest poverty rates were in the South and Southwest, but states with the largest increases in poverty were scattered across the nation.
• Safety-net programs had a mixed response to the recession. Entitlement programs, such as Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and Unemployment Insurance, responded robustly, but programs that depend on discretionary spending were less effective.
• The Great Recession’s impact on the poor would have been even worse if not for the 2009 stimulus package, which included $250 billion aimed at protecting low-income Americans. But most of the stimulus funds have now been spent.
• Federal deficits are creating pressures to control spending, which may adversely affect the poor. The 2011 debt ceiling legislation and the failure of the congressional “super committee” will trigger spending cuts. While entitlement programs are protected, that could change with some in Congress arguing that national defense deserves a higher priority.
• States face their own fiscal problems, with the stimulus ending and state tax collections lagging. Some are cutting state spending on programs such as Medicaid and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. More are likely to follow suit, especially if the strapped federal government pushes more responsibility to the states.

Note: This White Paper is available online athttp://www.indiana.edu/~spea/pubs/white_paper_at_risk.pdf.

Please Note: Despite all of this grim news, there is hope -- there are solutions to overcoming your financial problems. Refer to the web links on the right side of this web page about wealth, your purpose in life, how to achieve success,  the wealth-health connection and what to do when you lose your job.

Economic Status of African-Americans

Excerpt from Wikipedia

Economically, African Americans have benefited from the advances made during the Civil Rights era, particularly among the educated, but not without the lingering effects of historical marginalization when considered as a whole. The racial disparity in poverty rates has narrowed. The black middle class has grown substantially. In 2000, 47% of African Americans owned their homes. The poverty rate among African Americans has decreased from 26.5% in 1998 to 24.7% in 2004. African Americans are the second largest consumer group in America with a combined buying power of over $892 billioncurrently and likely over $1.1 trillion by 2012. In 2002 African American owned businesses accounted for 1.2 million of the US's 23 million businesses.

In 2004, African American workers had the second-highest median earnings of American minority groups after Asian Americans, and African Americans had the highest level of male-female income parity of all ethnic groups in the United States. Also, among American minority groups, only Asian Americans were more likely to hold white-collar occupations (management, professional, and related fields), and African Americans were no more or less likely than European Americans to work in the service industry. In 2001, over half of African American households of married couples earned $50,000 or more. Although in the same year African Americans were over-represented among the nation's poor, this was directly related to the disproportionate percentage of African American families headed by single women; such families are collectively poorer, regardless of ethnicity.

By 2006, gender continued to be the primary factor in income level, with the median earnings of African American men more than those black and non-black American women overall and in all educational levels. At the same time, among American men, income disparities were significant; the median income of African American men was approximately 76 cents for every dollar of their European American counterparts, although the gap narrowed somewhat with a rise in educational level.

Overall, the median earnings of African American men were 72 cents for every dollar earned of their Asian American counterparts, and $1.17 for every dollar earned by Hispanic men. On the other hand by 2006, among American women with post-secondary education, African American women have made significant advances; the median income of African American women was more than those of their Asian-, European- and Hispanic American counterparts with at least some college education.

African Americans are still underrepresented in government and employment. In 1999, the median income of African American families was $33,255 compared to $53,356 of European Americans. In times of economic hardship for the nation, African Americans suffer disproportionately from job loss and underemployment, with the black underclass being hardest hit. The phrase "last hired and first fired" is reflected in the Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment figures. Nationwide, the October 2008 unemployment rate for African Americans was 11.1%, while the nationwide rate was 6.5%.

The income gap between black and white families is also significant. In 2005, employed blacks earned only 65% of the wages of whites, down from 82% in 1975. The New York Times reported in 2006 that in Queens, New York, the median income among African American families exceeded that of white families, which the newspaper attributed to the growth in the number of two-parent black families. It noted that Queens was the only county with more than 65,000 residents where that was true.

In 1999, the rate of births to unwed African American mothers was estimated by economist Walter E. Williams of George Mason University to be 70%. The poverty rate among single-parent black families was 39.5% in 2005, according to Williams, while it was 9.9% among married-couple black families. Among white families, the comparable rates were 26.4% and 6%.

According to Forbes magazine's "wealthiest American" lists, a 2000 net worth of $800 million dollars made Oprah Winfrey the richest African American of the 20th century; by contrast, the net worth of the 20th century's richest American, Bill Gates, who is of European descent, briefly hit $100 billion in 1999. In Forbes' 2007 list, Gates' net worth decreased to $59 billion while Winfrey's increased to $2.5 billion, making her the world's richest black person. Winfrey is also the first African American to make Business Week's annual list of America's 50 greatest philanthropists. BET founder Bob Johnson was also listed as a billionaire prior to an expensive divorce and as of 2009, had an estimated net worth of $550 million. Winfrey remains the only African American wealthy enough to rank among the country's 400 richest people.

Some black entrepreneurs use their wealth to create new avenues for both African Americans and new opportunities for American business in general. Examples such as Tyler Perry who created new filming studios in Atlanta, Georgia which makes it possible to film movies and television shows outside of California.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Economic Health of Black America

The following areas provide an overview of the economic health of African-Americans compared to other American groups in the United States.

Unemployment: The rate of unemployment is the most widely used indicator for the health of the labor market. In 2009 the unemployment rates for minorities rose 7.2 percentage points from 8.6 percent  to 15.8 percent, and has continued to rise during the past several years.

The unemployment rate for white Americans was 9.2 percent at the end of 2009, up 5 percentage points from December 2007. Asian Americans saw their unemployment rate go up from 3.7 percent to 7.7 percent, increasing two fold during the recession.

Employment: The unemployment rate is an important and useful indicator for the labor market, but people ultimately care most about getting a job. Looking at the employment level, which does not necessarily mirror trends in the unemployment rate, is therefore helpful for understanding how minorities are faring in the economy.

Continuing the trend from 2008, the number of employed persons in the labor force declined significantly in 2009. The decline has been particularly sharp for African Americans, whose employment levels have fallen by 3.9 percent annually. Both Asian Americans and whites saw the number of employed fall by 2.7 percent, while Hispanic employment levels declined by 2.3 percent annually.

Wages: The wages and earnings of those who are employed provide insight into the economic wellbeing of those Americans. As of the third quarter of 2009, Hispanics and African Americans continued to make far less per week than whites or Asian Americans. In the third quarter of 2009, Hispanics’ usual median weekly earnings were $527.13 in 2008 dollars; African Americans’ earnings were $608.33 a week; whites made $753.19 a week; and Asian Americans made $877.22 a week.

Median household income: Median household income is the most comprehensive measure of economic wellbeing. African Americans continued to have the lowest median household income: $34,345 in 2008 dollars. Hispanics’ median household income was $37,913. White Americans had a median income of $55,530 and Asian Americans had a median income of $65,567 in 2008 dollars.

These large gaps in income, with late 2009 Hispanic and African-American household incomes at 65.1 percent of household incomes for white households, are nothing new. In 2001, Hispanic and African-American household incomes were 66.7 percent of white’s incomes.

Poverty: The share of the population below the poverty line, which today is $21,203 for a family of four, reflects the number of households without sufficient income to meet basic needs. Poverty rates among African Americans and Hispanics are more than double the percentage of white Americans and Asian Americans in poverty; 8.6 percent of whites and 11.6 percent of Asian Americans are in poverty, while 24.7 percent of African Americans and 23.2 percent of Latinos are under the poverty line.

Health care: Having health insurance is a crucial component for a family’s financial stability, given rising health care costs and the burden such costs can place on a family. The percentage of those with health insurance varies widely between African Americans, Hispanics, and white Americans. Hispanics have consistently had far lower levels of health coverage than African Americans and whites throughout the decade. In 2008, 30.7 percent of Hispanics did not have health insurance compared to 10.8 percent of whites. This is an improvement from 2007, when 32.1 percent of Hispanics were uninsured.

African Americans’ insurance levels aren’t as dramatically low as Hispanics, but the number of uninsured is still 8.1 percentage points higher than white Americans. In 2008, 18.9 percent of African Americans lacked health insurance.

Retirement: Similarly, planning and saving for retirement can place financial burdens on families. Less than half of African Americans—45.6 percent—had access to employer-based retirement savings. Less than a third of Hispanics—30.3 percent—had employer-based retirement plans.  Whites also saw a decline, with only 56.6 percent having employer-based retirement plans.

Home ownership: Income is only one side of economic wellbeing; homeownership, as the biggest and most widely used assets, is a good place to start in understanding families’ economic security.

The homeownership rate was 46.4 percent for African Americans as of the third quarter of 2009, 48.7 percent for Hispanics, and 75.0 percent for white Americans.

Sources:
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of the Census

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Health Status of African-Americans

Note: It's not a coincidence that many African-Americans (and other ethnic groups) have poor health and very little wealth.  For possible solutions to the wealth issue, readThe Health & Wealth Connection web page.
African Americans continue to have lower life expectancies on average than whites in the United States. Even when adjusted for age, African Americans are 1.6 times more likely to die from one of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States than European Americans. However, there is evidence that this may be changing: by 2003, sex had replaced race as the primary factor in life expectancy in the United States, with African American females expected to live longer than European American males born in that year.
In the same year, the gap in life expectancy between American whites (78.0) and blacks (72.8) had decreased to 5.2 years, reflecting a long term trend of this phenomenon. By 2004, "the trend toward convergence in mortality figures across the major race groups also continued", with white–black gap in life expectancy dropping to five years. The current life expectancy of African Americans as a group is comparable to those of other groups who live in countries with a high Human Development Index.
At the same time, the life expectancy gap is affected by collectively lower access to quality medical care. With no system of universal health care, access to medical care in the U.S. generally is mediated by income level and employment status. As a result, African Americans, who have a disproportionate occurrence of poverty and unemployment as a group, are more often uninsured than non Hispanic whites or Asians. For a great many African Americans, healthcare delivery is limited, or nonexistent. And when they receive healthcare, they are more likely than others in the general population to receive substandard, even injurious medical care. African Americans have a higher prevalence of some chronic health conditions.
African Americans are the American ethnic group most affected by HIV and AIDS according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Black men are six (6) times more likely to have HIV than white men and black women are nearly eighteen (18) times more likely to have HIV than white women. A 2004 "CDC analysis of MSM in five cities found that while only 18 percent of the HIV-infected white men were unaware of their infections, 67 percent of the infected black men were unaware."
It has been estimated that "184,991 adult and adolescent HIV infections [were] diagnosed during 2001–2005" (1). More than 51 percent occurred among blacks than any other race. Between the ages of 25–44 years 62 percent were African Americans. Dr. Robert Janssen (2007) states, "We have rates of HIV/AIDS among blacks in some American cities that are as high as in some countries in Africa". The rate for African Americans with HIV/AIDS in Washington, D.C. is 3 percent, based on cases reported. In a New York Times Article, about 50 percent of AIDS-related deaths were African American woman, which accounted for 25 percent of the city's population.
In many cases there are a higher proportion of black people being tested than any other racial group. Dr. Janssen goes on by saying "We need to do a better job of encouraging African Americans to test. Studies show that approximately one in five black men between the ages 40 to 49 living in the city is HIV-positive, according to the TIMES. Research indicates that African Americans' sexual behavior is no different than any other racial group. Dr. Janssen says "Racial groups tend to have sex with members of their own racial group.
Crime also plays a significant role in the racial gap in life expectancy. A report from theU.S. Department of Justice states "In 2005, homicide victimization rates for blacks were 6 times higher than the rates for whites" and "94% of black victims were killed by blacks."

Why Blacks Remain Poor
Excerpt from Money Magazine article

In 1896, the landmark US Supreme Court ruling, Plessy Vs Ferguson, enforced segregation and created the ‘Separate but Equal’ doctrine and the rise of Jim Crow laws.

This had more than just a ‘moral’ impact, but also an economic one.

An example from the state of Georgia:
“All persons licensed to conduct the business of selling beer or wine…shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within the same room at any time.”

When you restrict the ability to create commerce, or limit it, it affects the population with the lowest income and wealth base the hardest, as it reduces potential clientele and funding.

Couple that with banks and their red-lining practices at the time and the ability for blacks to generate wealth was severely curtailed.

From the Civil War till now, how much has changed economically?

Although there has been ‘progress’ from an individual standpoint, the disparities between blacks and whites, specifically in the economic arena have been persistent.

According to Dr. Claude Anderson, in his book Black Labor, White Wealth:
"…on the eve of the Civil War, records indicated that more than 50 percent of free blacks were paupers; all free blacks collectively held less than one-half of one percent of the nation’s wealth…A century later, in the 1960s, an era considered by many as “great decade for blacks,” more than 55 percent of all the blacks in America were still impoverished and below the poverty line.  And, blacks barely held one percent of the nation’s wealth."

Much of the historical change for blacks in America occurred through legislation that made illegal certain forms of discrimination and racist practices.

However, this legislation did nothing to materially change the effects of years of economic disenfranchisement that occurred through unfair restrictions in the work place as well as in business development.

Affirmative Action, although important, was never intended nor designed to correct disparities caused by slavery and Jim Crow.

Where we are today
According to the Urban League’s State of Black America 2004 Report:

• Fewer than 50% of black families own their own homes, vs. over 70% of whites
• Blacks are denied mortgages and home improvement loans at twice the rate of whites
• Black males mean income is 70% of white males ($16,876 gap), black females mean income is 83% of white counterparts ($6,370 difference) (http://www.nul.org/news/2004/soba.html)
• Blacks are more likely to develop diabetes than any other race (except Native Americans)
• Blacks are less likely to spend their disposable income on healthy foods and books about diet and exercise.

But overall, the report said, in most areas of everyday life, Americans are still divided along racial lines, and economics was listed as the most significant racial disparity. The median wealth for blacks, according to the report, is 10 times less than it is for whites. (http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/bawnews/ulreport407)

Essentially, disparities created by unequal treatment in the past persist today because much of the Civil Rights Movement has not progressed beyond legislative and social issues into the arena of economic empowerment through entrepreneurialism and financial literacy.

In addition, this is a hard area to move into because essentially and broad scale initiatives to truly empower blacks financially creates competition against non-black businesses.

When you have systems in place such as networks and relationships with individuals in certain arena, it dramatically increases your odds for economic success.

Being that blacks have historically been locked out of certain ‘networks’ it further restricts their ability to access information that generates wealth.


The power of wealth
When you have a specific race with such a dramatic disparity in income, you also have a race that will be materially affected by the issues of poverty in America.

In a 2004 article titled Poverty Spreads by CNN Money, they state that the poverty rate of African Americans remained nearly twice the national rate, with 24.4 percent of blacks living below the poverty line in 2003, slightly higher from 24.1 percent a year earlier. (http://money.cnn.com/2004/08/26/news/economy/poverty_survey/)

When you are in poverty, the ability to acquire wealth and escape poverty is terribly difficulty. Check to check living precludes significant savings and investments, which allow you to grow your wealth and protect your future.

You typically acquire bad credit due to unforeseen financial problems occurring, which force you’re to skip payments. Bank loans are at a higher percentage rate, insurance costs are higher, health care is poorer or unaffordable and the educational system in the inner city environment that most poor blacks live in are worse or insufficient.

Even if racism ceased to exist today, the economic disparities caused by racism would still be pervasive and persistent amongst blacks as poverty becomes cyclical.

To truly eliminate or dramatically reduce disparity between blacks and whites, a holistic paradigm change in how our nation addresses the problem must occur.

Solutions to the disparity
The solution to the black disparity in wealth in America is a dramatic change in government policy and in non-profit funding and missions.

Typically, inner-city and African-American centered programs are geared towards good, but ineffective band aid programs that don’t holistically work to elevate the economic condition of blacks.

There need to be more programs that increase home ownership, that increase business ownership, that train on money management and wealth building. Access to cheap capital for business development, and low interest rate loans for mortgages are crucial.

Subtle red lining must be eliminated in insurance and banking practices, and buy here pay here, check cashing, and other businesses that nearly extort inner city residents must be regulated.

In addition, inner city, heavily minority concentrated schools should be teaching economics, business and financial literacy as core principles.

Empowerment zones and economic development grants for indigenous inner city residents should be appropriated from the federal level, and incentives should be increased for businesses that want to re-locate in urban, low income environments.

To truly decrease the economic disparity caused by hundreds of years of economic disenfranchisement and racism, effective, disciplined, and strategically oriented strategies at all facets of American life need to be enacted.

Financial Examples

Investments
When it comes to wealth building, amount, time and rate of return determine levels of wealth. If the typical African American has less to invest, the ultimate return, and the ability to secure a retirement, and leave wealth for children is dramatically decreased.

In the following example, it shows the difference between a thousand dollars invested and five hundred over thirty years.

$1000 at 10% at 30 Yrs – Returns $17,449
$500 at 10% at 30 Yrs – Returns $8,725

The although initially the $1000, which was double the $500 invested by the other investor, was only $500 more, at the end of 30 years, it is $8724 more dollars, although still double, that of the poorer investor. If blacks as a whole have less disposable income to invest, over time the disparity remains statistically even, even though real wealth is dramatically more for the white.

Loans
Although credit problems are pervasive in all races, being that blacks per capita have more poverty and less wealth reserves, they generally as a group have poorer credit, meaning that they have to pay more for the money they borrow.

The following is the difference in interest paid over the life of a Class A mortgage loan, and a poorer credit Class B mortgage loan.

Class A - $100,000 at 6% at 30 Yrs – Interest = $115,838
Class B - $100,000 at 12% at 30 Yrs – Interest = $270,300

The difference is $154,462 or an average of $429 dollars a month. (Calculations courtesy of Quicken Loans)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Impact of Being Born Into a Poor (Black) Family
Excerpt from NY Times magazine article

There are hundreds of examples of poor black people and other poor people rising up out of the depths of being raised in poor families.

So there was a study about being born in a poor household in America that those kids never escape that situation. Now of course because we in America and if as a people are so focused on race the study say forty percent of black children in that situation not only stay poor but dropout of school and have more teen pregnancies.
This study would be a good one and some what disappointing if there were programs in place to put an end to poverty in America as well raising the minimum wage to a living wage. But since that isn’t the case and now the country seems to be closing schools in the inner city and rural areas how will things get better?
This study is an old one and I feel like all these race related economic, residential and educational gap studies seem to be popping up because of Obama. You ask any black person who says since Obama has become president things seem to be looking up for blacks they’ll still tell you there will be people left behind. Being poor is like being really wealthy is becomes a generational thing. The poor black kids have of course poor parents who parents were most likely poor too and so on and so on.
Again this also becomes sad because it starts from education and job opportunities. Just roll through Kansas City on Gilliam Road and then just drive downtown and see big ass building you know were factories that are now just empty. The city is still looking to open bars but not re-open those buildings and give people in the inner city a good paying job that is right in their backyard.
There really in the end shouldn’t have to be a reach to help poor people in this country. You ask someone in their 50’s the programs that were available may have small but they were important. Middle and high school have lost so many classes that now to take them you have to go to college. A group of older men who know how to work on car engines and have worked in mechanic shops as late teens and early 20’s because they took those classes in high school.
There is none of that or culinary classes in high school anymore, so to at least even find your self or a passion for free and then want to get a school loan to further that career path is not there. You can’t get a trade in prison anymore either. Hell, that in itself is a bad hand dealt out to you. Yes ,you did the crime do the time but say you were falsely arrested and lost five to ten maybe more years of your life. Yeah you don’t have to say you were locked up but you can’t get work to provide for your family because you haven’t worked for so long.
Then there is the fact that as time has gone by blacks have become less helpful to one another. I’m old enough to remember those days and I’m always reminded of that when I see how Mexicans who don’t know each other at all will help one another for no other reason than the bond of race. Yes I feel bad saying help a black person because you’re black but we have lost that essence in the last twenty years. Look at those civil rights marches  where blacks from all backgrounds came together.
A place where a person in some good position would get someone a job doing nothing more than janitorial duties may not have even get that job today. Like that scene in Boomerang where Chris Rock thanks Eddie Murphy for the hook up for the job, those days are totally gone these days. I lived about 15 minutes from Hampton University and that mixed with pro black pro active black men and women wanting to insure that blacks in the hood had better choices before them did have a good impact in some areas. Of course it still comes down to if one is qualified for the jobs but the assistance was there.
If just half of the money given to the Pentagon, NASA and if the corporations gave the same money to the funds they have their names attached to that they give to political parties to lobby for things would be, COULD be better. Again not wanting to go back to Kansas City but the city is willing to cut programs and spend city money on entertainment. It is sad to inherit poverty, your life is an uphill battle from birth.
And with that battle comes to fact people aren’t as willing to help you make a difference in your life to better your self. Maybe while they do these studies they also should address how we as Americans play a hand in keeping people where they are.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Excerpt from NewsOne Article

When former Republican Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan said “America has been the best country on earth for black folks” and “no people anywhere have done more to lift up blacks than white Americans”, you can be sure that he believed every word.

As recently as 2004, the typical Black family earned only 58% of what the typical white family earned, a full 5% less than the percentage of white income that a Black family earned way back in 1974.

Even if the Blacks and whites are similarly educated, the white male still out earns the Black male by 30%.

 Black poverty rate, though down considerably since the early 1990s, was at a still astonishing 24.7% in 2008.

Among the myth-based mindsets that even non-virulently racist whites can’t seem to shake is that welfare is a predominantly Black phenomenon.

Meanwhile, most Blacks know by now that purely from a gross numerical standpoint, way more whites are on welfare than Blacks.

Add to that the fact that white America’s awe for white wealth—regardless of its source—doesn’t extend to Black wealth.

Mafia members, bootleggers and stock market fixers are all respected for their ingenuity and only loathed when they get caught.

This is the reason that Bernie Madoff could run his fraudulently-gotten gains up to 65 billion but 5 grams of crack will get a Black kid 5 years mandatory the very first time he gets busted.

So why are so many Black people poor?

Well simply stated, the “Buchanan mentality” becomes a daft exercise in the worst kind of circular logic, allowing whites to feel guiltless about not hiring even the most qualified Blacks because somewhere in their minds, they think that Blacks always have welfare to fall back on, meanwhile Buchanan “types” simultaneously work to reverse affirmative action and nearly exterminating welfare altogether seemingly, one might think, just because Blacks have been so ungrateful after all that white people have done to help.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On the fiftieth anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the United States seems to have returned to degree zero of moral concern for the majority of descendants of slavery and segregation. Whether the Black poor live or die seems to merit only haughty disinterest and indifference. Indeed, in terms of the life-and-death issues that matter most to African-Americans -- structural unemployment, race-based super-incarceration, police brutality, disappearing affirmative action programs, and failing schools -- the present presidential election might as well be taking place in the 1920s.

But not all the blame can be assigned to the current occupant of the former slave-owners' mansion at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue. The mayor of New Orleans, for example, is a Black Democrat, and Los Angeles County is a famously Democratic bastion. No, the political invisibility of people of color is a strictly bipartisan endeavor. On the Democratic side, it is the culmination of the long crusade waged by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) to exorcise the specter of the 1980s Rainbow Coalition.

The DLC, of course, has long yearned to bring white guys and fat cats back to a Nixonized Democratic Party. Arguing that race had fatally divided Democrats, the DLC has tried to bleach the Party by marginalizing civil rights agendas and Black leadership. African-Americans, it is cynically assumed, will remain loyal to the Democrats regardless of the treasons committed against them. They are, in effect, hostages.

Thus the sordid spectacle -- portrayed in Fahrenheit 9/11 -- of white Democratic senators refusing to raise a single hand in support of the Black Congressional Caucus's courageous challenge to the stolen election of November 2000. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Excerpt from news article

Recently a group of more than a hundred Jamaicans returned to Jamaica from jobs on the US Gulf coast. They were ordinary workers, hotel maids, bellhops and the like, with no particularly rare skills. They’ve been working in the US because American hotels “can’t find” American workers to do these jobs.

They can’t find them because Americans, no matter how poor, refuse to work for the kind of pay Jamaicans will accept. The American workers are, in the words of the globalist, not competitive.

To encourage them to be more competitive the United States has for generations, relied on imported labor, mainly illegal immigrants and some others who go to the United States with the full knowledge and complicity of the American authorities to work on American farms and factories.

“How can we compete?” the capitalists ask piteously, “Against the production of peasants? in far away countries, impressed into industrial labour forces by agents of  other American capitalists and increasingly, by Chinese and other foreign businessmen.

Obeying the imperatives of capitalism, and the bottom line, Americans have been outsourcing production for a very long time. Within the last ten years the movement has accelerated  into a stampede.

Originally, the equation was simple. Industrialized countries “bought” primary products from former colonies and sold them at grossly inflated prices to their own markets and to the people they had bought the stuff from in the first place.

But as countries like Jamaica developed on the so-called "Puerto Rican" outsourcing model and others developed on the Japanese model, profits began to be shaved and markets began to be fragmented.

In the Far East where colonialism had not managed to do too much damage, people retained their culture, their language, and most of their ancient skills. The Chinese, who invented gunpowder, were producing steel in backyard furnaces in the 1960s.

The Japanese who had built the world's largest and most advanced battleship—the YAMATO, 70 years ago—had to endure the fairly benign occupation of the American Military after having been atom-bombed into subjection. But they got to keep their emperor and they got something infinitely more valuable, enormous amounts of US  military expenditure which helped fuel a new growth of industrialization. The same thing happened in Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and the effect spilled over into other southeast Asian countries. Europe got the Marshall Plan.

Starting from a lower level than Americans, these people soon began to outproduce Americans particularly in motor vehicles and electronics.

In Africa, where whole civilizations and cultures had been uprooted and obliterated, and in the former American colonies of the European powers, life was very different.

One major reason was  the color of the skins of the peoples. For 500 years, in order to justify slavery, the world was told that blacks were shiftless, work-shy and undisciplined. They had to be forced to work "for their own good, you understand." They needed slavery. Long after slavery was officially abolished that same excuse allowed King Leopold to literally enslave and brutalize the Congo,  long after slavery was officially abolished and licensed the British, Dutch Portuguese and Spanish to enforce similar  forms of profit-extraction and productivity in  Africa, the Caribbean Latin America and in the southern United States. 

In Latin America there were lots of blacks, but they were not the majority, except in the Caribbean. In Latin America, the majorities were, as writer Inga Muscio was once described "less than white." 

Within the United States itself  the promised Reconstruction after slavery swiftly degenerated into white reaction and re-enslavement under other names.

The puritanical Americans emulated the ecclesiastics of the twelfth century, but instead of estimating how many angels could dance on the head of a pin they were more interested in  calculating how many Anglos could dance on the head of a peon.

Blacks in the Americas have always been ambivalent about their prospects on this side of the Atlantic. There were and are those, like Martin Luther King and Jean Bertrand Aristide, who  figured that their blood and suffering had bought them rights. There were others, like Marcus Garvey and the "Black Muslims" who could not believe that white man's justice would ever encompass them.

Being black in the US is not quite as dangerous as being openly homosexual in Jamaica, but it is close. A black man in the Bronx today "or in Haiti" has a lower life expectancy than a Bangladeshi of the same age.

Nearly fifty years ago, on my first visit to the United States I was challenged by a black shoemaker in Washington DC, literally within the shadow of the capitol. He  was puzzled by my accent and wanted to know where I came from. When I told him he asked me: "They got anybody like me where you come from?" I didn' t understand him. Yes, they had shoemakers in Jamaica, I said. "No man. They got any niggers there?"

I was totally flabbergasted. He and I could easily have been blood brothers; our hair was the same, our skin colour was the same—if anything he was a shade or two lighter skinned than I and I thought we looked a little bit alike. We settled the historical and ethnic questions over a pitcher of beer in a nearby bar. Why, I asked him, didn't he think I was a nigger?

"Because you don't talk like a nigger, man and you don't walk like a nigger."

Passing for Creole

New Orleans  was on the surface, a swinging, cosmopolitan city, multicultural, multi-ethnic, in which "black culture" was the defining flavor. In reality it was cross-dressing—passing for Creole while underneath it was the archetypical Southern United States city, a kind of human zoo or theme park in which the majority of the population are allowed to flourish as long as they are of good behavior.

Beneath the export-only black culture there was another layer of black poverty and misery, largely invisible to the Blitzers and the kibitzers.

Apart from being so poor and so black, the Afro American minority is also dismissed as  criminal and diseased. In the name of law and order, about half a million blacks are currently warehoused in prisons which are really universities of crime, sources of cheap commercial labor and focal points for spreading HIV/AIDS throughout the black communities.  

The American black prison population alone is larger than the total prison population of any country other than perhaps China .  Almost one third of young black American men are either in jail or under some sort of state  supervision, because the laws of the United States, as exemplified by such as Trent Lott,, Jesse Helms, and the media, believe that blacks prefer a life of crime to fulfilling the American dream.

As Herrnstein and Murray boldly  say in The Bell Curve, "Clearly something about getting seriously involved in crime competes with staying in school." The Bell Curve, accepted "by an overwhelming cross section of the US media" as a sane and sensible book, postulated a "Custodial state," a high tech and more lavish version of the Indian reservations for some substantial minority of the nation's population while the rest of America tries to go about its business?

Its authors,  Herrnstein and Murray say that such a state "will not only be tolerated but actively supported by a consensus of the cognitive elite" and they claimed that they were not theorising but "reporting." 

Instead of a custodial state Herrnstein and Murray suggested "cognitive partitioning" supported by a return to Individualism. That is, the cognitive elite will formally continue to select out its Colin Powells, Condoleezza Rices and Clarence Thomases (but obviously  not Serena Williams or Cynthia McKinney) to serve them as Harry Belafonte described Powell—as house slaves.  

The problem is not only ethnic, although ethnicity is involved. The Central Europeans who are the largest ethnic bloc in the United States outside of Hispanics, have always had  their Serbs, Slavs and Gypsies (Egyptians) to hew wood and draw water.

To that underclass we could, perhaps, add the Irish—until they were all supplanted by the blacks.

Nor is discrimination simply ethnic, but it provides a convenient means to classify an economic underclass because so many wear an instantly recognizable uniform. Blacks are only one section of the American underclass. Their white compatriots are usually ignored, as if they are simply passing through a phase.

But since many become visible because of their homelessness, or joblessness or some dysfunctionality which makes them stand out, all of these characteristics (welfare abusers etc.) are typically ascribed to all  poor people, particularly to blacks.

Black is black and white is white and never the twain shall mate. That at least is the theory of Hollywood myth-makers and of much of the media that is now part of the Hollywood entertainment-industrial-financial  complex. The rest of the world looks nonplussed at an America in which "Guess who's coming to dinner" after forty years, is still the Hollywood paradigm for race relations, as if the mating of white and black were as experimental as the union of gorillas and chimpanzees. 

The result is a case like O.J. Simpson's,  who, having been acquitted of murder, was still found guilty, essentially of marrying a white woman. While no one can explain how Simpson could have sanitized himself and his house in the hour or two between the murders and his journey to Chicago, most white Americans thought he should pay punitive damages to the families of his murdered wife and her friend.  NEWSWEEK made the point. O.J.  tried to live like a white man: "He even played golf."

TIME magazine  confessed to painting Simpson blacker than he was—as they did more recently to Hugo Chavez, no doubt for good and sufficient geopolitical reasons.

When, forty years ago, movie star Kim Novak was rumoured to be having an affair with Sammy Davis Jr. it more or less meant the end of her career. "Inter-racial" mating is seen by the media as terminally dangerous not just to  the morals of their audiences but more subversively, to the class system. There can be no miscegenation without representation, and where would that leave the working class and its necessary underclass?

Barbara Bush had it right. Refugees in Texas must be better off than at home in New Orleans. And more hygenic and less sinful to boot. 

Meanwhile, if one examines the real USA, away from the ersatz gentility of the media, one discovers that not only are the really poor getting poorer, but the middle class is going nowhere fast.

In real economic terms, in constant dollar terms, the Middle classes are almost exactly where they were when Jimmy Carter was president. Meanwhile,  according to the US Census Bureau, the rich have become immeasurably wealthier. If the appearance of  social peace is to be maintained, globalisation must provide the answer: That means  providing  cheaper and cheaper goods to disguise the static economic position of the majority of Americans. 

That requires not only a real Third World outside the boundaries of the United States; it also  requires one within those boundaries.

Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau for African-Americans:

Annual median income: $33,000 vs. $51,000 for U.S.
Blacks with a bachelor's degree or higher: 14% vs. 37% for Whites, 50% for Asian-Americans,  and 10% for Latinos
Poverty rate: 28% vs. 12% for U.S.
Lacking health insurance: 21% vs. 15% for U.S.
Home ownership: 44% vs. 69% for U.S.
Black-owned businesses: 1.9 million
Revenue from black-owned businesses: $137 billion

Author's Note: Refer to the following web pages for information about  knowledge, wealth, success, purpose in life, and starting a small business:

Knowledge is Power

Wealth & Health Connection

How to Start a Business

Purpose in Life

What is Success

References

1. ^ America: A Narrative History, Chapter 18-19
2. ^ Text of Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886) is available from:  ·Findlaw
3. ^ West, Jean. "Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson, Interview Essay".http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/resources/pdf/hs_in_robinson_rickey.pdf. Retrieved 2009-04-15.
4. ^ Tygiel, Jules (2002). Extra Bases: Reflections on Jackie Robinson, Race, and Baseball History. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press. pp. 69–70. ISBN 0-8032-9447-6.http://books.google.com/books?id=2zI2UhykNuEC&pg=PA69.
5. ^ Foner, Henry (2002). "Foreword". In Dorinson, Joseph; Pencak, William. Paul Robeson: Essays on His Life and Legacy. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. p. 1. ISBN 0-7864-2163-0.http://books.google.com/books?id=Otiz7Mi-iUYC&pg=PA1.
6. ^ Myrdal, Gunnar; Bok, Sissela (1995). An American dilemma: the Negro problem and modern democracy. Transaction Publishers. p. 478. http://books.google.com/books?id=yuAEokAx2G4C.
7. ^ Fauntroy, Michael K. (2007). Republicans and the Black vote. Lynne Rienner Publishers. p. 43. http://books.google.com/books?id=RyuHAAAAMAAJ. ""... lily whites worked with Democrats to disenfranchise African Americans.""
8. ^ [1]^{[dead link]}
9. ^ Glenn Feldman, The Disfranchisement Myth: Poor Whites and Suffrage Restriction in Alabama, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004, p. 136
10. ^ Kenneth T. Jackson, The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915–1930, New York: Oxford University Press, 1967; reprint, Chicago: Elephant Paperback, 1992, pp.242–243
11. ^ Kenneth T. Jackson, The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915–1930, New York: Oxford University Press, 1967; reprint, Chicago: Elephant Paperback, 1992
12. ^ James D. Anderson, Black Education in the South, 1860–1935, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988, pp.244–245
13. ^ For example, Alpha Phi Alpha the first black intercollegiate fraternity was founded at Cornell University in 1906. Wesley, Charles H. (1950). The History of Alpha Phi Alpha: A Development in Negro College Life (6th ed.). Chicago, IL: Foundation.
14. ^ "We Shall Overcome: The Players". http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/players.htm. Retrieved 2007-05-29.
15. ^ James D. Anderson, Black Education in the South, 1860–1935, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 198
16. ^ Source — PBS website From Swastika to Jim Crow
17. ^ ^a b c Ewers, Justin (March 22, 2004). "'Separate but equal' was the law of the land, until one decision brought it crashing down" (page 2). US News & World Report.
18. ^ Ewers, Justin (March 22, 2004). "'Separate but equal' was the law of the land, until one decision brought it crashing down" (page 3). US News & World Report.
19. ^ Ewers, Justin (March 22, 2004). "'Separate but equal' was the law of the land, until one decision brought it crashing down" (page 4). US News & World Report.
20. ^ ^a b c d David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009, pp.72-89.

Why Blacks Are Fat

Warning: If you are overly-sensitive about these types of issues, do not read this web page.

Author's Note: During one of my workshops, a heavy black woman said "I'm not really fat, I'm big-boned." And, I said "Miss, I'm sorry to say but bones don't jiggle." 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------How Obesity Has Gradually Become Accepted By African-American Culture

Several decades ago African-Americans were basically thin or athletically-built people. Today, African-Americans are one of the most obese groups in the United States -- and it may be by choice.

Obesity is a growing epidemic in this country, with Americans eating more and becoming less active. Seventy-three percent of adults and 43 percent of all children in the United States are overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Among African-Americans 20 years and older, more than two-thirds are overweight or obese defined as a body mass index (BMI) of 25 pounds or more. Carrying around those extra pounds increases the likelihood of developing Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure -- two diseases that disproportionately affect African-Americans. Being overweight also increases the risk of stroke, heart disease, arthritis and certain cancers. In fact, obesity could become more dangerous for your health than smoking cigarettes.

Yet, in the African-American community, the so-called normal body image is skewed toward the unhealthy. Studies show a strong tendency to deem larger body sizes as acceptable, particularly for women.

Many African-American women rationalize being obese as being "big-boned" or "thick". Also, within the African-American community, curvy, overweight women are considered more appealing to black men than normal-weight women. There is almost a reverse distortion of body image -- with obese women getting fatter and slender women wanting to gain weight in order to be accepted.

This may account for the staggering statistic that 4 out of 5 African-American women are overweight or obese. It is even more alarming that some of these women are making a choice to live at an unhealthy weight.

African-American women of all ages report less exercise than their white counterparts. "Many of them feel that it's not feminine or they're afraid to sweat because it will ruin their hairstyle," adds Dr. Bell. Other hindrances include not having child care, not having enough time to be physically active, and not feeling safe being active in their neighborhoods.

African-American men aren't off the hook either. African-American men also exercise less than whites, and have the highest prevalence of obesity among all male ethnic groups.

With the head of the African-American family -- the matriarch -- more likely to be overweight and sedentary, it is no surprise that many black men and children are also overweight. Regular exercise, portion-control and healthy eating habits are not routinely ingrained into the structure of many African-American families.

One in four African-American girls and almost one in five African-American boys are overweight. We are now beginning to see high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes -- historically diseases of adulthood -- in these overweight children! Seven out of every 10 overweight adolescents will become overweight adults. That number increases to eight if one or more parents is also overweight. Thus, the cycle continues.

The "soul food" tradition adds to the problem in some African-American households. Most of the recipes are passed down from generation to generation, usually from families who originated from the Southern states.  Because these recipes and cooking habits have been passed down from generation to generation, it appears that Type 2 diabetes is a hereditary disease that runs in black families because of the family genes.  But, it's not! (More on this topic later).

There is a strong social component to this style of cooking, centered around family gatherings or opportunities for the family's matriarch to show her love for the family. However, traditional soul food is often cooked with animal fat, sugar and unhealthy amounts of table salt that contribute to weight gain and high blood pressure. Ironically, soul food is often considered "good food," as compared to fast-food, so the perception of healthy food choices are also skewed.

Originally, some aspects of soul food used to be healthy, but, today, with animals being fed growth hormones, antibiotics, and genetically-modified (GM) corn, animal meat from the chicken, pig, and cow have become unhealthy meats.

Even among those families who desire to eat healthier, doing so may not be economically feasible. One in four African-Americans still live in poverty, and there is a strong correlation between low income and obesity. Many impoverished neighborhoods do not even have an accessible grocery store with affordable, healthy foods such as fresh vegetables, fruits, legumes, and nuts. It's not hard to imagine that tasty, inexpensive fast-food beats out the cost and taste of lean meat, fresh vegetables, and fresh fruits. To make matters worse, most African-Americans believe that it cost more money to eat healthy foods versus eating fast foods or processed packaged foods.

Fast-food companies also gear marketing efforts toward minority communities. Have you noticed the hip-hop music being played during many of the commercials by McDonald's, Burger King, and Kentucky Fried Chicken? While offhand these ads may appear culturally-sensitive, studies show that ethnic minorities are more responsive to these targeted ads and such marketing is, in fact, manipulative. This poses a dilemma as many of these ads are for less-than-healthy food and beverage options.

There are, however, national efforts to reverse these unhealthy perceptions and traditions. The "Black Women DO Workout" website and organizations such as theNational Black Marathoners' Association are encouraging African-Americans to pursue healthier lifestyles. And, there is an African-American engineer who is teaching blacks how to transform their unhealthy soul food into healthy soul food! This black engineer survived a diabetic coma, and wrote one of the best books on diabetes called "Death to Diabetes". Recently, he has written a cookbook and an ethnic foods book that explain how to transform traditional soul food into a healthier version of soul food with a few slight modifications. He believes that dietitians are making a mistake telling African-Americans to stop eating soul food. Instead, he believes that it is better to embrace the African-American culture and other cultures and their food preferences, and teach them how to transform their favorite foods into healthier versions.

The good news is that there are viable solutions out there, including Mr. McCulley's Death to Diabetes wellness program. Although his program is focused on Type 2 diabetes, his wellness program has been used to help non-diabetics with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, chronic fatigue, obesity, kidney health issues, and heart disease.

With this new knowledge from this innovative African-American author, African-American families can begin passing down the traditions of family fitness and health, rather than obesity and diabetes. 

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”  Ghandi

"My people perish for lack of knowledge." Hosea 4:6
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

African-Americans and Social Factors
Most black people are familiar with the phrase DWB – Driving While Black. There is a new phrase for us: that uses the same letters: Dying While Black.

At almost every income level, African-Americans are sicker than whites and dying at a significantly higher rate. Black men live on average 6 years less than white men. Black men have shorter live spans than men in Chile, Barbados, Bahamas or Jamaica. Black women live on average years 5 less than white women. Black women have shorter live spans than women in Barbados, Panama, Bosnia and the Bahamas. Infant mortality rates are 2 times higher for blacks. Some racist commented that African Americans should be grateful for being in the United States, yet, African-Americans have more low-birth weight infants than women in Rwanda, Ghana and Uganda.

Social factors more than any other type of factors fuels the inequality of health status between Blacks and Whites in the United States. These social factors include: wealth/income, education, physical environment, healthcare, housing employment, stress and racism/discrimination. In fact, racism is so dominant a factor, that middle class blacks have poorer health than some less well-off whites due to the stress of living in a racist discriminatory society.

Chris Rock, the black comedian, once said: “Once I became successful, I asked a homeless white man if he wanted to be me --rich and black. The white person said: “No thanks, I think I’ve got a good thing going here (being white).”

Of course, using racism as an excuse only creates a vicious cycle of apathy and self-victimization. There are too many examples of blacks who have overcome the challenges and barriers despite the odds of growing up poor in an economically-drained community. I believe these challenges can make you or break you. What’s that saying? “Whatever doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.”

Author's Note: "Luckily for us, we had strong parents who didn’t accept failure. My father told us: “You have 2 choices – to be a victim or a victor – it’s up to you. But, since you’re livin’ rent-free under my roof, you only have one choice – you will go to school and get A’s and B’s – you will be victors in this society, even if it kills you.”"

Many blacks experience some form of passive racism when they visit the doctor or the hospital. It’s not that doctors and nurses are bad people. In fact, they are good people who helped to save the life of this book’s author. In fact, the author wrote a letter to the personnel department of the hospital thanking the doctors and especially one of the nurses for saving his life.

However, during his visit to the endocrinologist, the endocrinologist assumed that the author didn’t understand anything about diabetes and blood glucose testing, and so he talked down to the author. When the author tried to show the endocrinologist the analysis he had done with his glucose data, the doctor pooh-poohed him, and told him that he didn’t have the necessary knowledge to reduce his insulin shots. Three months later, the author had reduced his insulin shots from 4 a day to 1 a day, and then eventually to no shots. But, instead of being happy for the author, the doctor was angry. Why? It wasn’t racism – it had more to do with money – the fact that the doctor wouldn’t be able to make any more money pushing his drugs onto the author.

When the author was growing up, he received a lot of support from various white people including teachers and other professionals. As a result, the author believes that although racism exists, you can overcome it via hard work and intelligence. In fact, his father told him to accept the fact that although racism exists, he would not allow his son to use it as an excuse for not getting A’s and B’s in school. His father told him: “Son, you will just have to work harder, smarter and longer than the other kids. That’s just the way it is.” The author’s father worked 3 jobs and his mother 2 jobs, so his father and mother had a strong work ethic that they passed down to their children.

Ironically, that strong work ethic from his father helped the author deal with his diabetes, and realize that he had to work harder, smarter and longer if he wanted to defeat this disease – and, he did, thanks to his wise father.

Note: Black people (African-Americans) used to be pretty healthy 50-60 years ago. And, further back -- during slavery times -- black people were even healthier. The primary reason why black people weren’t living that long had more to do with the hangings, beatings, and overt racism – not how they ate or exercised. But, today that has changed – we’re not getting hanged as much, but we’re still dying just as fast.

It's sad how much time and money that some young black men spend on rims for their cars, an asset that steadily decreases in value.  But, they hesitate to spend $20 for a health book or an extra few dollars for healthier food.  Black women spend $200 on a weave but not on a personal trainer or nutritionist. They spend hours in a beauty salons and nail spas, but will not take a 20 minute walk on their lunch break.  They care about their appearance, but the caring stops just above the shoulders. Why do you care what’s put on your hair and your fingernails but not what’s put in your body??

Impact of Culture
One of the keys to understanding why black people are so fat requires us to understand their ancestry and culture.

Culture is defined as the thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions of racial, ethnic, religious, or social groups.

Because health care is a cultural construct, arising from beliefs about the nature of disease and the human body, cultural issues are actually central in the delivery of health services treatment and preventive interventions. By understanding, valuing, and incorporating the cultural differences of America's diverse population and examining one's own health-related values and beliefs, health care organizations, practitioners, and others can support a health care system that responds appropriately to, and directly serves the unique needs of populations whose cultures may be different from the prevailing culture.

African American culture in the United States refers to the cultural contributions of African ethnic groups to the culture of the United States, either as part of or distinct from American culture. The distinct identity of African American culture is rooted in the historical experience of the African American people, including the Middle Passage, and thus the culture retains a distinct identity while at the same time it is enormously influential to American culture as a whole.

African American culture is rooted in Africa and is a blend of chiefly sub-Saharan African and Sahelean cultures. Although slavery greatly restricted the ability of Africans in America to practice their cultural traditions, many practices, values, and beliefs survived and over time have modified or blended with European American culture. There are even some facets of African American culture that were accentuated by the slavery period. The result is a dynamic culture that has had and continues to have a profound impact on mainstream American culture, as well as the culture of the broader world.

The Legacy of African-American CuisinePopular southern foods, such as the vegetable okra (brought to New Orleans by African slaves), are often attributed to the importation of goods from Africa, or by way of Africa, the West Indies, and the slave trade. Okra, which is the principal ingredient in the popular Creole stew referred to as gumbo, is believed to have spiritual and healthful properties. Rice and seafood (along with sausage or chicken), and filé (a sassafras powder inspired by the Choctaw Indians) are also key ingredients in gumbo. Other common foods that are rooted in African-American culture include black-eyed peas, benne seeds (sesame), eggplant, sorghum (a grain that produces sweet syrup and different types of flour), watermelon, and peanuts.

Though Southern food is typically known as "soul food" many African Americans contend that soul food consists of African-American recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation, just like other African-American rituals. The legacy of African and West Indian culture is imbued in many of the recipes and food traditions that remain popular today. The staple foods of African Americans, such as rice, have remained largely unchanged since the first Africans and West Indians set foot in the New World, and the Southern United States, where the slave population was most dense, has developed a cooking culture that remains true to the African-American tradition.

This cooking is aptly named southern cooking, the food is caled soul food. Over the years, many have interpreted the term soul food based on current social issues facing the African-American population, such as the civil rights movement. Many civil rights advocates believe that using this word perpetuates a negative connection between African Americans and slavery. However, as Doris Witt notes in her book Black Hunger (1999), the "soul" of the food refers loosely to the food's origins in Africa.

In his 1962 essay "Soul Food," Amiri Baraka makes a clear distinction between southern cooking and soul food. To Baraka, soul food includes chitterlings (pronounced chitlins), pork chops, fried porgies, potlikker, turnips, watermelon, black-eyed peas, grits, hoppin' John, hushpuppies, okra, and pancakes. Today, many of these foods are limited among African Americans to holidays and special occasions. Southern food, on the other hand, includes only fried chicken, sweet potato pie, collard greens, and barbecue, according to Baraka. The idea of what soul food is seems to differ greatly among African Americans.

General Dietary InfluencesIn 1992 it was reported that there is little difference between the type of foods eaten by whites and African Americans. There have, however, been large changes in the overall quality of the diet of African Americans since the 1960s – which has fueled the increase in cancer rates and the diabetes epidemic in African-Americans. In the 1950s and 1960s, in the South, many African-American families or a close relative had a farm, so they grew their own food. In the North, many African-American families (like the author's) had a garden, where they grew some of their own food -- not because it was healthy, but because it was a lot less expensive than buying food from the grocery store.

Author's Note: "I remember the time my brothers and I spent working my father's garden; and, the time we spent on our uncle's farm in Wheatland. I still have dirt under my nails from digging holes to plant my father's tomato plants. Growing up we didn't really appreciate this food from the garden or the farm. We didn't realize that we were eating food that was a lot healthier than the food in the grocery store!"

Unfortunately, many of the black children of today as well as other children have no connection to a farm or a garden of  fresh home-grown vegetables and fruits -- the very foods that prevent obesity and diabetes!

In 1965, African Americans were more than twice as likely as whites to eat a diet that met the recommended guidelines for fat, fiber, and fruit and vegetable intakes. By 1996, however, 28 percent of African Americans were reported to have a poor-quality diet, compared to 16 percent of whites, and 14 percent of other racial groups.

Today, the diet of African Americans is particularly poor for children two to ten years old, for older adults, and for those from a low socioeconomic background. Of all racial groups, African Americans have the most difficulty in eating diets that are low in fat and high in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. This represents an immense change in diet quality. Some explanations for this include: (1) the greater market availability of packaged and processed foods; (2) the high cost of fresh fruit, vegetables, and lean cuts of meat; (3) the common practice of frying food and using fats in cooking; and (4) lack of knowledge about real nutrition.

Exploitation of African-Americans by Western MedicineIt is important that African-Americans with Type 2 diabetes or any disease driven by a nutrient deficiency realize that they are subject to multiple socio-cultural, medical and environmental influences on their eating and other health-related behaviors. This is true for all ethnic cultures in the U.S.

Just as important, African-Americans and other cultures have been falsely led by the medical profession to believe that their Type 2 diabetes is hereditary. This is far from the truth. This is dangerous thinking because some African-Americans “give up” because they believe that they can’t defeat a disease that’s “in their blood”.

In addition, despite the fact that African-Americans were mistreated by the medical profession (e.g. Tuskegee syphilis experiment, 1932-1972), a large majority of African-Americans have a strong (false) belief in the medical profession and their drugs.  Not to make excuses, but many African-Americans do not have the “luxury” to make better choices about their food, when they have to overcome the reality that they are not welcomed by a country that became rich, benefiting from the centuries of free labor via slavery. Also, many African-Americans are more concerned about getting a job, keeping a job, overcoming their environment, and not getting shot in their neighborhood. Eating healthy is just not seen as a major priority.

The exploitation of African-Americans in medical education and research included the use of black bodies in anatomical dissection, the medical care of slaves, the surgical experiments on slaves, and government-sponsored radiation experiments after World War II using unwitting African-Americans as guinea pigs. And, don’t forget about the notorious Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which about 600 black men with syphilis were left untreated by the U.S. Public Health Service in an effort to study the pathology of the disease.

However, it would be remiss on my part if I did not point out that the ethical problems in medical research pertain not to race alone but to the power relations of scientific medicine. For centuries the urban poor have been exploited as "teaching material" in the great hospitals of every Western country. In America since the later 19th century, similar stories could be told about immigrants, Catholics, Jews, and others who habituated the charity wards of US teaching hospitals. Medical research has always tended to take advantage of the powerless and voiceless, whoever they might be.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, when racism in the United States was at its most intense, numerous episodes of flagrant maltreatment occurred. After World War II, as racism began to ebb, the worst of these abuses ended. However, African-Americans continued to be over-represented in clinical trials relative to their percentage of the general population. This largely reflected the fact that academic medical centers drew most of their “clinical material” from their immediate geographic surroundings -- areas that were often heavily black in demographic composition.

Today, many African-Americans do not have a good relationship with Western Medicine for various reasons including insufficient healthcare, language barriers, and negative perceptions. During the 1900s-1960s, African-Americans did not have the types of jobs where the company paid for their healthcare. As a result, many African-Americans could not afford to go to the doctor, and relied upon their great grandmother or other older relative to provide herb mixtures and other concoctions. However, after the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s, more African-Americans acquired jobs working in Corporate America. As a result, more African-Americans obtain healthcare insurance and now could afford to visit the doctor.

Ironically, this didn’t really help to improve the health of African-Americans. Instead, they relied upon the knowledge of the doctor and trusted the doctor, who “pushed” a lot of drugs onto the African-American families. During the next 30 years, African-Americans gradually became one of the top consumers of OTC and prescription drugs. Coincidentally, during that same time frame, the overall health of African-Americans deteriorated and the number of deaths associated with heart disease, cancer, and diabetes increased dramatically.

During that same time, the medical industry worked hand-in-hand with the pharmaceutical companies to increase their revenue and profits tremendously, such that the pharmaceutical industry has become a trillion-dollar revenue-making industry.

Despite the terrible history that African-Americans have had with Western Medicine, most African-Americans believe that drugs really work and believe that the drugs give them the freedom to eat poorly – without realizing that the drugs actually contribute to their poor health. This misperception is reinforced by the doctor who plays the “blame game” and implies that your disease is due to your family genes, your diet, your lifestyle, and your age. Although this is true to some degree, for the most part, these are excuses that transfer the blame from the doctor to the patient. There’s nothing wrong with that – as long as the patient realizes that they are responsible for their health, not their doctor.

Now, doctors are good people – they do the best they can, but the reality is that doctors are trained to push the drugs, and we as patients gladly accept the drugs. Western Medicine is a business, not a service, which is designed to generate massive profits – for the doctors and the pharmaceutical companies – at the expense of the patient’s health. Unfortunately, this is not going to change – until the patient gets smarter and realizes that he must reject the drugs and find alternative solutions.

All of us need to become more aware of how we end up taking more and more drugs, and not improving our health.

• When a person doesn’t feel well, he goes to the drugstore to get an OTC drug to relieve the discomfort.
• When that stops working, he goes to the doctor, who prescribes a drug for the problem.
• When that stops working, the doctor increases the dosage of the prescribed drug, or the doctor prescribes a stronger drug, a new drug, or a combination of drugs.
• When that doesn’t work or stops working, the doctor recommends some extreme drug therapy or surgery.

At no point during this “journey to illness” did anyone question the overuse of ineffective drugs. Why? Because doctors are trained to push the drugs and offer them as the solution. And, we. as the patients, take the drugs and don’t push back for a better solution.

Regardless of your race or culture, we can all agree that healthcare costs are rising, and will continue to rise because Western Medicine is “a big business”, not a service for the American public. And, the sooner the public realizes this, the sooner they’ll realize that the state of their health should be in their control, not the control of the healthcare system.

The “Isolation” of African-Americans in AmericaThere is a large percentage of African-Americans who don't have a computer and access to the Internet. Unfortunately, this leads to "knowledge isolation" and a lack of understanding about how diabetes and other diseases really work. Because of this isolation, many African-Americans suffer unnecessarily, and are unaware of Amazon.com, YouTube, BlackInAmerica.com, WebMD,  and other Internet platforms that can expand their knowledge in nutrition and alternative medicine , and understand the dangers of Western medicine and its dependence on drugs.

We attribute this to several factors. Of course, our findings do not apply to all African-Americans, and these reasons are not associated with just African-Americans. Other ethnic cultures suffer similar isolation issues.

1. Many African-Americans are nutrient-deficient, making them more susceptible to diabetes, high blood pressure, and some cancers. For example, African-Americans do not eat lean protein foods such as nuts, seed, and wild salmon, and are therefore deficient in Omega-3 EFAs. African-Americans eat more nutrient-poor fast foods than other ethnic groups, consuming excess animal fat and refined carbohydrates. Also, African-Americans do not get enough exposure to the sun, and consequently are Vitamin D deficient.

2. Some African-Americans will spend money for cosmetics, hair products and going to the beauty salon, but they are not as willing to spend money for their health, e.g. health book, health coaching appointments, health plan, health seminar, diabetes workshop.

3. Some African-Americans will spend money for the doctors and their drugs, but not for health-related products or services.

4. Some African-Americans are more concerned (and rightly so) about having enough money to buy any kind of food, let alone "healthy" food.

5. Some African-Americans are struggling just to stay alive --eating healthy is not a priority. "Eating healthy" is seen as a luxury, not something that is mandatory.

6. African-Americans struggle with bigger problems than "health" -- not realizing that good Health and Wealth are connected.

7. African-Americans have to deal with various social "isms" and overcome other struggles that majority Caucasian-Americans don't have to deal with on a daily basis, e.g. racism, elitism.

8. Some African-Americans do not believe that they are worthy and intelligent. due to racism and other "isms" in our society. They are unaware of their  rich heritage and their powerful history. Did you know that some of the original mathematicians and engineers were of African heritage?

9. More than 97% of African-American homes have a TV, but less than 15% own a computer, creating an "isolation" phenomena.

10. Some African-Americans have a very strong belief in their doctors and their drugs -- despite the abuse of African-Americans by the medical profession in the 1900s and 1940s, and the biases of the healthcare system.

11. Some African-Americans don't have the disposable income to buy health-related and nutrition-based books.

12. Some African-Americans no longer leverage the power of the black church -- as they did in the past. For example, it was the black church that educated blacks when it was against the law for blacks to read or go to school.

13. Some African-American churches and pastors ignore the sections of the Bible that discuss nutrition. Ironically, many of the church leaders (as well as the congregation) struggle with health issues, many of which are directly connected to poor eating habits.

14. Some African-Americans tend to have a strong faith and belief in God, but when they get sick, they along with their pastors and church leaders choose the man-made drugs over God's foods! 

15. African-American homogeneous groups (i.e. black fraternities, sororities, clubs, churches) tend to sponsor mostly entertainment-type events such as concerts, shows, parties, etc. and demonstrate very little interest in health-related events.

16. African-Americans are unaware of the manipulation by the American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association, Kidney Foundation, and other health organizations to use free health fairs to infiltrate black churches starting in the mid-1980s. Many of these free health fairs were sponsored by the pharmaceutical companies, who paid these organizations to infiltrate the black churches with a "trojan horse". As a result, a larger percentage of African-Americans take medications today.

17. African-Americans are unaware of how to enjoy their favorite ethnic foods. Most dietitians have told African-Americans that they can't eat fried chicken, bacon, grits, etc. This has led African-Americans to ignore good eating habits because most of these diet programs do not embrace ethnic foods. However, during the past several years since Mr. McCulley gave his talk at Aenon Baptist Church, he has done the research to figure out how African-Americans can enjoy their favorite foods (by transforming them into healthier foods!).

Note: Some of these statements are controversial and may upset some people, but the bottom line is that the CDC and NIH health statistics show that African-Americans (and other etnic groups) are dying faster than they should be dying. In the end, it will be their responsibility to change the way the eat and live -- if they want their children to have a higher quality of life and to live longer than their parents.

The Solution:  An Action Plan for African Americans There are 11 key areas that African-Americans (and other ethnic groups) need to address to improve their overall health:
• Low Employment
• Lack of Education
• Poor Environment
• Lack of Healthcare Insurance
• Lack of Family Wealth
• Eating Habits
• Lifestyle
• Lack of Computers/Technology
• Religious Beliefs
• Marketing Scams/Targeting
• Racism/Prejudicial Perceptions


Note: Read this web page to understand why African-Americans remain poor.

For more specific information about possible solutions to improve the health of African-Americans and other ethnic cultures, get the ebook PDF titled "Why Black People Are Droppin' Like Flies" from our online store.

This 90-page ebook PDF explains the key reasons behind the dramatic health decline of African-Americans in the U.S, and "why black people are droppin' like flies". It also explains the history and social/economic/racial impacts that affect the health of many African-Africans, and how to overcome these "isms".

Key sections include: black culture, profile of African-Americans, food and culture, disease statistics for black men and black women, history of "soul foods", why blacks reject conventional diets, the "isolation" of blacks, top challenges, how to stop the madness, and action plans for blacks to improve their health and the health of their family, and future generations -- by overcoming the financial, social, and economic barriers.

Other sections include nutrition and disease-related discussions about Hispanic-Americans, Native Americans, Asian Indians, and diabetes in Africa.

Note: Although this ebook focuses on the African-American culture, these health issues apply to the other ethnic groups in the United States. As a result, there are other sections in the ebook about Hispanic-Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Indians and their foods.

Note: The good news is that you slow down your own dying (or the dying of a loved one) by reading this web page, and start taking action today or first thing tomorrow.

“A sure way for one to lift himself up is by helping to lift someone else.”  Booker T. Washington
“What I’ve learned from God personally is that as soon as you get the lesson, it’s over . . . that’s what Grace is.” Oprah Winfrey

“Let your food be your medicine, and let your medicine be your food.” Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine

References

1. ^ Kushner, Robert (2007). Treatment of the Obese Patient (Contemporary Endocrinology). Totowa, NJ: Humana Press. pp. 158. ISBN 1-59745-400-1. http://books.google.com/?id=vWjK5etS7PMC&pg=PA121&lpg=PA121&dq=measurement+of+metabolism+in+obese+Bessesen. Retrieved April 5, 2009.
2. ^ ^a b Adams JP, Murphy PG (July 2000). "Obesity in anaesthesia and intensive care". Br J Anaesth 85 (1): 91–108. doi:10.1093/bja/85.1.91. PMID 10927998.http://bja.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/85/1/91.
3. ^ NICE 2006 p.10–11
4. ^ Imaz I, Martínez-Cervell C, García-Alvarez EE, Sendra-Gutiérrez JM, González-Enríquez J (July 2008). "Safety and effectiveness of the intragastric balloon for obesity. A meta-analysis".Obes Surg 18 (7): 841–6. doi:10.1007/s11695-007-9331-8. PMID 18459025.
5. ^ ^a b Barness LA, Opitz JM, Gilbert-Barness E (December 2007). "Obesity: genetic, molecular, and environmental aspects". Am. J. Med. Genet. A 143A (24): 3016–34.doi:10.1002/ajmg.a.32035. PMID 18000969.
6. ^ ^{a b c d e} Woodhouse R (2008). "Obesity in art: A brief overview". Front Horm Res 36: 271–86. doi:10.1159/000115370. ISBN 9783805584296. PMID 18230908. http://books.google.com/?id=nXRU4Ea1aMkC&pg=PA271&lpg=PA271&dq=Obesity+in+art:+a+brief+overview.
7. ^ Sweeting HN (2007). "Measurement and definitions of obesity in childhood and adolescence: A field guide for the uninitiated". Nutr J 6: 32. doi:10.1186/1475-2891-6-32. PMC 2164947.PMID 17963490. http://www.nutritionj.com/content/6/1/32.
8. ^ NHLBI p.xiv
9. ^ Gray DS, Fujioka K (1991). "Use of relative weight and Body Mass Index for the determination of adiposity". J Clin Epidemiol 44 (6): 545–50. doi:10.1016/0895-4356(91)90218-X. PMID 2037859.
10. ^ ^a b "Healthy Weight: Assessing Your Weight: BMI: About BMI for Children and Teens". Center for disease control and prevention.http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/childrens_BMI/about_childrens_BMI.htm. Retrieved April 6, 2009.
11. ^ Yang W, Kelly T, He J (2007). "Genetic epidemiology of obesity". Epidemiol Rev 29: 49–61.doi:10.1093/epirev/mxm004. PMID 17566051.
12. ^ Walley AJ, Asher JE, Froguel P (June 2009). "The genetic contribution to non-syndromic human obesity". Nat. Rev. Genet. 10 (7): 431–42. doi:10.1038/nrg2594. PMID 19506576.
13. ^ Farooqi S, O'Rahilly S (December 2006). "Genetics of obesity in humans". Endocr. Rev. 27(7): 710–18. doi:10.1210/er.2006-0040. PMID 17122358.http://edrv.endojournals.org/cgi/content/full/27/7/710.

Other References:

• American Heart Association 
  http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/
• CDC's WISEWOMAN — Well-Integrated Screening and Evaluation for Women Across the Nation 
  http://www.cdc.gov/wisewoman/
• Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, FCS, FNCS, USDA 
  http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/
• Food and Nutrition Information Center, USDA 
  http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/
• National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Information Center, NHLBI, NIH, HHS 
  http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/infoctr/index.htm
• Nutrition.gov 
  http://www.nutrition.gov/
• Smallstep.gov 
  http://www.smallstep.gov/
• Weight-Control Information Network

Salt, Diabetes and High Blood Pressure

More than 70% of people with Type 2 diabetes have high blood pressure. More than 85% of people with Type 2 diabetes consume too much salt on a daily basis. Coincidence? Is there a connection?

From a physiological perspective, Type 2 diabetics have high blood glucose levels, which thickens the blood and requires the heart muscle to work harder to push the thicker blood throughout the body. High blood glucose levels damage the kidneys, which can also lead to high blood pressure.

From a diet perspective, Type 2 diabetics eat more processed "dead" foods, fast foods, and junk foods that contain a lot of salt. So, it appears that salt should be avoided to prevent high blood pressure.

But, when  the majority of Type 2 diabetics go on a low-salt diet, their blood pressure doesn't go down! Why? Because the problem is not salt! The real problem is a lack of eating potassium-rich foods such as vegetables, fruits, and beans!

I know this sounds crazy, but to help dispel the myth about salt and high blood pressure, we need to discuss what is "real" salt , the physiology of salt and high blood pressure; and, how science mistakenly connected salt to high blood pressure (hypertension).

Note: This myth about salt is similar to the myths about fat  and cholesterol, leading to the low-fat and low-cholesterol diets of the last part of the 20th Century. As we discovered, fat (alone) is not the culprit that made us fat. And, cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease -- it was a mistake (or lie) that has led to millions of people taking cholesterol-lowering (statin) drugs. But, let's focus on the salt-high blood pressure myth on this web page.

What is Salt?

The body needs salt. “Salt” is actually a chemical term for a substance produced by a reaction of an acid with a base. The terms “salt” and “sodium” are used interchangeably, but technically this is not correct. 

“Salt” is sodium chloride, or, in chemistry terms, NaCl. By weight, “salt” is 40% sodium and 60% chloride. Sodium is an essential nutrient, a mineral that the body cannot manufacture itself but is required for life and good health. 

Salt was seen as a valuable food and commodity for centuries. In fact, wars were fought over its possession and civilizations rose and fell in pursuit of what came to be called “white gold.” In times past, common rock salt was given to the common people and the highly valued crystal salt, like Original Himalayan Crystal Salt®, was reserved for royalty.

Salt has a long history of use in rituals of purification, magical protection, and blessing. Salt has been used throughout the ages as a ward against negative energies or evil spirits. There are even Biblical references to salt. For example, in the New Testament, Matthew 15:3, Jesus speaking to his disciples, “You are the salt of the earth.”

So, salt had a good reputation until  the latter part of the 20^th Century when so-called "experts" began telling us that salt was causing high blood pressure -- which led to the "low-salt" diet.

This was an major mistake! -- the real issue was not the salt -- it was the over-consumption of processed foods (which contain high levels of sodium) combined with theunder-consumption of vegetables and beans (which contain high levels of potassium, magnesium, and zinc).

This led to the sodium-to-potassium ratio becoming excessively high. Instead of strictly reducing salt intake, a better strategy is to increase the intake of potassium-rich foods. This will trigger the cells to pump sodium out and potassium in via the “sodium-potassium pump”. This pump is in the membranes of all body cells, and one of its most important functions is preventing cellular swelling. If sodium is not pumped out, water accumulates in the cell, causing it to swell and ultimately burst.

History: How Did Salt Become a Villain?

The first report of the link between salt and hypertension was reported in 1904. Ambard and Beujard reported that salt deprivation was associated with lowered blood pressure in hypertensive patients. Over the next 50 years, various animal models were examined to support the hypothesis of salt causing high blood pressure. In almost all of these studies huge amounts of refined salt were given to the animals to induce a hypertensive effect. The use of large amounts of a lifeless product devoid of minerals such as refined salt should have made the results of these studies suspect.

In the 1940s, a Duke University researcher named Walter Kempner, M.D., became famous for using salt restriction to treat people with high blood pressure. Later, studies confirmed that reducing salt could help reduce hypertension.

So, salt became Public Enemy No. 1 in the kitchens of the misguided and health-obsessed. Back in 1976, Jean Mayer, then president of Tufts University, called salt "the most dangerous food additive of all." Four years later, The New York Times linked excessive consumption of salt to high blood pressure, heart and kidney disease, and stroke.
The INTERSALT Trial of 1986 was the most popular single study that provided the “smoking gun” proving that salt = hypertension. The study looked at over 10,000 subjects from 52 centers in 39 countries. The authors looked at the relationship between electrolyte excretion (sodium in the urine) and blood pressure. This study showed a mild decrease in blood pressure (3-6mm Hg systolic and 0-3mm Hg diastolic) when there was a dramatic decrease in salt excretion.
Note: If the goal of  Intersalt was to come up with a definitive answer to the question of salt-hypertension relationship, it failed to do so. If anything, it raised more questions, and clearly indicated that if such relationship exists at all, it is neither linear nor simple. For all that its data directly convey, the effect of salt intake on blood pressure doesn't seem to be a significant factor at the level of population.
But, the die had been cast. Salt was an evil thing to be avoided at all costs.
On the one side are those physicians who believe caution is the best policy until the data prove one way or the other that a low-sodium diet is beneficial; on the other are those physicians who do not support the conclusions of current data and worry about negative side effects from a low-sodium diet.
Salt's demonization by doctors had its roots in the early 1970s, when studies seemed to show a link between sodium intake and high blood pressure. As a result, doctors made the general recommendation that everyone should reduce their sodium intake. But by the mid-1990s newer studies were calling those data into question, including theJournal of the American Medical Association's 1998 meta-analysis of 114 clinical trialsthat did not support a general recommendation to reduce salt intake. Two years later,another study in the journal Hypertension concluded that "no single universal prescription for sodium intake can be scientifically justified."
"Better safe than sorry" is not science, but it may be fear-mongering, the specialty of the Washington, D.C.-based nutritional group called the Center for Science and the Public Interest. The CSPI continues to insist that "a diet high in sodium increases the risk or severity of high blood pressure, which increases the risk of heart attack and stroke. Everyone should eat less salt." (They're so unrelenting on this point, they've even sued the Food and Drug Administration over it.)
This isn't to say that salt is safe for everyone. Studies show that 30 percent of the Americans who have high blood pressure would greatly benefit from a low-sodium diet. But that's about 10 percent of the overall population -- the rest of us are fine with sodium. And drastically cutting out sodium may actually hurt some people.
"Nothing works for everybody. Low-sodium diets can be dangerous," says Dr. David Case, a hypertension specialist at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. "Clogged arteries have nothing to do with salt intake, though congestive heart disease does. Kidney disease is affected by salt intake, but healthy kidneys excrete excess salt. The bigger issue is what happens if people do restrict salt, which may make them more vulnerable to hemorrhaging, diarrhea, and water loss. There were some tragic results when some mothers restricted their infants' salt intake, which sent them into shock. Some even died."

What science really shows: Normally the kidneys control the level of salt. If there is too much salt, the kidneys pass it into urine. But when our salt intake levels are very high, the kidneys cannot keep up and the salt ends up in our bloodstream. Salt attracts water. When there is too much salt in the blood, the salt draws more water into the blood. More water increases the volume of blood which raises blood pressure.

Some people are more sensitive to salt than others. In some people too much salt will cause their blood pressures to rise, in others there will not be as large a change. About half of people are salt sensitive. African-Americans, the elderly and people with diabetes are more often salt sensitive. If you have high blood pressure, you may benefit from decreasing your salt intake.

But, large-scale scientific reviews have determined there's no reason for people with normal blood pressure to restrict their sodium intake.

It's been known for the past 20 years that people with high blood pressure who don't want to lower their salt intake can simply consume more potassium-containing foods. Why? Because it's really the balance of the two minerals that matters. In fact, Dutch researchers determined that a low potassium intake has the same impact on your blood pressure as high salt consumption does. And it turns out, the average person consumes 3,100 milligrams (mg) of potassium a day—1,600 mg less than recommended.

Does Salt Cause High Blood Pressure?

The Physiology of Salt
Eating too much processed food, many people accumulate more salt and water than their kidneys can handle. Some people have genes that control cellular channels, enzymes and hormones at various sites in the kidney, conserving salt to enable adaptation to the hot, dry savannah.  In order to remain active, one had to control body temperature. If water and salt were scarce, the kidney would conserve salt to retain fluid used to coat the body with sweat during activity. As sweat evaporated from the skin, it would cool the skin and keep body temperature normal. Without sweating, the body would quickly overheat during activity.

However, those genes necessary in our early development mistakenly conserve salt regardless of the environment. As long as excessive salt is ingested, it will be disproportionately reabsorbed in about 20 percent of the population.  Through a process known as osmosis, salt retains water. It also promotes thirst, as every bartender and movie theater proprietor knows.

Excessive salt keeps the circulatory volume higher than it should be, exerting excess fluid pressure on blood vessel walls. These walls react to this stress by thickening and narrowing, leaving less space for the fluid already cramped in the blood compartment, raising “resistance” and requiring higher pressure to move blood to the organs. The heart has to pump against this high pressure system.

Lifting free weights in the athletic center causes muscles to become harder and larger. This same phenomenon happens to the heart with one notable exception, there is no break. This 24/7 activity can cause the heart to enlarge dramatically, and dangerously. The kidney contains around one million tiny, delicate filters comprised of blood vessels. The increase in pressure transmitted to the kidneys damages its vascular system leading to a disorder known as “hypertensive nephrosclerosis,” a major cause of kidney disease.

Essential Hypertension
This genetic disorder, essential hypertension, is present in approximately 65 million Americans, and while characterized by measurements over 140/90, cardiovascular risks are already associated with blood pressures greater than 115/75.

It is controlled by eating a potassium-rich diet, restricting salt or using a diuretic drug, and is more common in those whose ancestral origins are equatorial. Doctors tend to push the diuretic drugs,  but, the best choice is a change in diet!

The Solution to the Problem of High Blood Pressure

A healthy diet with vegetables, fruits and legumes with salt reduction to roughly less than five grams (100 mmols sodium) substantially lowers blood pressure. Tribes in remote areas that ingest little salt in their diet have lower blood pressures. Around the world, lower salt usage is associated with lower pressure.  Restricting salt is difficult because it is as much a preservative as a flavoring condiment.

According to the latest (real) science, a proper balance of sodium, in addition to potassium and magnesium, is more important than severely reducing or eliminating sodium completely to achieve a healthy body. Sodium, potassium and magnesium help to regulate fluid balance in the body and allow nutrients and oxygen to travel to their necessary destinations within the body.

To provide a better balance of these minerals, use Himalayan salt or organic sea salt, which has a sandy color and contains magnesium and other nutrients and is not overly-processed and refined like the traditional (white) table salt. Also, flavor your food with garlic, onion, peppers, herbs, and other organic spices. 

More importantly, eat potassium and magnesium-rich foods such as vegetables, beans and fruits to naturally reduce and normalize the sodium level in the body.

Despite what banana-growers want you to think, a banana is not the best source for potassium. Also, a banana is not the best fruit for diabetics. A typical banana gives you just 490 mg of potassium. You'd have to eat 10 bananas to get the 5,000 mg a day, which most people need. And when you figure in the glycemic index (GI) of bananas, eating 10 a day would make you put on fat.
Instead, try an avocado, which will give you 1,483 mg of potassium with a much lower GI. But your best source of potassium is nuts. They are quite high in potassium and have a much lower glycemic index.

What else is a good source of potassium? Name any fruit. Most fruits are great sources of potassium.

Also, avoid processed foods such as canned tomato juice, soups, and lunch meats because they tend to contain high levels of sodium.  Avoid or reduce the consumption of most condiments, pickles, ham, bacon, salsa, cheese, cold cuts, olives, and broths.

Also, avoid fast foods, junk food, and fried foods (say goodbye to Kentucky Fried Chicken and Popeye's). And, be wary of some salt substitutes that may contain too much potassium chloride, which can cause numbness, irregular heartbeat, low blood pressure (dizziness, weakness, fatigue), coma, and, even a heart attack. 

So unless you've got high blood pressure, the next time you're in the kitchen -- don't be afraid to pick up that saltshaker. Your taste buds will thank you.

Diabetes and High Blood Pressure

As previously mentioned, people with diabetes have a greater risk of developing high blood pressure. Eating a high-calorie diet that is also high in sodium can increase the risk of kidney damage and eye damage.

Safe Sodium Intake and Blood Pressure Levels

If you have diabetes, your blood pressure would be too high at 130/80 mm Hg. If you have kidney problems, aim for 125/75. The American Association of Diabetes Educators advises that you reduce your daily sodium intake to no more than 2,400mg. That's about a teaspoon's worth. Cutting your salt intake by 8.5g each day could reduce your blood pressure by 7/3 mm Hg. In the "Journal of Human Hypertension" study, researchers say it takes about five weeks to see the full effect.

Major Sodium Food Sources

Americans get most of their sodium from bread, chicken and beef dishes, pizza, pasta, condiments, Mexican food, cheese, grain-based desserts, soups, cold cuts, sausage, hot dogs, bacon, and ribs. These foods contribute about 56 percent of the sodium in the average American's diet, or nearly 2,000mg a day. Watch out for salad dressings, soups and some cereals too.

Salt Alternatives and Lowering Sodium

A preference for salt can be trained, according to the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. Once you cut down, you won't want as much. Your body only needs 180mg per day to balance fluids. Season your foods with fresh herbs. Taste food before adding salt, rinse canned vegetables and remove the salt shaker from the table.

Importance of Salt and Filtered Water

The combination of using authentic sea salt and drinking pure, filtered water is very therapeutic for the human body. But, avoid table salt and drinking tap water!

Salt is a vital substance for the survival of all living creatures, particularly humans. Water and salt regulate the water content of the body. Water itself regulates the water content of the interior of the cell by working its way into all of the cells it reaches. It has to get there to cleanse and extract the toxic wastes of cell metabolisms. Salt forces some water to stay outside the cells. It balances the amount of water that stays outside the cells. 

There are two "oceans" of water in the body; one ocean is held inside the cells of the body, and the other ocean is held outside the cells. Good health depends on a most delicate balance between the volume of these oceans, and this balance is achieved by salt - unrefined salt.

When water is available to get inside the cells freely, it is filtered from the outside salty ocean and injected into the cells that are being overworked despite their water shortage. This is the reason why in severe dehydration we develop an edema and retain water. The design of our bodies is such that the extent of the ocean of water outside the cells is expanded to have the extra water available for filtration and emergency injection into vital cells. The brain commands an increase in salt and water retention by the kidneys. This is how we get an edema when we don't drink enough water.

Initially, the process of water filtration and its delivery into the cells is more efficient at night when the body is horizontal. The collected water, that mostly pools in the legs, does not have to fight the force of gravity to get onto the blood circulation. If reliance of this process of emergency hydration of some cells continues for long, the lungs begin to get waterlogged at night, and breathing becomes difficult. The person needs more pillows to sit upright to sleep. This condition is the consequence of dehydration. However, you might overload the system by drinking too much water at the beginning. Increases in water intake must be slow and spread out until urine production begins to increase at the same rate that you drink water.

When we drink enough water, we pass out a lot of the salt that was held back. This is how we can get rid of edema fluid in the body; by drinking more water. Not diuretics, but more water!! In people who have an extensive edema and show signs of their heart beginning to have irregular or very rapid beats with least effort, the increase in water intake should be gradual and spaced out, but not withheld from the body. Naturally, salt intake should be limited for two or three days because the body is still in an overdrive mode to retain it. Once the edema has cleared up, salt should not be withheld from the body.

Salt has many other functions than just regulating the water content of the body. 

Vital Functions of Salt in the Body

Vital functions of salt in the human body include the following.

Salt is most effective in stabilizing irregular heartbeats and, Contrary to the misconception that it causes high blood pressure, it is actually essential for the regulation of blood pressure - in conjunction with water. Naturally the proportions are critical.

Salt is vital to the extraction of excess acidity from the cells in the body, particularly the brain cells.

Salt is vital for balancing the sugar levels in the blood; a needed element in diabetics.

Salt is vital for the generation of hydroelectric energy in cells in the body. It is used for local power generation at the sites of energy need by the cells.

Salt is vital to the nerve cells' communication and information processing all the time that the brain cells work, from the moment of conception to death.

Salt is vital for absorption of food particles through the intestinal tract.

Salt is vital for the clearance of the lungs of mucus plugs and sticky phlegm, particularly in asthma and cystic fibrosis.

Salt is vital for clearing up catarrh and congestion of the sinuses.

Salt is a strong natural antihistamine.

Salt is essential for the prevention of muscle cramps.

Salt is vital to prevent excess saliva production to the point that it flows out of the mouth during sleep. Needing to constantly mop up excess saliva indicates salt shortage.

Salt is absolutely vital to making the structure of bones firm. Osteoporosis, in a major way, is a result of salt and water shortage in the body. Twenty-seven percent of the body's salt is in the bones. Osteoporosis results when the body needs more salt and takes it from the body. Bones are twenty-two percent water. Is it not obvious what happens to the bones when we're deficient in salt or water or both.

Salt is vital for sleep regulation. Salt is vital for the prevention of gout and gouty arthritis.

Salt is vital for maintaining sexuality and libido.

Salt is vital for preventing varicose veins and spider veins on the legs and thighs.

Salt is vital to the communication and information processing nerve cells the entire time that the brain cells work.

Sea salt contains about 80 mineral elements that the body needs. Some of these elements are needed in trace amounts. Unrefined sea salt is a better choice of salt than other types of salt on the market. Ordinary table salt that is bought in the super markets has been stripped of its companion elements and contains additive elements such as aluminum silicate to keep it powdery and porous. Aluminum is a very toxic element in our nervous system. It is implicated as one of the primary causes of Alzheimer's disease.

Salt Cravings

Salt cravings are a common occurrence and are usually not severe. There are many reasons for salt cravings and most are mild and can be treated easily. The most common reasons are: dehydration, vomit and diarrhea, excessive sweating,  and Addison's disease.

Dehydration

Dehydration is the single most common cause of salt cravings. Dehydration is the loss of water from the body. If too much water is lost, the body will begin pulling the nutrientsit needs from other sources. One of these nutrients is salt and this will cause a salt craving. This craving can be cured by drinking more water and can be prevented by getting the proper amount of water per day – at least 8 glasses. 

Vomiting and Diarrhea

Vomiting and diarrhea are common conditions that usually go hand and hand with being sick. With these two conditions, the food enters the body and is not in there long enough to be digested because it is eliminated before it can be absorbed. With this elimination, the body is missing out on nutrients that the body needs. The body will crave these nutrients, such as salt, to function properly. The cure for vomiting and diarrhea is to hydrate the body. The most common way to rehydrate is by drinking plenty of water. An alternative to water is to drink an electrolyte enriched drink such as a sports drink.

Excessive Sweating

Excessive sweating is another cause of salt cravings. When the body sweats too much, water is lost through the skin. When too much water is lost, a salt craving will occur. Anyone who has ever tasted sweat knows that it has a salty taste to it. To get rid of a salt craving due to excessive sweating, the body needs to be hydrated.

Addison’s Disease

Addison’s disease is a rare endocrine or hormonal disorder. This occurs when the adrenal glands do not produce enough of the hormone cortisol. This will cause the body to crave salt. Because of this condition, the salt craving may be a little harder to treat. The salt craving will most likely not be what is treated, but will be cured as a secondary effect of treating the disease.

A salt craving is a very common occurrence in the body. Most often the salt craving will be due to a mild and common condition such as dehydration. This is easy enough to be cured and prevented. Some serious conditions can cause salt cravings, and these need the help of a doctor to diagnose and cure. No matter what the cause of the salt craving, it needs to be addressed and tended to for the body to continue functioning properly.

References:

1. Appel, L. J., T. .J. Moore, E. Obarzanek, et al. 1997. A clinical trial of the
   effects of dietary patterns on blood pressure. DASH Collaborative Research
   Group. New England Journal of Medicine 336:1117–24.
2. Dyer, A. R., P. Elliott, M. Marmot, et al. 1996. Commentary: strength and
   importance of the relation of dietary salt to blood pressure. British Journal of
   Medicine 312:1663–65.
3. He, J., L. G. Ogden, S. Vupputuri, et al. 1999. Dietary sodium intake and
   subsequent risk of cardiovascular disease in overweight adults. Journal of the
   American Medical Association 282:2027–34.
4. Moore, T. J., W. M. Vollmer, L. J. Appel, et al. 1999. Effect of dietary
   patterns on ambulatory blood pressure: results from the Dietary Approaches
   to Stop Hypertension (DASH) Trial. DASH Collaborative Research Group.
   Hypertension 34:472–7.
5. Sacks, F. M., L. P. Svetkey,W.M.Vollmer, et al. 2001. Effects on blood pressure
   of reduced dietary sodium and the dietary approaches to stop hypertension
   (DASH) diet. New England Journal of Medicine 344:3–10.
6. Young JH, Chang Y-PC, Kim JD-O, et al: Differential susceptibility to hypertension is due to selection during the out-of-Africa expansion. PLoS Genet 1:2005
7. Leakey LS, Tobias PV and Napier JR: A NEW SPECIES OF THE GENUS HOMO FROM OLDUVAI GORGE. Nature 202:7-9, 1964
8. Kurlansky M: Salt. A World History Penguin Group: New York, 2002
9. Rosskopf D, Schurks M, Rimmbach C, et al: Genetics of arterial hypertension and hypotension. Naunyn Schmiedebergs Arch Pharmacol 2007
10. Blaustein MP, Zhang J, Chen L, et al: How does salt retention raise blood pressure? Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol 290:514-523, 2006
11. Haddy FJ: Role of dietary salt in hypertension. Life Sci 79:1585-1592, 2006
12. Cushman WC: The burden of uncontrolled hypertension: morbidity and mortality associated with disease progression. J Clin Hypertens (Greenwich) 5:14- 22, 2003
13. Chobanian AV, Bakris GL, Black HR, et al: The Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure: the JNC 7 report. JAMA 289:2560-2572, 2003
14. Major outcomes in high-risk hypertensive patients randomized to angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor or calcium channel blocker vs diuretic: The Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering Treatment to Prevent Heart Attack Trial (ALLHAT). JAMA 288:2981- 2997, 2002
15. Wright JT, Bakris G, Greene T, et al: Effect of blood pressure lowering and antihypertensive drug class on progression of hypertensive kidney disease: results from the AASK trial. JAMA 288:2421-2431, 2002
16. Calhoun DA: Resistant or difficult-to-treat hypertension. J Clin Hypertens (Greenwich) 8:181-186, 2006
17. K/DOQI clinical practice guidelines on hypertension and antihypertensive agents in chronic kidney disease. Am J Kidney Dis 43:1-290, 2004
18. Hebert LA: Target blood pressure for antihypertensive therapy in patients with proteinuric renal disease. Curr Hypertens Rep 1:454-460, 1999
19. Sacks FM, Svetkey LP, Vollmer WM, et al: Effects on blood pressure of reduced dietary sodium and the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet. DASH-Sodium Collaborative Research Group. N Engl J Med 344:3-10, 2001
20. Mancilha-Carvalho JdJ and Souza e Silva NA: The Yanomami Indians in the INTERSALT Study. Arq Bras Cardiol 80:289-300, 2003
21. Elliott P, Stamler J, Nichols R, et al: Intersalt revisited: further analyses of 24 hour sodium excretion and blood pressure within and across populations. Intersalt Cooperative Research Group. BMJ 312:1249-1253, 1996
22. Flack JM, Peters R, Shafi T, et al: Prevention of hypertension and its complications: theoretical basis and guidelines for treatment. J Am Soc Nephrol 14:S92-98, 2003
23. Stephen Z. Fadem, MD, FASN, FACP, serves as a member of the AAKP Medical Advisory Board and a Vice President of the AAKP Board of Directors. Dr. Fadem is a practicing nephrologist in Houston.