The media’s gonna think I’m being a button-pushing comedian for asking that question so bluntly. But I’m dead serious: Black
and brown folks are in a battle for survival every damn day in this country, in a way white people can’t fully comprehend.
Our life expectancy is a full three years less than white Americans. The very air we breathe is more polluted, our water is more contaminated, our local food options are toxic, and our jobs are underpaid. Folks where I grew up in South Central L.A. aren’t jogging to the local Whole Foods for a smoothie. Even if they could afford it, odds are they’d have early stage lung cancer by the time they got there. Black people have higher rates of obesity, high blood pressure, and other risk factors, owing in no small part to adverse environmental factors. Despite the obvious need, the quality of our health care is tragically inadequate. According to the American Cancer Society, African Americans have the highest death rate from most cancers and the lowest survival length. Our kidneys fail us at three times the rate of whites. Damn,
even our kidneys are profiling us.
Still alive? Well, even the healthiest among us gotta be careful out there. Our communities are statistically less safe than
the average, and yet we’re terrorized by the law-enforcement and criminal-justice systems that are supposed to protect us,
sending us to prison at five times the rate of whites. Not least, our means of addressing these injustices—voting—is perennially under assault.
