Ethicalego Opinion

Social problems grow as government officials ignore them.

 American society does not learn from past mistakes that it is better to solve social problems at the beginning when they are small and easier to manage. Instead, government officials and community leaders seem unable to recognize there is a growing problem when at first it affects only the welfare of groups not valued highly in society.

The negative effects from subprime loan defaults still reflect through the economy.  Homeowners are losing their homes. Workers are losing jobs. Investors are losing value on stocks and investments. Government officials had warnings that subprime loans were bad for borrowers and could potentially upset the housing market. Still, they dismissed its importance.   

A few years ago, concerned groups claimed that lending institutions steered a higher percentage of black-labeled loan applicants into subprime loans than it did white-labeled applicants. They claimed that subprime higher interest rates and harsher terms made it more likely those homeowners would default on the loan.   

Defenders for lending institutions answered part of the claim. They rationalized that lending institutions steered a higher percentage of black-labeled applicants into subprime loans, because they had lower credit ratings than white-labeled applicants did. This rationalization seemed to answer the racial discrimination charge, so the news media and federal regulators lost interest.

They ignored the second part of the claim that subprime loans rates and terms increased the likelihood the borrower would default on the loan. However, few people outside the affected group cared.  The consensus was that black-labeled Americans created this problem for themselves, because they earned low or bad credit ratings.

This callousness about the interests of this group of home loan applicants allowed lending institutions to feed their greed with no oversight. Lending institutions steered more Americans into subprime mortgages with even more burdensome terms. Nobody cared that many homeowners would default and lose their homes. Then, the potential number of defaults and money involved threatened the stability of the housing market, lending institutions and the national economy. Suddenly, the nation was concerned. The national economy may have suffered less upset from slowing house sales if regulators had conscientiously looked into lending institutions practices when black-labeled borrowers complained about them.   

Americans’ problem with obesity was another area of national disinterests when seemingly it mostly affected black-labeled Americans. About thirty years ago, health officials and news media mostly talked about obesity as “black women’s” problem if they discussed it at all. They speculated that black culture and black diet probably caused the obesity. Some writers suggested the women gained weight intentionally to make themselves unattractive to lecherous employers.

Health officials adopted a different attitude about obesity near the turn of the century when obesity rates climbed for other American citizens.  Something changed in 1990 that caused increased rates of obesity and diabetes. They doubled for all groups between 1990 and 2005. Obesity related diseases like diabetes and stroke became more prevalent.

However, government officials, health officials and the news media still have not learned their lesson. They should report obesity and diabetes as a national problem for Americans.  Instead, they still report health statistics in racial comparisons as if having good health is a racial contest.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 13.3% non-Hispanic blacks 20 years or older and 8.7% whites have diabetes. It reports that blacks are 1.8 times as likely to have diabetes as whites are. This confirms the conclusion in society that diabetes is mostly a black disease. 

However, percentages represent number ratios. The numbers are 13.1 million whites in the 20-year and older category have diabetes and 3.2 million blacks do. Therefore, someone can just as accurately report that four times as many white-labeled Americans have diabetes as black-labeled Americans do.  In addition, the prevalence of diabetes increased at a higher percentage in white-labeled Americans than for black-labeled Americans during the past twenty-five years.   

Which is the better way to describe the prevalence of diabetes between those two racial groups?   It does not matter. Government agencies’ obsession with unimportant racial comparisons confuses and distracts Americans’ concerns about this serious health threat.  I doubt if the people who suffer obesity and diabetes care about what percentage of white-labeled and black-labeled share it with them.  

It is important for health officials to protect Americans’ health better by taking seriously all threats to health in the nation no matter the group affected. Think how much suffering, deaths and health costs American society could have avoided if it addressed obesity as a national health threat 30-years ago, instead of characterizing it as a racial characteristic.

Contact Kenneth Brooks at P.O. B 882, Vallejo, CA 94590. opinion@ethicalego.com