Fat Black Women as "Social Dead Weight"

• In Event: 324 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 06. RGC and Health Inequality

Abstract

A flurry of recent articles in the medical and popular press have decried black women’s “alarmingly” high rates of obesity. The number of high-profile publications lamenting the “epidemic” among black women has grown, even as mounting evidence indicates that obesity (BMI>=30) does not necessarily lead to poor health. Indeed, given its functional limitations in explaining or predicting health outcomes, a number of medical researchers are now issuing calls to revise the standard definition of obesity. In this paper, I examine the curious nature of the discourse decrying the “obesity epidemic” among black women. I argue that rather than being a novel concern about black women’s health or public health, the medical and popular discourse about obesity and black women is largely a reproduction of the “diseased black woman” trope that has been used throughout American history. The latest iteration is distinct in that it renders black women as triply signified “social dead weight.”

Author

• Sabrina A. Strings, University of California-Berkeley