16 ms·

It’s really hard for me not to be skeptical of a study that starts with the premise of measuring everyone else against “the most privileged group,” aka. white m

It’s really hard for me not to be skeptical of a study that starts with the premise of measuring everyone else against “the most privileged group,” aka. white men, and then calling their metric “health justice.” I don’t know the stats off the top of my head but I’ve heard many times that men’s health issues are under-studies relative to women’s — ie breast cancer versus prostate cancer. I’ve also seen that mental health problems affect men more than women, as well as behavioral problems with youth, and yet there’s no outcry for “health justice” for all the men with mental issues or men vastly overrepresented in the prison population. The study claims that health correlates most strongly with income, and that the gap between black and white has narrowed - and yet the study author claims there’s a “stunning lack of progress.” Most of America’s problems correlate most strongly with income and more weakly with race and gender, which isn’t surprising when income itself is uneven between race and gender demographics. Yet it feels to me like we’re constantly crying out about race and gender discrimination while paying much less attention to wealth and income which seem to be the root issue. Are there racists in the country? Do hate crimes happen? Yes, and we shouldn’t gloss over them. But are the country’s problems driven mostly by racial hatred? I don’t think so. I think the problem is we have done a lot to pull the ladder up behind the upper-middle class, everyone in the lower income brackets is getting screwed, and that disproportionately affects minorities and historically disadvantaged groups. I think if we could get more serious about putting the ladder back and investing in upward mobility for all, we could make a lot more progress on all the rest of the issues that are affecting the country.

supercanuck 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism >It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.
save_ferris 7y ago
Statistically speaking, white men are far and away the highest income earners in America. They are literally the most privileged group. Until 2008, 44 of 44 of US presidents were white men. White men dominate the Fortune 500, Wall Street, and leadership in the government. The paper also explicitly defined health justice as "a measure of the correlation of health outcomes with income, race/ethnicity and sex; and a summary health equity metric.", which doesn't sound like much of an editorialization to me.
- invalidOrTaken 7y ago
  Who are the highest income spenders? I'm reminded of the Seinfeld reservation bit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T2GmGSNvaM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T2GmGSNvaM).
  - save_ferris 7y ago
    I don't quite understand your point or its connection here. What are you arguing?
    - humanrebar 7y ago
      It's not the earning that matters. The spending is the important part. You can't pay for an x-ray with a W-2. Analogously, taking a reservation is pointless. Holding the reservation is the point.
  - bigmanwalter 7y ago
    Usually the people who earn the most have people whose only job is spending it for them.
- flahgd 7y ago
  Indians and asians actually earn more than whites on average.
  - Guthur 7y ago
    Whoa I didn't realise how insanely true that was. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the...
  - RickJWagner 7y ago
    I think some places categorize Indians as Asians. (Not that this changes the earnings stats.)
SolaceQuantum 7y ago
"I don’t know the stats off the top of my head but I’ve heard many times that men’s health issues are under-studies relative to women’s — ie breast cancer versus prostate cancer." I think the actual metric is extremely complicated. By and large, symptoms of diseases and illness are based on male patients. Drug trials often exclude women (due to pregnancy risk) and many exclude pregnant women (forcing pregnant women to go without necessary medication to protect the fetus). Certain women's cancers like breast cancer recieve significant income but other issues like endomeitrosis recieve little to no research. Women are statistically forced to wait longer at ER and have their pain dismissed more regularly as not indicating anything serious. So in some ways men are considered 'default' for drug trials, clinical health profiles, their pain and health are considered more seriously, etc. On the other hand, there isn't a lot of money for mental health geared towards men in particular, certain cancers that are male specific are ignored, and there isn't as much pressure for thinness and health on men as there are women socially. So I don't think there's clear lines that by far X gender is oppressed on all levels in the healthcare field. It would be more accurate to presume that there are many different systemic failures correlated with different demographics, and this affects different demographics differently. While I agree with you that class has a massive influence, I would hesitate to agree with you that the country's problems should be considered primarily class based. We are still only a generation past (less than a generation? arguably still ongoing?) purposefully refusing to lend or perform economic deals with people based on their race or gender. This would show up as class stratification but has a racial/sexist cause, so it may be inaccurate to presume that solely economic solution would resolve all other societal stratification issues. (But I really do agree with you we need to remove barriers of economic class transfer.)
JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
I think income and race/gender are too intertwined to characterize it as ignoring the income issue. I agree that income is strongly correlated to many outcomes, health or otherwise. When it comes to solutions, though, you can't raise income without addressing the racial and gender biases today. The same resume with a Black sounding name gets far less traction than a stereotypically white name. Income and race are, unfortunately, coupled. I think economic justice and racial equality and gender equality all come hand-in-hand. When you hear people talking about racial injustice, while you advocate for economic equality, I think both are ultimately advocating for the same position.
mempko 7y ago
There is no such thing as a root cause. The economy is a dynamic system under a legal framework which governs the way it works. A lot of that legal framework is designed to punish the poor and punish minorities which makes them poor. It's doubly troubling and to tackle inequality requires tackling the legal and social framework our economy exists in which happens to have institutional racism and sexism. In other words, does racism and gender create the income inequality we see across the board? No, but is getting rid of racism and gender inequality required to diminish income inequality? Yes.
- reallydude 7y ago
  > getting rid of racism and gender inequality You can't get rid of racial and gender inequality, because we're inherently inequal to each other AND between the genders. It's in our DNA for the foreseeable future. We can diminish and mute it, at best. Diminishing returns has set in, while we ignore the more impactful issues.
  - mempko 7y ago
    this is literally the definition of racism and sexism.
    - xiphias2 7y ago
      ,,Racism is the belief in the superiority of one race over another'' I like this definition. People can be different, still having the same rights. They don't have to be ordered to have an equality operation defined on them.
      - mempko 7y ago
        What are you worried about if they are considered equal?
TheTruth321 7y ago
Quit whining, b!tch.
reallydude 7y ago
My friend, Tiana Baldwin, focused on the statistical correlation between Nursing Home costs and survival metrics. She got an award for her master thesis (and graduated), before becoming the city planner for Anaheim, CA. I would have thought it would be easy to look up. Now she works at Cal State University Fullerton as a Professor under her married name. I'm sure she can point you to the specific study. Sadly, I cannot find it casually.
tomp 7y ago
> men’s health issues are under-studies relative to women’s — ie breast cancer versus prostate cancer. That sounds unfair, but according to the staistics I can find [0] [1], breast cancer kills more and/or younger people (mostly women) than prostate cancer, which kills slightly less and/or older men (many men die with prostate cancer, but not of it). [0] https://ourworldindata.org/cancer https://ourworldindata.org/cancer [1] https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/mortality/age https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...
Sojuwa 7y ago
Have sex.

supercanuck 7y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism >It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.

save_ferris 7y ago

Statistically speaking, white men are far and away the highest income earners in America. They are literally the most privileged group. Until 2008, 44 of 44 of US presidents were white men. White men dominate the Fortune 500, Wall Street, and leadership in the government. The paper also explicitly defined health justice as "a measure of the correlation of health outcomes with income, race/ethnicity and sex; and a summary health equity metric.", which doesn't sound like much of an editorialization to me.

invalidOrTaken 7y ago
Who are the highest income spenders? I'm reminded of the Seinfeld reservation bit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T2GmGSNvaM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T2GmGSNvaM).
- save_ferris 7y ago
  I don't quite understand your point or its connection here. What are you arguing?
  - humanrebar 7y ago
    It's not the earning that matters. The spending is the important part. You can't pay for an x-ray with a W-2. Analogously, taking a reservation is pointless. Holding the reservation is the point.
- bigmanwalter 7y ago
  Usually the people who earn the most have people whose only job is spending it for them.
flahgd 7y ago
Indians and asians actually earn more than whites on average.
- Guthur 7y ago
  Whoa I didn't realise how insanely true that was. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the...
- RickJWagner 7y ago
  I think some places categorize Indians as Asians. (Not that this changes the earnings stats.)

SolaceQuantum 7y ago

"I don’t know the stats off the top of my head but I’ve heard many times that men’s health issues are under-studies relative to women’s — ie breast cancer versus prostate cancer." I think the actual metric is extremely complicated. By and large, symptoms of diseases and illness are based on male patients. Drug trials often exclude women (due to pregnancy risk) and many exclude pregnant women (forcing pregnant women to go without necessary medication to protect the fetus). Certain women's cancers like breast cancer recieve significant income but other issues like endomeitrosis recieve little to no research. Women are statistically forced to wait longer at ER and have their pain dismissed more regularly as not indicating anything serious. So in some ways men are considered 'default' for drug trials, clinical health profiles, their pain and health are considered more seriously, etc. On the other hand, there isn't a lot of money for mental health geared towards men in particular, certain cancers that are male specific are ignored, and there isn't as much pressure for thinness and health on men as there are women socially. So I don't think there's clear lines that by far X gender is oppressed on all levels in the healthcare field. It would be more accurate to presume that there are many different systemic failures correlated with different demographics, and this affects different demographics differently. While I agree with you that class has a massive influence, I would hesitate to agree with you that the country's problems should be considered primarily class based. We are still only a generation past (less than a generation? arguably still ongoing?) purposefully refusing to lend or perform economic deals with people based on their race or gender. This would show up as class stratification but has a racial/sexist cause, so it may be inaccurate to presume that solely economic solution would resolve all other societal stratification issues. (But I really do agree with you we need to remove barriers of economic class transfer.)

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago

I think income and race/gender are too intertwined to characterize it as ignoring the income issue. I agree that income is strongly correlated to many outcomes, health or otherwise. When it comes to solutions, though, you can't raise income without addressing the racial and gender biases today. The same resume with a Black sounding name gets far less traction than a stereotypically white name. Income and race are, unfortunately, coupled. I think economic justice and racial equality and gender equality all come hand-in-hand. When you hear people talking about racial injustice, while you advocate for economic equality, I think both are ultimately advocating for the same position.

mempko 7y ago

There is no such thing as a root cause. The economy is a dynamic system under a legal framework which governs the way it works. A lot of that legal framework is designed to punish the poor and punish minorities which makes them poor. It's doubly troubling and to tackle inequality requires tackling the legal and social framework our economy exists in which happens to have institutional racism and sexism. In other words, does racism and gender create the income inequality we see across the board? No, but is getting rid of racism and gender inequality required to diminish income inequality? Yes.

reallydude 7y ago
> getting rid of racism and gender inequality You can't get rid of racial and gender inequality, because we're inherently inequal to each other AND between the genders. It's in our DNA for the foreseeable future. We can diminish and mute it, at best. Diminishing returns has set in, while we ignore the more impactful issues.
- mempko 7y ago
  this is literally the definition of racism and sexism.
  - xiphias2 7y ago
    ,,Racism is the belief in the superiority of one race over another'' I like this definition. People can be different, still having the same rights. They don't have to be ordered to have an equality operation defined on them.
    - mempko 7y ago
      What are you worried about if they are considered equal?

TheTruth321 7y ago

Quit whining, b!tch.

reallydude 7y ago

My friend, Tiana Baldwin, focused on the statistical correlation between Nursing Home costs and survival metrics. She got an award for her master thesis (and graduated), before becoming the city planner for Anaheim, CA. I would have thought it would be easy to look up. Now she works at Cal State University Fullerton as a Professor under her married name. I'm sure she can point you to the specific study. Sadly, I cannot find it casually.

tomp 7y ago

> men’s health issues are under-studies relative to women’s — ie breast cancer versus prostate cancer. That sounds unfair, but according to the staistics I can find [0] [1], breast cancer kills more and/or younger people (mostly women) than prostate cancer, which kills slightly less and/or older men (many men die with prostate cancer, but not of it). [0] https://ourworldindata.org/cancer https://ourworldindata.org/cancer [1] https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/mortality/age https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...

Sojuwa 7y ago

Have sex.