Nicole Cardoza Nicole Cardoza Nicole Cardoza Nicole Cardoza

Dismantle anti-fatness.

Fatphobia is rooted in racism and white supremacy. As the transatlantic slave trade grew in the early 1800s, colonies were introduced to African people of all sizes and body types. Race scientists started to create false correlations between curvier body sizes of African people – particularly African women – and their characteristics, suggesting that they were promiscuous, greedy, and aggressive. These stereotypes placed people that demonstrated them at the bottom of the social hierarchy, and used them to justify the enslavement and discrimination against those villainized for it.

Happy Monday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily! Today we're diving into the history of anti-fatness and its role in state-sanctioned violence. Note that we use the terms "anti-fatness" and "anti-fat bias" rather than "fatphobia" throughout this piece, details here.

Our Earth Week series, "This is our home," is almost over. Subscribe to learn from youth environmental justice leaders addressing the biggest climate threats of our time. thisisourho.me.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

  • Follow the work of organizations like The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), which a non-profit, all volunteer, fat-rights organization dedicated to protecting the rights and improving the quality of life for fat people.

  • If you identify as fat, join Fat Rose, which organizes fat radicals to embed fat politics on the left, contributing to building an intersectional fat liberation movement.

  • Support the #NoBodyIsDisposable movement to resist the triage discrimination fat, and disabled people experience during the COVID-19 pandemic.

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

Last week, Ma’Khia Bryant, a 16-year-old Black girl, was shot four times by a police officer in Columbus, Ohio (NYTimes). As we’ve written previously, adultification bias influences how young Black girls are seen as older and more threatening than they are. But it’s also important to understand how anti-fat bias magnifies violence against Black communities and that anti-fat sentiment is just as ingrained in Western culture as other forms of oppression.


Fatphobia is rooted in racism and white supremacy. As the transatlantic slave trade grew in the early 1800s, colonies were introduced to African people of all sizes and body types. Race scientists started to create false correlations between curvier body sizes of African people – particularly African women – and their characteristics, suggesting that they were promiscuous, greedy, and aggressive. These stereotypes placed people that demonstrated them at the bottom of the social hierarchy, and used them to justify the enslavement and discrimination against those villainized for it. These perceived behaviors were also discouraged in Protestantism, a form of Christianity popular during this time that celebrated moderation, not excessive consumption. So both religion and slavery greatly influenced the weaponization of fatness against Black people. Sabrina Strings’ book, Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia, is a comprehensive resource on this issue. Her 12-minute interview with NPR offers a full overview. Anti-fatness in the slave trade institutionalized that oppression in the same way that it institutionalized racism, ableism, and colonialism.

“If you abolish anti-fatness today, and not anti-Blackness, you don't abolish anti-fatness. They exist, and they come online into a coherent ideology through the exact same mechanisms.”

Da’Shaun Harrison, in dialogue with Virgie Toval for Rebel Eaters Club Podcast

Our healthcare system has reinforced systemic anti-fat bias by discriminating against fat people in policy and practice. One way is through the use of the body mass index, or BMI. A mathematician designed the formula as a quick hack to determine the degree of obesity in teh general population, based on the body proportions of a white man. It doesn’t consider the wide genetic predispositions of different bodies, and it was explicitly not designed to gauge individual fatness. You can read a bunch of other reasons it doesn’t work in this NPR article. 

Nevertheless, it’s been adopted as the standard metric of what a healthy body looks like (The Guardian), which harms everyone, particularly people of color. Studies show that the BMI overestimates health risks for Black people and underestimates health risks for Asian people. It also completely ignores the physical, sex-based differences of human bodies (Elemental).

And consequently, a war has been launched against the “obesity epidemic,” which equates fatness to disease, placing individual responsibility on the perceived adverse health effects of being fat that is often a result of a biased, oppressive system. This translates into interpersonal oppression that only exacerbates the harm of the whole. Many physicians will be quick to tell a fat person to “lose weight” instead of investigating the true cause of an ailment (illustrated by Jess Sims in her article for Well+Good). What’s worse: 24% of physicians admitted they were uncomfortable having friends in larger bodies, and 18% said they felt disgusted when treating a patient with a high BMI (Scientific American). This leaves many genuine medical concerns undiagnosed; in fact, fat people are 1.65x more likely to have significant undiagnosed medical conditions than the general population (APA). Consequently,  fat people are more likely to avoid medical care when they believe they won’t be treated appropriately, which increases the likelihood that a health condition can go longer untreated. 
 

Anti-fat bias also exacerbates the state-sanctioned violence that Black people experience. Police often try to justify violence against Black victims based on their size. The officer that killed Michael Brown in 2014 referred to him as a “demon” and said restraining him felt like “ a 5-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan” (Slate). After Eric Garner died after being put in a chokehold by police officers in July 2014, the coroner referenced his weight as a contributing factor to his death. U.S. Congressman Peter King stated that a chokehold was necessary to restrain Garner because of his size, and if he didn’t have “asthma and a heart condition and was so obese,” he “almost definitely” would not have died from it (Huffington Post). Both insinuate that Eric Garner’s death because of his weight, shielding the system of police brutality from accountability. This sentiment certainly influenced the case; federal charges against the officer responsible were ultimately dropped (NYTimes).

“Officers unable to restrain an obese person without killing him are not fit to be serving in a country in which more than one-third of all adults are obese, particularly since these rates are going to be higher in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas that are disproportionately likely to attract police attention.”

Rebecca Kukla and Sarah S. Richardson, “Eric Garner and the Value of Black Obese Bodies” for Huffington Post

Through all this and more, anti-fatness shapes nearly every aspect of our society, including how clothing is sized (Vogue Business), public spaces are designed (Teen Vogue), and health insurance is designed (National Institute of Health). Fat people are discriminated against in the workplace, earning $1.25 less per hour than other employees, which can lead to a loss of $100,000 throughout a career (Yes! Magazine). Even movies and TV shows about fat people are more likely to cast a non-fat actor than a fat one (GEN). In late 2019, TikTok admitted to hiding content created by fat users and other marginalized communities to prevent cyberbullying – a shameful way for a social network to eschew responsibility for toxic behavior (Slate).

Addressing anti-fatness will take more than just changing individual behavior – but that’s a necessary first step. We must stay in inquiry about how we reinforce systemic narratives through body shaming and holding conversations about weight – with each other, but especially within ourselves. And as you continue along on your anti-racism journey, know that dismantling anti-fat bias is part of the work.

Key Takeaways

  • Anti-fatness outlines the systemic and interpersonal oppression that fat people experience

  • Anti-fatness has roots in slavery, and exacerbates racial violence

  • Fat people experience discrimination in the workplace, the healthcare system, the criminal justice system and other aspects of everyday life

RELATED ISSUES

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.

Subscribe on Patreon | Give one-time on PayPal | Venmo @nicoleacardoza

Read More
Andrew Lee Nicole Cardoza Andrew Lee Nicole Cardoza

Learn how militarism supports racism.

The US is the top military spender on the planet. What’s more, it spends more on its military than the next ten countries–China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, the UK, Japan, South Korea, and Brazil–combined. The gargantuan military budget sponsors 800 American overseas military bases spread across more than 70 countries (Politico). In 2016, U.S. Special Operations Forces deployed to an astounding 138 countries. Given that there are only 195 countries on Earth, this means more than 70% were visited by American commandos (Forbes).

Happy Friday, and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. Last week, the Biden administration announced it will withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021 (Washington Post), which offers long-awaited reprieve for the troops and families who have dealt with decades of deployments. It would be remiss to discuss anti-racism from the lens of the United States without acknowledging how militarism fuels that racism both here and abroad. Today, Andrew shares his thoughts on warmongering and racial violence.

Our youth-led series on environmental justice launched last night! Don't miss out – subscribe to receive the week-long series in your inbox: thisisourho.me.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

GET EDUCATED

By Andrew Lee (he/him)

Each year, the majority of the federal government’s discretionary budget goes to paying for the same single thing. It isn’t health care or housing. It isn’t education or transportation. No, each year hundreds of billions of dollars go to the US military (National Priorities Project).

The US is the top military spender on the planet. What’s more, it spends more on its military than the next ten countries–China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, the UK, Japan, South Korea, and Brazil–combined. The gargantuan military budget sponsors 800 American overseas military bases spread across more than 70 countries (Politico). In 2016, U.S. Special Operations Forces deployed to an astounding 138 countries. Given that there are only 195 countries on Earth, this means more than 70% were visited by American commandos (Forbes).

In my lifetime alone, this sprawling, expensive military apparatus invaded Haiti, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq (twice). It intervened in Kosovo, Somalia, Bosnia, and Syria (Infoplease). There’s no reason to think this will change anytime soon. President Biden is already signalling a “tougher” foreign policy, calling Chinese president Xi Jinping a “thug” and refusing to lift sanctions on Iran (MarketWatch). Half of Americans expect to go to war with Iran in coming years (Reuters) though less than one in four can point to it on a map (Newsweek). 

We should oppose US military interventions on anti-racist grounds because they lead to the mass death and deprivation of people of color abroad. The War on Terror has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians directly (Watson Institute), to say nothing of those who died from environmental degradation and starvation in the wake of American attacks. The aftermath of the US invasion of Libya has seen the introduction of literal slave markets in the country (Time). No consistent anti-racist can endorse outcomes like these. 

There’s an additional reason why opposing racism means opposing militarism. When America’s leaders beat the war drum, they put people of color in the United States at risk as well. 

The day after September 11th, 2001, President Bush announced that the attacks were “more than acts of terror. They were acts of war.” The United States, he said, was engaged in a “monumental struggle of good versus evil” against an “enemy [who] hides in the shadows and has no regard for human life” (BBC). Three days later, a man with stated intentions to “go out and shoot some towel heads” murdered a Sikh gas station owner, erroneously believed him to be Muslim (PRI). The murderer told police he did it out of patriotic duty. That year, 2001, anti-Muslim hate crimes jumped by 1718% (PRI).

In the early 1980s, Vietnamese refugees along the Gulf Coast came under attack by the Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Burning crosses appeared in the front yards of Vietnamese families as their homes and shrimping boats went up in flames (NPR). Some of the Klan’s members were veterans who saw their campaign of racial terrorism as a continuation of the Vietnam War in which they had fought. “I promise them a lot better fight here than they got from the Viet Cong,” said the Klan’s leader (Timeline). For these white paramilitaries, their enemy hadn’t just been the North Vietnamese army but rather Vietnamese people in general. 

And the current wave of anti-Asian attacks follows years of escalating rhetoric against China. According to one Forbes article, China is poised to “take over the world” (Forbes). China “ripped off the United States like no one has ever done before,” according to President Trump, and pushed the World Health Organization to “mislead the world” over the “Wuhan virus” (CNN). One 2020 Trump campaign email read, “America is under attack -– not just by an invisible virus, but by the Chinese” (NY Times). 

To justify, fund, and conscript soldiers for war requires framing an entire people as the enemy. Politicians sometimes clarify that it is only the political leadership or a certain group within a nation that’s worthy of elimination. But this is fine print in the campaign of racially-tinted dehumanization necessary to convince a nation to endorse mass slaughter. As Dale Minami puts it, “Those images remain. The antipathy remains and survives. And to dehumanize these people of color and bring that back to your own country, the United States, leads to a justification for just terrible treatment of Asian people” (NPR).

President Biden called for increasing the defense budget from $740 to $753 billion this year (The Hill), with the $13 billion addition supposedly only a “modest” increase. Biden’s first military act as president was sanctioning an airstrike in Syria that the administration described as a “deliberate” move designed to “de-escalate the overall situation.” A Notre Dame Law School professor, in contrast, called the attack a clear violation of international law (The Guardian). 

“Deliberate” executions from the sky and Special Forces roaming across a majority of countries in the world aren’t anything unusual. Biden’s airstrike barely made the nightly news in the United States. But if US foreign policy should take an even more contentious turn in the near future, we would do well to remember the catastrophic effects of American war for people around the world and in our very own communities, too. Dehumanization, othering, and racial violence–at home as well as abroad–all go hand in hand. 

We need to stand against warmongering.

Key Takeaways

  • The US military operates in most countries around the world. Its budget dwarfs that of any other nation.

  • American wars have devastating civilian consequences, largely falling on people of color in poor countries.

  • Building support for these wars involves demonizing and dehumanizing the targets of US intervention.

  • This dehumanization creates the climate for racial attacks against people of color in the United States.

RELATED ISSUES

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.

Subscribe on Patreon | Give one-time on PayPal | Venmo @nicoleacardoza

Read More