The University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health is looking to tackle obesity. No, not the health problem but the word itself.
A dietician at the school has declared the word to be racist and has a more woke suggestion to replace it.
Jesse O’Neil reports at the New York Post:
University of Illinois Chicago wants to cancel the word ‘obesity’ because it’s ‘racist’The woke police are coming for the term “obesity.”The University of Illinois Chicago’s school of public health published an article by a dietitian claiming the medical term is “racist” and should be replaced with the wordy term “people with larger bodies.”Author Amanda Montgomery, RN, argued that race scientists used “fatness and differing body characteristics” to classify black people as “less civilized” and “as a way to justify slavery, racism and classism, and control women,” according to her health brief, entitled “Addressing weight stigma and fatphobia in public health.”Montgomery also contends that losing weight “has detrimental effects on our physiology” and many people can’t become thinner because of “uncontrollable genetic or environmental factors.”
Amanda Montgomery appears to be part of the school’s “Collaboratory for Health Justice.”
She posted the following on their website:
Addressing weight stigma and fatphobia in public healthPublic Health’s focus on “obesity” prevention has increased exponentially within the last few decades,and with it an increase in weight stigma and negative attitudes towards people in larger bodies. In the past decade, weight discrimination has increased by 66 percent, and is one of the only forms of discrimination actively condoned by society (1,2). Decades of research have shown that experiencing weight stigma increases one’s risk for diabetes, heart disease, discrimination, bullying, eating disorders, sedentariness, lifelong discomfort in one’s body and even early death…Additionally, “obesity” related public health approaches can be harmful because they are based on limited or poor quality evidence, they focus on preventing one outcome at the expense of another outcome, they lack community engagement and they ignore the root cause of problems…The focus on body size is rooted in racismAround 81 percent of societies historically have favored people in larger bodies5. Larger bodies signified wealth and prosperity while thinness signified poverty andweakness. However, this began to change due to racism and eugenics. Charles Darwin and other race scientists created a hierarchy of civilization, placing whitemen on top and people of color, specifically black people, at the bottom, considering them to be “less civilized.” Fatness and differing body characteristics wereused to justify lack of civilization: fatness used as a marker of “uncivilized behavior” while thinness was “more evolved”. This idea was maintained throughoutthe United States in the 19th and 20th centuries, as a way to justify slavery, racism and classism, and control women through “temperance”. This ideology hasperpetuated Desirability Politics- where thinness and whiteness are given more access to social, political and cultural capital…
Welcome to the woke future of medicine. Professor Jacobson talked about this in a recent post. It’s a cause for great concern.
Featured image via YouTube.
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