Fat kids, racial disparities and education reform

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A new study that exposes an obesity crisis among America's children also highlights the most alarming weakness in the costly new bipartisan education bill making its way through Congress.

No one would suggest that our public schools should take responsibility for reforming the eating and exercise habits of today's young people; educators face challenges enough in simply teaching America's children how to read. But the worrisome racial distribution of overweight kids suggests the destructive folly at the heart of current efforts at education reform and other federal policies that insist on eliminating all performance gaps among various ethnic groups.

The new obesity study, conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, analyzed children between the ages of 4 and 12 and concluded that the percentage of seriously overweight kids had increased in every population subgroup. Among white children, the percentage with weight problems went up since 1986 from 8 percent to 12 percent. Among black kids, however, the percentage of overweight children skyrocketed from 8 percent to 22 percent. In other words, black children today are nearly twice as likely as white children to earn classification as obese.

"These trends carry enormous public health implications, because of the known effects of excess body weight on the risk for type-2 diabetes, heart disease and other complications," commented Dr. David Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children's Hospital in Boston. In addition to their other challenges (involving economic disadvantages, unsafe neighborhoods and so forth), black children now face a significant – and totally unnecessary – physical problem.

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Who is to blame for this unfortunate development? Of course, the usual race hustlers (otherwise known as "civil rights activists") seek to place responsibility on the white power structure. An African-American community leader from San Diego tried to explain black obesity with reference to slavery, suggesting that plantation owners tried to save money by feeding their slaves cheap and unhealthy food. This explanation ignores the fact that no vicious overseers today stand over black children, forcing them to eat fattening junk. Moreover, as recently as 1986 the incidence of obesity among African-American kids proved virtually identical to that among white kids. Then something happened to create the current distressing disparity.

Though the authors of the University of Michigan study offer no persuasive explanation, three factors suggest themselves in explaining racial trends in the obesity problem. First, there is an obvious (and clinically proven) correlation between hours spent watching television and the incidence of overweight. Several studies suggest that black children watch at least 50 percent more hours of TV than white kids, taking time away from exercise, games, or physical activity of any kind – and the amount of television viewing has recently soared in the African-American community.

Second, family structure makes an obvious contribution to weight problems: single mothers will necessarily find less time to prepare nourishing food for their kids than mothers in stable marriages, and black children are nearly three times as likely to grow up in single-parent households.

Finally, there is the sense of victimhood and hopelessness that has recently spread like a cancer in the black community. The constant emphasis on racism, suffering and inequality leads inevitably to a sense of self-pity and resentment, which in turn encourages overeating and a disregard for good health and attractive physical appearance.

None of the factors that may contribute to obesity among black children, in other words, can be explained away with direct reference to white racism. Neither new civil rights legislation, nor more vigorous enforcement of thousands of existing laws, will cause African-American kids to exercise more or eat less.

That conclusion brings us back to the education bill, dubbed by both Democrats and Republicans as the "No Child Left Behind" Act. The legislation not only mandates extensive testing for all students between 3rd and 8th grades, but demands that the test results be evaluated in racial terms. In other words, if white kids continue to outperform black kids in standardized tests, the schools will be held accountable for this "failure" in educational reform.

This proposition remains illogical and dangerous. Imagine a federal policy that insisted that poor kids must perform just as well as rich kids; or that expected children of single parents to equal the achievements of offspring of stable, conventional families; or that required young people who watched 30 weekly hours of television to score as highly in school as children who watched half that amount. Such expectations make no sense, and yet the fact remains that black children are far more likely than white children to grow up poor, in single-parent homes, and with extensive television viewing. Schools can neither solve these problems nor readily compensate for their impact – any more than doctors or clinics can easily overcome the lifestyle factors that predispose black kids to obesity.

By insisting on racial analysis of all test scores, and demanding equal or nearly equal scores among all ethnic groups, the current effort at educational reform is sure to fail. Few if any schools will succeed in erasing racial disparities that relate far more to disadvantages in home environments than unequal treatment by educators.

Differential success among individuals does not represent automatic evidence of unfairness or discrimination or conspiracy, and neither do contrasting levels of group success. Agitators and professional complainers may pretend that every disparity, from obesity rates to test scores, stems from racism, but to do so undermines the emphasis on individual responsibility and initiative that remains the only reliable path to meaningful achievement.

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