Black Lives Matter? Not in an NYT Graphic

[Judi Lynn]

Black Lives Matter? Not in an NYT Graphic

By Jim Naureckas

Nov 03 2015

Quick–who’s missing from this New York Times chart (11/2/15)?



The point of the chart, based on one in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is that US non-Hispanic whites aged 45-54 have a rising mortality rate, unlike the similarly aged groups included for comparison purposes: Hispanics in the US, and people in France, Germany, Britain, Canada, Australia and Sweden.

The most obvious omission is African-Americans, who make up about 12 percent of the US population. They are left out of the chart not because they don’t support the point—they, too, have a falling death rate in the 45-54 demographic, unlike US whites—but presumably because they would require a larger graph, since the black mortality rate is still well above whites in this age group: 582 vs. 415 per 100,000.

That deaths among middle-aged whites are rising while they’re falling among other groups is a remarkable story—particularly when the disparity is explained, as the PNAS study indicates, by rising rates of drug and alcohol overdoses, alcohol-induced liver damage and suicide. But the story is complicated, surely, by the fact that the shocking news is that middle-age whites in the US now die 71 percent as often as blacks—as opposed to 56 percent as often, like they did 14 years ago.

More:
http://fair.org/home/black-lives-matter-not-in-an-nyt-graphic/

[Igel]

1. It's a newspaper.

Thing about news is that it's new. What's new is that compared to what many would assert are their peers, this cohort has a newly rising mortality rate.

It's not an oldspaper.

Nor is it a political and social action agenda report.

In fact, this undercuts a common theme. A reasonable amount of social science research over the last decade has a split developing over the last few decades between higher and lower SES groups in education, health, income, in all sorts of ways. This split is working at obliterating the obligatorily discussed black/white gaps in education, where changes in just African-American student populations have produced a split wider than the white/black achievement gap and reflect pretty closely the same split in white student populations. Same for economics. Same for health care. Same for a range of other differences. It reduces the uniqueness and distinctiveness, the spotlight cast on the one topic that many view the world through. It's being resisted. But the trend will probably continue to undercut that theme.

[valerief]

2. I was wondering why that was absent! Thanks. nt