Gender Studies Professor Brittney Cooper Ties Black Female Obesity to Trump Policies, Racism

COOPER: "I actually want us to hold up a little bit before we do this thing where we start blaming ourselves. Like, I hate when people talk about black women being obese, I hate it. Because it becomes a way to blame us for a set of conditions that we didn't create. We're moving, we're taking care of kids, but our food quality suffers. We are living in the Trump era. And look, those policies kill our people. You can't get access to good health care, good insurance. The research says that black women, when we do the same diets as white women, we lose less weight and we lose it slower, even when we're following the diet, than our white women counterparts. And what public health practitioners think is that our stress responses in the body change our metabolism. It's literally the racism that you're experiencing and the struggle to make ends meet actually means that diet don't work for you the same."