Shrinking Sistahs

In case you have missed the news for the past week, African American women are shrinking!

The Center for Disease Control released a study this past week that showed:

"The average height of a black woman born in the 1980s is just under 5 feet 4 inches; her mother, born in the 1960s, is more than half an inch taller. Even her grandmother, born in the 1940s, is a bit taller. The average white woman born in the 1980s is about half an inch taller than her mother. "

The reason why I responded to this new was because the researchers said, "height is a very good overall indicator of how well the human organism thrives in its socioeconomic environment."

So now you have it! All of the adversity African-American manage to overcome on a daily basis does more than burden the soul, cause high blood pressure, and hypertension. All of the problems within the home and community that many African-American women must learn to sort through interferes with her ability to thrive and remain competitive in the environment. So the environmental issues for African-American women would include competing socially, economically, mentally, etc.

Those of us who study race and gender dynamics in America understand this already but now its played itself out in a Darwinistic way.

Very interesting news.