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Fiber & Freedom

Dr. Wuse

Hi Byte Wellness Fam,

How are you feeling?

I’m feeling determined. If you’d caught me a few days ago, I’d have told you I felt disappointed for a hot minute. Like many, I was disappointed (but not surprised) by the two Supreme Court rulings that recently dismantled affirmative action. This reminded me of last year’s Dobbs decision that removed women’s constitutional right to full bodily autonomy.

Just in case we had gotten too comfortable with our human rights, Dobbs reminded us that our society and legal system either don’t understand how to and/or don’t care to offer women the same types of protections that men get in the United States. 

Similarly, these affirmative action rulings were bold-faced reminders that we can not rely on society to right the systemic oppression it continues dole out to Black Americans via structural and interpersonal racism.

Discussion Question

  • What is one of your go-to restaurants? Do you know the nutrition facts of your favorite meals there?

Check out the recording from the last #PhyteWellWednesday Workshop below to see if you’re optimizing your fiber intake.

If you want invites to the weekly sessions (Wednesdays at 5pm PT/7pm CT/8pm ET) text TEXT to 1(866)717-1919 to join the text thread.

This past week, we explored which foods have the fiber we need to eat to thrive (roughly 28 grams per day). Eating a good variety of food with soluble and insoluble fiber is important for:

These are some foods that can get you to 28g, according to the USDA Food Central database:

  • Beans: Lentils (15g per cup),

  • Fruit: Raspberries (8.4g per cup)

  • Vegetable: Broccoli (5g per cup)

  • Whole Grains: All-Bran Cereal (10g per half-cup)

See more high-fiber options here: bytewellness.com/blog/high-fiber-recipes-and-foods

Updated nutrition guidelines from the USDA recommend we focus on eating a balanced combination of food groups rather than focusing primarily on specific nutrient needs. However, there is a Daily Recommended Intake of Fiber set by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academies of Sciences Engineering, and Medicine.

*VIDEO CORRECTION:

Fiber and Freedom

Believe it or not, in my mind, the goal of eating plenty of fiber is very much related to the goal of racial justice that was further delayed by the Supreme Court’s recent Affirmative Action ruling.

There are battles being waged at two different scales. In the fight for health and wellbeing within our bodies, we have to constantly balance the positive forces against the destructive ones. If we don’t actively choose positive forces (like eating lots of whole plants with heart-protecting fiber), the destructive ones will win. We’ll contract a preventable disease and, potentially, suffer.

Similarly the fight for the wellbeing of Black folks in the social realm involves a balance of positive and destructive forces. Destructive forces like structural racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and others are constantly present As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson points out in her dissent here (starting on page 209). Without positive pro-justice forces (like Affirmative Action) those destructive forces act unopposed and harm entire communities of people.

Just like we don’t simply wake up well everyday, human rights progress isn’t lost or gained passively. Wellbeing requires a concerted positive effort. Without that effort, destructive forces win.

Justice in Education

Digging into the anatomy of these two Affirmative Action cases against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, reinforces the reality that even in the social world, work has to be done to overcome social barriers like racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, etc.

What these cases taught me is how possible it is to put a name and face to those destructive forces. There are individuals and entities actively working to reverse the progress we’ve seen over the last half decade. One of those individuals is Edward Blum, the conservative political strategist behind this recent assault on Affirmative Action.

According to NPR’s reporting, Blum founded the organization that served as the vehicle for this latest assault on affirmative action (Students for Fair Admissions, or SFA) and recruited Asian American plaintiffs to ride along as the face of the movement. He claimed to fight on behalf of Asian Americans who experience anti-Asian bias in university admissions.

Studies analyzing admissions data trace Asian American discrimination in admissions to White supremacist structures that minimize Asians into personality-less “model minority” stereotype and admissions policies that advantage wealthy White applicants over everyone else.

But, rather than address White supremacy as the source of anti-Asian bias, this conservative political strategist used Black and Latino progress as a scapegoat. He argued that the system of Affirmative Action, a mechanism that largely benefitted Asian American college applicants in the 1980s and 1990s as well as Black and Latino students, was responsible for creating the unjust conditions facing Asian applicants today.

And. it. worked…

This isn’t Blum’s first at-bat creating conditions that harm Black folks.

According to reporting by ProPublica, he was responsible for assembling the funds and plaintiff for the Fisher v. University of Texas-Austin case. 

Remember that case when a White American woman who was rejected  from the selective state University alleged that the University discriminated against her because she was White? 

He funded the [ultimately unsuccessful] fight with a non-profit organization he’d founded all the way back in 2005 (Project on Fair Representation).

Justice in Voting

Get this, Blum’s efforts aren’t limited to education. Remember the 2013 Supreme Court ruling (Shelby County v Holder) that gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965? That ruling opened the clouds to release a hailstorm of Voting Rights restrictions that have made it harder for [particularly] Black and Latino citizens in the South to cast a vote. 

I remember when that ruling came down. I was commuting to a medical school rotation, walking through University City near West Philadelphia. As I listened to a podcast analyzing the ruling, I couldn’t help but flinch at Chief Justice John Roberts’s justification for removing the required oversight of Southern States’ voting policies.

He essentially explained that we live in a colorblind society where there was no evidence that States would violate their residents’ voting rights according to race, despite a lower court’s ruling to the contrary.

According to NPR’s reporting, the very same Edward Blum was one of the people responsible for orchestrating that case. 

How can one man singlehandedly dismantle society’s attempts to insure justice in education and in political representation over the course of 10 years?

Simple. He didn’t. He wasn’t working alone. Who funds Blum’s nonprofit work? Wealthy conservative donors, according to ProPublica. These are people with a political agenda that (whatever their intent) results in the systematic destruction of Black folks’ opportunities to participate fully in society. 

Let’s let that sink in.

There are people and institutions committed to our destruction. These are the destructive forces fighting against our wellbeing.

So what are we going to do about them? These destructive forces win if we don’t oppose them with positiive forces that support our wellbeing.

In her “A Burst of Light” essay, when faced with a scenario she had little control over (a fatal liver cancer diagnosis) Audrey Lorde wrote about shifting her mindset to creative a narrative in which she’s a winner, no matter the outcome. 

As individuals, we can’t will pro-justice legislation or judicial rulings into being.

But, as we protest and strategize for social justice, we can will our way to personal and communal wellness. Somehow, knowing we exist in a social environment that is engineered to harm us makes me even more determined to find a way to thrive biologically and psychologically.

Thoughts?


Happy Healthy Living,

Dr. Wuse