Juneteenth

Today is Juneteenth.

It commemorates the day in 1865 when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Galveston, Texas—900 days AFTER the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect.

Celebrated for the first time in 1866, it wasn’t until 2021 that Juneteenth to become a federal holiday.

This lag in recognition is emblematic of the myriad inequities many of our older Black friends and neighbors grapple with every day: disparities in healthspan, wealthspan, and lifespan.

Not only is this unacceptable, it really chaps my tush.

Here are a few facts from the 2016 CIGNA Health Disparities Report as reported in 2021 by the NAACP:

HEALTHSPAN

The incidence of high blood pressure in Black men aged 20+ is 30% higher than white men.

 The incidence of high blood pressure in Black women aged 20+ is 60% higher than white women.

 The risk of stroke for Black men is twice that of white men.

 Black women are 40% more likely to die of breast cancer than white women.

 Black men have a 40% higher cancer death rate than white men.

Black Americans are 80% more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes than white Americans, and nearly twice as likely to be hospitalized.

Black Americans are more than twice as likely as whites to suffer from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

As if those stats weren’t telling enough, here are others revealed in the Administration for Community Living (ACL)’s 2020 Profile of African Americans Age 65 and Older:

WEALTHSPAN

The median income of households headed by African Americans 65+ was $51,743 as compared to $70,254 for all households headed by anyone 65+.

 The poverty rate for African Americans 65+ was 18%—more than twice that for all Americans 65+.

LIFESPAN

Life expectancy at birth for African Americans was 71.3 years for men and 78 years for women. By comparison, life expectancy at birth for all Americans was 76.2 years for men and 81.2 years for women.

 Finally, 38% of African Americans 65+ had one or more disabilities compared with 33.5% of all Americans 65+.

My adult children have taught me that we must not expect members of historically marginalized populations to educate us about their history, their current reality, or their prospects for the future. Rather, the onus is on us to educate ourselves.

In keeping with that lesson, I just ordered the book, “Aging While Black: A Radical Reimaging of Aging and Race in America,” by @Raymond A. Jetson. Fortuitously, it is supposed to arrive in my mailbox today.

Black history is American history.

And Juneteenth should serve as a powerful reminder that we ALL have much work to do to ensure that the future for Black elders is as robust and filled with opportunity as it is for EVERY American age 65+.

We do not age in a vacuum. Which is why we must lift each other up as we head down the path toward older age—TOGETHER.