So, 10 years yon, how goes the disparity between Black and White life expectancy?
Missouri:
"In 2022, Missouri’s life expectancy rebounded from 74.6 years to 75.4 years having fallen steeply immediately following the COVID-19 outbreak. However, the 2022 life expectancy is still about two years lower than our state’s life expectancy was in 2019 and remains about two years under the national life expectancy of 77.5 years in 2022. Further, the disparity in life expectancy between white and black/African-American Missourians remains substantial, with white men living 8.5 years longer than black men and white women living 4.4 years longer than black women.
"Pregnancy-related death rates among Black/African American mothers were three times higher than white mothers.42 Of the 68 pregnancy-related deaths, 57 (84%) were preventable.
"The infant mortality rate among Black/African American residents was over double the rate for white residents (11.7 versus 5.1)."
I don't have comparable stats for Louisiana.
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| Myrtle Grove Cemetery, Opelousas, Louisiana. |
There's a good chance that if you're brown and you live in Opelousas,
you'll die 15 years sooner than your white neighbors.
How do I know this?
Soon after I moved to Opelousas, a couple of events got me looking at local obituaries.
I looked at the obituaries of two local funeral homes: Sibille and Williams. The first thing I noticed is that
Sibille is the funeral home for white folks and
Williams is the funeral home for those of color.
Over time, as I periodically visited the obituary listings, it seemed
that the ages of death over on the Williams obituary page were notably
younger than those at over at the Sibille page. This was odd.
To test this perception, I looked at all of the obituaries at Sibille
and Williams for the people who died in October and November 2015
:
- White: average age of death = 79.36 years
- Brown: average age of death = 63.67 years
- 79.36 minus 63.67 = 15.69 average difference in age
OK, what about outliers? Brown people who died extraordinarily young and
white people who lived well into their 90s? They skewed the average for
these two months, yes?
I crunched the numbers again, this time tossing out the oldest white decedent and the youngest brown decedent. Results:
- White: average age of death = 78.24 years
- Brown: average of death = 65.0 years
- 78.24 minus 65.0 = 13.24
In this adjustment, Opelousas residents of color died THIRTEEN years younger than their white neighbors, still shocking.
Now I needed a control group, so I looked at deaths in
central Missouri,
whence I came, using two funeral homes there: Millard Family Funeral
Chapels and May Funeral Home. Unlike Sibille and Williams in Opelousas,
there is some integration of services at Millard and May, but there is
still a strong bias in the clientele served. Generally, Millard's
clients are white. Generally, May's clients are brown.
Results for October and November 2015 in mid-Missouri:
- White: average age of death (served by Millard) = 72.85 years, after excluding the oldest and youngest decedents
- African-American: average age of death (served by both Millard and
May) = 60.17 years after excluding the oldest and youngest decedents
- 72.85 minus 60.17 = 12.68 years average difference in age upon death
So from a slice of mid-Missouri, African-American decedents died an
average of TWELVE AND HALF YEARS younger than their white neighbors.
Note: In the Missouri sample,
there was what seemed to be an aberrational number of infants who died
(at least I hope it was aberrational), both white and black. So for the
Missouri comparison, I excluded the oldest individual and the youngest
individual in both white and African-American groups.
Side note: Jesus. Why are
mid-Missourians, generally, dying so young? And it's astounding to
compare the average age of African-American deaths in mid-Missouri to
average age of white deaths in the Opelousas area - almost
TWENTY years difference!
Centuries of institutional racism have a long, long reach.
But maybe you think that I happened to choose two months in a particular
year that were non-representational of the facts. Wonderful! By all
means, please dig deeper. Please do.
