By now you might have heard that a 400-pound woman fell six feet through a New York City sidewalk while waiting for the bus. I heard about it on the radio, while the DJs were sniggering. I didn’t once think, Is the 400-lb lady black? Actually, in my mind’s eye I pictured a rotund white woman falling through the floor America’s Funniest Home Videos style, and then snickered a little myself. I mean, can you imagine? You’re standing next to the lady who just blasts through a sidewalk…A SIDEWALK?!

I put it out of my mind until I got a note from a reader pleading with me to cover this because the walking, talking fart, Rupert Murdoch tweeted this:

That’s when I found out that “the fat lady” was a 6’5 tall, 400-pound black woman. Ulanda Williams, 32, is a social worker, not a welfare recipient. She’s not on welfare, she dispenses it. Take that, walking fart!

But (and this is just me thinking out loud), with black women leading the pack in obesity in America, we just make it too damn easy for men like Rupert to take shots at us. We walk right into those stereotypes, Doritos and Twinkies in hand, daring anyone to criticize our weight. And…AND…she’s 32, walking with a cane. Three-TWO. She is way too young to be that big, I don’t care if she is just five inches shy of seven feet tall, that woman weighs what two full grown men at or over six feet tall should weigh.

Take a read:

The first major collaboration between APA and the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi), the summit was “a call to action,” said ABPsi President Cheryl Grills, PhD. “The issues facing the African-American community are immense, but if we don’t have our health, not much else matters,” she said.

The obesity epidemic has affected all Americans, but it has hit African-American women the hardest, said speaker Cynthia Ogden, PhD, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Almost 60 percent of black women are obese, compared with 32 percent of white women and 41 percent of Hispanic women. The trend is decreasing black women’s life expectancy and increasing their chances of developing a host of ailments, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and arthritis, Johnson noted.

The data also show a curious trend, Ogden said. White and Hispanic women with higher socioeconomic status and more education seem somewhat protected from rising obesity rates, but that doesn’t hold true for black women. “It’s not just the low-income African-American population that’s experiencing this problem,” Ogden said.

SOURCE

Again, Murdoch was wrong–60% of black women are fat even when they aren’t on welfare.

I’m happy Ulanda didn’t meet her death in the six-foot fall. I’m just sad it gave black-woman haters more fodder for water cooler jokes. Being 400 pounds might save you from falling through the sidewalk, but trust me, that’s about the only thing it will save you from.

Either way, Miss Williams is about to have a major payday. Let’s hope she gets her weight under control so she can actually enjoy it.