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To summarize: many African Americans that live in the Mississippi Delta region don’t have access to fresh produce and are surrounded by fast-food restaurants. Without access to a healthy diet, and because of the poverty enforced in this region, many of the people there develop diabetes and other health issues. From there, a lot of complications occur that involves their blood vessels and nerves in their legs being destroyed from the buildup of plague and sugar.

But due to the capitalistic and racist nature of the healthcare system, many of the surgeons decide to amputate the leg instead of saving it, as they find it more cost-effective. It doesn’t solve the problems of the rising blood pressure of the blocked blood vessels or anything. The solution is surface-level and does more harm in the long run as the patients suffer from their loss of wages and the further health complications from being disabled.

It’s a combination of factors that make this cesspool of medical negligence possible. People not caring about black people. Hospitals cutting corners so they wouldn’t have to deal with the extra expenses of helping these patients. The purposeful imposed poverty that comes from the region’s history of enslavement. The evident food deserts that prevents African Americans from having a good diet. All of these factors contribute to the overwhelming rate of amputation of black people.

What Recreators Can Do

It costs approximately $30,000 to incarcerate a juvenile offender for one year. If that money were available to Parks and Recreation, we could do the following:

Take him swimming twice a week for 24 weeks,

And give him four tours of the zoo, plus lunch,

And enroll him in 50 community center programs,

And visit the nature center twice,

And let him play league softball for a season,

And tour the gardens at the park twice,

And give him two weeks of tennis lessons,

And enroll him in two weeks of day camp,

And let him play three rounds of golf,

And act in one play,

And participate in one fishing clinic,

And take a four-week pottery class,

And play basketball eight hours a weeks for 40 weeks,

After which we could return to you: $29,125 and one much happier kid.

Reprinted, by permission, from E. O’Sullivan, 1999, Setting a course for change (National Recreation and Park Association).