Husband and wife anthropologists spoke to a crowd of approximately 50 people yesterday in Manning Hall at The University of Memphis.
William Dressler, professor of anthropology, and Kathryn S. Oths, associate professor of anthropology, were the featured speakers. Both are from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.
Dressler’s talk was entitled “Health Inequalities Among African Americans,” and Oths was entitled “Give Me Shelter: Temporal Patterns of Women Fleeing Domestic Abuse.”
“There is an enduring difference in health status between social groups in a population,” Dressler said. “Like political and economic inequality, health inequality reflects the unequal distribution of resources in society.”
Coronary Artery Disease is the number one killer of Americans, he said, and there is an elevated risk for African Americans as compared to all other groups.
“African Americans are at a higher risk of nearly all kinds of health problems,” Dressler said, adding that African Americans have a lower access to healthcare than do European Americans.
“African Americans are less likely to be referred for more procedures,” he said.
Dressler said there are four explanations of health inequalities: genetics, health behaviors, and sociocultural and socioeconomic reasons.
“What I wanted to leave with students was the importance of culture,” Dressler said, adding that he wanted to break down the conventional ways of thinking about ethnic groups.
Oths spoke about her volunteer work with the Turning Point Agency in West Alabama that covers nine counties. In 1994 the Federal Government approved the Violence Against Women Act, which provided financial support for places like safe houses.
Breaking down the myth that women’s shelters are cold, nasty, dreary institutions is one topic on which Oths focused. Oths showed pictures during her PowerPoint proving that the facilities are inviting and comfortable.
Oths said that the houses are normally a “new start for most people.”
Oths said that one in three women are abused, normally by a man they have had an ongoing personal relationship with.
Women normally stay in abusive relationships because of economic dependence, passive personalities and threats from their partner, she said. However, she said they normally leave because of the visibility of abuse causing embarrassment, threats to their children, economic independence, spouses’ drinking and because they have a safe place to go. However, it often takes several tries before a woman will leave for good.
“Alcohol is very, very correlated with domestic violence,” Oths said, adding that so were drugs. One of the two was found in over 90 percent of cases.
Ninety percent of calls come from women between the ages 18 and 46 and 61 percent are European-American and 38 percent are African-American.
Oths also spoke about folklore associated with high violence on high-drinking days like the Super Bowl, New Years, Fourth of July and Memorial and Labor Days.
However, Oths said, this “turns out to be a myth.”
Women with school-age children normally coincide their departure from a relationship with their children’s school schedule because they often don’t want to disrupt their lives, she said.
Oths said she wanted students to see that “the association between drinking and domestic violence isn’t as straightforward as everybody thinks.”
“They don’t seek to leave at the time of abuse because they are constrained by social patterns of living, they leave when it is most advantageous for them,” she said.
Satish K. Kedia, assistant professor of medical anthropology at The U of M, said the event went really well because “both talks possessed data-based evidence, not just rhetoric.”
