I recently had a discussion about eating disorders within the black community and it made me realize that there are a LOT of blacks who have them, but don’t get treatment because in the black community, having any kind of mental health issues are frowned upon.

Why? Let’s stop for a second. When people are talking about black people, a majority of the time, it isn’t anything good. Being sick with an ED, a woman spoke about how she had sought after therapy to express her eating habits. She said she never got treatment because her therapist wouldn’t believe her and said that EDs are a white people thing. The therapist was also white.

I started questioning why I never spoke about my issues with food. It’s still uncomfortable to talk about. But, when it comes to black women, none of our suffering is acknowledged or validated. With the number of black women I know who suffer from EDs, why are the poster people for EDs never really black?

M