While the political class debates budgets and slogans, a silent crisis is claiming Black lives—one cell mutation at a time.
The American Cancer Society’s latest 2025 report drops a sobering truth: Black Americans still face the highest death rates for breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers. Not because of biology, but because of systems—systems that delay screenings, ration access, and minimize our pain. Systems that are now on the chopping block as federal Medicaid and Medicare cuts creep toward reality.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t a medical mystery. It’s an economic and political equation. The risk factors—late-stage diagnoses, food deserts, environmental toxicity, low health literacy, and poor access to early intervention—are all rooted in public neglect and failed leadership. When you close clinics, defund outreach, and send millions back into the uninsured pool, outcomes are not theoretical. They’re fatal.
Look at prostate cancer. Black men are twice as likely to die from it. And yet, the most common screening test (the PSA test) is still treated like a debate topic instead of a default for high-risk populations. Why? Because our lives are measured by budgetary line items, not outcomes. Meanwhile, colorectal cancer—once seen as a disease of the elderly—is rising fast among adults under 50. That’s your nephew, your co-worker, your barber. The new normal is younger, deadlier, and avoidable.
But here’s the deeper issue: too many of our institutions still treat Black health as a reactive, not proactive, concern. We talk “equity,” but where’s the ecosystem? Where are the HBCU-led cancer research centers, the culturally competent clinics, the community health navigators embedded in barbershops, churches, and gyms? Why aren’t we using technology—apps, text alerts, AI—to reach Black families where they are?
We don’t need more panels. We need pipelines.
Here’s what must happen:
- We stop waiting for political permission to save ourselves. Every Black church, barbershop, media outlet, and nonprofit must be part of a decentralized wellness infrastructure. Preventive care, real food education, stress management, and masculine wellness must be preached like scripture. We don’t have time for gatekeepers.
- HBCUs must return to mission. They were built to create what white institutions denied us. That includes medical infrastructure. Health innovation, community clinics, and preventive research must be core priorities. Graduating influencers while our people die young is not liberation. It’s distraction.
- Black celebrities and professionals must collaborate. If you can sell merch, you can sell mammograms. We need a new alliance between entertainers, athletes, doctors, and community health workers to drive health campaigns with the same energy we put into album drops and shoe releases.
- Black politicians must get off the sidelines. Stop chasing headlines and start holding hearings on issues that actually matter—like Black health. Where is the legislation on early cancer screening, on funding Black-run clinics, on protecting Medicaid access in our districts? If your platform is more about identity than outcome, you are part of the problem. Do your job—or step aside.
The truth is simple: cancer doesn’t care about hashtags. And budgets don’t lie.
If we don’t own the solution, we will inherit the outcome.
Let’s build a future where Black health isn’t managed. It’s mastered. Not by reacting to diagnosis—but by rewriting the diagnosis of a broken system that was never meant for us.
