American blacks are about 50 percent more likely to have hypertension than American whites. Again, this could be due to differences like diet and income. So what did the hypertension rates of other black populations look like? Fryer found that among Caribbean blacks—another population brought from Africa as slaves—hypertension rates were also elevated. But he noted that blacks who still live in Africa are statistically indistinguishable from whites in America. The evidence was hardly conclusive, but Fryer was convinced that the selection mechanism of the slave trade could be a long-lasting
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