Lepers were horrifying to people at the time, not only because of their unsightly affliction — black boils, truncated limbs — but because the disease was thought to be caused by sin.
Since the 1970s, the federal government has administered a benefit program for miners who develop black lung disease, a wretched affliction caused by coal dust exposure and characterized by chronic shortness of breath and coughing.
Though generally acclaimed, the novel met with objection from some African American critics who disputed its emphasis on the afflictions of the black community.
Working with a demographer, Anthony discovers a close correlation between the prevalence of a wide range of present-day afflictions and the predominantly black neighborhoods established a century ago — including, of course, the unrelieved prevalence of rats.
More fable than documentary, the movie is a simultaneously probing and comic look at racism in affluent American society and the problems and afflictions of an emerging black elite.
Today, the city is almost wholly black, with a black mayor and the civic afflictions of drug-related criminality.
Anthony's archival and demographic research reveals Baltimore's history of racial segregation — de jure and de facto — and pinpoints a wide range of present-day afflictions in the neighborhoods assigned to black residents a century ago.
For St. Benedict, the affliction took the shape of "a little black boy pulling the monk away by the hem of his garment," while to the great fourth-century ascetic Evagrius it sometimes appeared as "demons that touch our bodies at night and like scorpions strike our limbs".
In particular, there's a strong racial divide of affliction in countries like the U.S., where "black males are most commonly affected, with a prevalence of approximately 10percentt," as noted in a 2005 article on diagnosing and managing the disease.
The history of jazz is inseparable from the history of the racist afflictions endured by its musicians and by other black Americans.
