"Don't Drink No Water"...

The quote from this scene and the book bothered me enough to look it up officially:

Drinking plenty of cold, clear water is essential for your health and, in fact, for your very survival. You can live much longer without food than you can without water. Water is an important part of all body functions and processes, including digestion and elimination. When you’re on a diet, water also acts as a weight-loss aid because it can help you eat less.

See: Everyday Health link.

Ray Charles in an interview said: "he just didn't like water." Maybe it stems from this. It would explain our propensity for weight gain, high blood pressure, diabetes and other related health ailments. It would explain our gravitation towards fatback, salt pork and junk foods, especially in the south. Dieticians advise increasing our water intake, as we may not be as hungry more than we are thirsty.

It would explain a lot mostly blamed on biology/genetics (either not to be confused with the pseudo-science of Eugenics), when it just could have simply been the way society was structured, and how our bodies silently endured it for a very long time.

The Dred Scott decision: According to Chief Justice Taney “the authors of the Constitution had viewed all blacks as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

See also Langston Hughes on Poets.org: Black Like Me