Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of African American supercentenarians


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete.  MBisanz  talk 13:15, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

List of African American supercentenarians

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Prodded, but I thought this needed a discussion as it appeared to be not uncontroversial as required by WP:PROD. This seems to me to be a list that violates WP:NOT - Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate source of information - and WP:NPOV as the "definition" for inclusion, particularly on the "race" side, be subjective and arbitrary at best - how many of a person's great-grandparents must be African American to "qualify" for the list - eight? six? two? one? What does it mean to be "African American" in the first place? Despite an assertion in government publications to the contrary, it's up to a person's interpretation, thus making it a POV issue. B.Wind (talk) 06:18, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Grandparents are irrelevant. We should be looking at sources that confirm the entries which seem to be present. Still I'm not sure I'm seeing a feasible link between race and age. Unless it can be established that African Americans are scientifically more or less likely to reach such an age, there's no reason to split it off. (My gut feeling would be to merge any entries not yet in List of the verified oldest people, but I'm leaving my vote until more people commented.) - Mgm|(talk) 10:59, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment:

My research here:

http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-07182008-143721/unrestricted/young_robert_d_200808_masters.pdf

Showed that at age 110, African-Americans had a life expectancy advantage of about six months over their Caucasian-American counterparts. It was not possible to determine a maximum lifespan difference (unlike gender, where women live 7 years longer). The "qualification" to be African-American is mostly self-determined, or as recorded in documents such as the census, Social Security, etc.

I might ask the question, however: what would happen if someone created an article on "List of Caucasian-American supercentenarians"? Ryoung 122 13:05, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Of course grandparents matter. If it weren't for grandparents, there would be no parents. Now, in the original research that you cited, what was your definition of African American? Had Barack Obama married a Caucasian woman instead of Michelle, would his children be African American according to your definition? Did you know that the State of Louisiana actually changed its official definition of "African American" in the past thirty years (it was that if a person had one black great-great-great-grandparent, he/she must show "black" as a race on his/her driver's license)? Another key question is how did the data account for those who claimed multiethnic ancestry, or people (like yours truly) who claimed their race to be "human" on their census form - and others). B.Wind (talk) 02:05, 7 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The same. Apparently race and life expectancy are not linked in any cause-and-effect manner. Unless something like that can be proven, the list is a trivial intersection like List of red-haired sportspeople. - Mgm|(talk) 13:48, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete no need in having 100s of these supercentenarian articles for every race, religion, handedness, etc. one could devise; and how African American does one have to be? Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:43, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete as original PRODder and per my comments on the article talk page. They have pretty much been summed up here: there are POV problems in determining who is "African American" and, even if there weren't, I don't see any evidence that "African American" and "lived to be at least 110" are not a trivial intersection. Cheers, CP 21:56, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * COMMENT We should make sure that all entries here are covered in the regular list, otherwise deletion would lead to loss of perfectly valid information that was just mistitled/miscategorized. - Mgm|(talk) 14:14, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete one page per country is enough. Secondly something like race is not clear cut whereas birth and death places are. I don't fully agree with the comment above. Not all American supercentenarians are listed on List of supercentenarians from the Unites States, so I don't think it makes sense to include everyone who appears on this page there as it would cause an under-representation of non-black supercentenarians SiameseTurtle (talk) 00:06, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.