Lance Reddick’s Death Is Another Sign That Black Men Are Dying Too Young

Actor Lance Reddick always appeared to be physically strong. He died last week at age 60.

Celebrities die just like the rest of us. When it happens, we commiserate collectively and pour out our hypothetical (and maybe literal) glasses for the deceased in honor of however they connected with us in their profession.

When I heard about Lance Reddick’s death, there was something else… something I’ve felt before, recently and frequently: a sense of internalized dread.

Reddick, known for his roles in “The Wire,”the John Wick franchise and the popular Destiny video games, died of “natural causes” ― nomenclature that confounds many of us who don’t believe that 60-year-olds die “naturally,” which simply means that no external factors contributed directly to his death. 

“Natural causes” doesn’t comfort me considering Reddick joins an exhausting, morbid procession of famous Black men who have died too young and, in many cases, unexpectedly. Just last month, De La Soul’s Trugoy the Dove died at age 54 after years of battling congestive heart failure, mere weeks before the group’s classic oeuvre finally reached another generation of listeners by hitting streaming services. 

There was Coolio, who died of a heart attack in September at 59. There was Black Rob, who died of cardiac arrest at 51 in 2021. There was Virgil Abloh, who died in 2021 at 41 (my current age) after a private battle with cancer. There was Michael K. Williams (54), DMX (50), Gift of Gab (50), MF Doom (49), John Singleton (51) and Chadwick Boseman (43).

Unfortunately, I could go on.

Coolio performs on stage on Sept. 18, 2022, at Riot Fest in Chicago. He died just 10 days later.

I don’t believe Death has bias: Anyone can get it after they open their eyes in the morning (and even if they don’t). But it seems that Black icons are leaving a lot younger than their peers of other races. It’s taxing on our psyche: Seeing these celebrity deaths play out with men who are around my age makes me examine my own mortality ― we’re all on the clock, but I think about it more often than is probably healthy.  

External physical appearance never tells the full tale in one’s health, but it’s doubly sobering how good some of these men looked at the time of their death. Reddick was chiseled every time he took his shirt off on television and frequently shared his workouts on Instagram. Regardless of how you feel about the dude, Kevin Samuels, the controversial YouTube self-proclaimed relationship guru, didn’t look like he would succumb to death by hypertension at 53 following a career of invidious remarks about the health of Black women. 

It underlines why, even with my own obsession with exercise, I need to work harder than my white counterparts in all aspects of my life to stay above ground. The men on my mother’s side of the family are prone to heart attacks ― it claimed my grandfather when he was barely a decade younger than me, and my cousin wasa decade younger than me when he passed at 26. Fortunately, I have a mama who stays on my ass about my metrics.