It's Still Slavery by Another Name

2020 ◽  
pp. 40-50
Author(s):  
Michael D. Yates

As the long history, right to the present day, of police and vigilante violence against black people has shown with great clarity, the racial chasm between black and white people in the United States lives on. A few black men and women have climbed into the 1 percent, and a sizable African-American middle class now exists. But by every measure of social well-being, black Americans fare much worse than their white counterparts. Just as for the economic, political, and social distance between capitalists and workers, so too is there a differential between black and white people, for these same interconnected components of daily life continue because of the way our system is structured.

Circulation ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 141 (Suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoshihiro Tanaka ◽  
Nilay Shah ◽  
Rod Passman ◽  
Philip Greenland ◽  
Sadiya Khan

Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common sustained arrhythmia in adults and the prevalence is increasing due to the aging of the population and the growing burden of vascular risk factors. Although deaths due to cardiovascular disease (CVD) death have dramatically decreased in recent years, trends in AF-related CVD death has not been previously investigated. Purpose: We sought to quantify trends in AF-related CVD death rates in the United States. Methods: AF-related CVD death was ascertained using the CDC WONDER online database. AF-related CVD deaths were identified by listing CVD (I00-I78) as underlying cause of death and AF (I48) as contributing cause of death among persons aged 35 to 84 years. We calculated age-adjusted mortality rates (AAMR) per 100,000 population, and examined trends over time estimating average annual percent change (AAPC) using Joinpoint Regression Program (National Cancer Institute). Subgroup analyses were performed to compare AAMRs by sex-race (black and white men and women) and across two age groups (younger: 35-64 years, older 65-84 years). Results: A total of 522,104 AF-related CVD deaths were identified between 1999 and 2017. AAMR increased from 16.0 to 22.2 per 100,000 from 1999 to 2017 with an acceleration following an inflection point in 2009. AAPC before 2009 was significantly lower than that after 2009 [0.4% (95% CI, 0.0 - 0.7) vs 3.5% (95% CI, 3.1 - 3.9), p < 0.001). The increase of AAMR was observed across black and white men and women overall and in both age groups (FIGURE), with a more pronounced increase in black men and white men. Black men had the highest AAMR among the younger decedents, whereas white men had the highest AAMR among the older decedents. Conclusion: This study revealed that death rate for AF-related CVD has increased over the last two decades and that there are greater black-white disparities in younger decedents (<65 years). Targeting equitable risk factor reduction that predisposes to AF and CVD mortality is needed to reduce observed health inequities.


Author(s):  
Kristopher A. Teters

While many western Union officers came to support emancipation and even the enlistment of black troops, their racial attitudes changed very little. On the whole, officers continued to view black people as inferior, exotic, incapable, and even subhuman. Interactions with former slaves reinforced racial stereotypes. This intense prejudice was especially prominent in the Midwest where there were many discriminatory laws. Freeing the slaves, which many officers only supported as a practical necessity to win the war, was very different from seeing black people as anything close to equal with white people. But experiences with black men and women, particularly servants with whom Federals formed long-lasting personal bonds, often tempered racial prejudices on an individual level. Black men and women who assisted the Union army by providing information, resources, and aid in dangerous circumstances also won positive comments from officers. This softening of racial attitudes, however, almost never extended to the black population as a whole, and even ardent supporters of emancipation showed little sympathy for expanding black rights. The Civil War had eliminated slavery but had hardly solved the problem of racial prejudice.


2020 ◽  
pp. 002193472097008
Author(s):  
Molefi Kete Asante

In this essay the author introduces the emergence of the paddy rollers as control forces to contain the black population during the enslavement of Africans in the United States. Soon after the end of the Civil War the police forces took over the activities that had been the purvey of the paddy rollers: keeping black people in place and out of the way of white people. However, the resistance to abuse, torture, and murder was never far from the active imagination and reality of African Americans who maintained their own humanity. Tracing, in a limited fashion, how the biologically unscientific race became the premise for racism and the attacks on black people by police officers who often took their perceptions of blacks, especially black men, as negative and inferior from the systemic and institutional character of the society’s understanding of superior and inferior humans. This, according to the author, is at the base of hatred, discrimination, and lynching of African Americans in current and previous occasions. He illustrates this by discussing the case of Mary Turner who was killed in the early part of the 20th century for objecting to white mob attacks on her husband.


Circulation ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 141 (Suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nilay S Shah ◽  
Donald M Lloyd-jones ◽  
Kiarri N Kershaw ◽  
Mercedes R Carnethon ◽  
Sadiya S Khan

Introduction: Age of onset for heart disease (HD), cerebrovascular disease (CBD), and diabetes (DM) has shifted earlier, with increases in avoidable cardiometabolic deaths. We quantified total and trends in years of potential life lost (YPLL) before the age of 65 from HD, CBD, and DM, to describe population burden of premature preventable cardiometabolic mortality. Hypothesis: YPLL from premature cardiometabolic deaths in the U.S. have increased and are highest in black adults. Methods: Death certificates from the CDC’s Wide-Ranging Online Database for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) were used to quantify mean age at death and proportion of deaths that were premature (<65 years) from HD, CBD, and DM as underlying cause of death. We then calculated age standardized premature YPLL (before age 65) per 100,000 people and mean annual percent change (APC) in YPLL, overall and in black and white women and men, before and after the previously published inflection in cardiometabolic death rates in 2011. Results: Between 1999-2017, 19% of HD deaths, 14% of CBD deaths, and 27% of DM deaths were premature. Overall, premature YPLL from HD decreased between 1999-2011 from 512 to 416 per 100,000 (APC -1.7%/year, 95% CI [-2.0, -1.5]), then remained unchanged from 2011-2017. For CBD, premature YPLL decreased 1.8%/year (-2.2, -1.5) to 70 per 100,000 in 2011, but remained unchanged through 2017. Premature YPLL from DM remained unchanged at 71 per 100,000 from 1999-2011, then increased 2.5%/year (1.8, 3.1) to 81 per 100,000 in 2017. Premature YPLL were higher in black men and women compared with white men and women, respectively (FIGURE). Conclusions: Premature YPLL from cardiometabolic causes plateaued or increased after 2011. Disparities in YPLL have persisted in the past decade with nearly half of cardiometabolic deaths in black men occurring before age 65. Equitable promotion of cardiometabolic health early in the lifespan may reduce population, health system, and financial burden of premature cardiometabolic mortality.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 340
Author(s):  
Earl James Edwards

Since first becoming a major social issue in the 1980s, homelessness has been a racialized problem in the United States. Its disproportionate impact on Black Americans is primarily driven by structural racism and the limited housing and employment opportunities for Black Americans. The first major federal legislation to address the needs of the United States’ homeless population—the Stewart B. McKinney–Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987 omitted the root causes of Black housing instability, thereby proving ineffective at mitigating Black homelessness. As a result, Black Americans remain disproportionately impacted today. In addition to being neglected by the McKinney–Vento Homeless Assistance Act, Black men and women experiencing homelessness are more likely to be discriminated against than any other racial group. For example, Black men are more likely to be arrested than anyone else, and Black women are the most likely to experience hyper-surveillance. This paper uses the Public Identity Framework to argue that in the 1980s, advocates and opponents of homeless legislation created two contradictory public personas to shape public discourse and policies for the homeless. A colorblind public persona was used to pass the McKinney–Vento Homeless Act; meanwhile, the public persona of the “underclass” was used to criminalize and shame the homeless. Both personas operated concurrently to create a dual public identity for the homeless that influenced policy and ultimately harmed Black people.


Author(s):  
Christopher Cannon Jones

ABSTRACT This article examines the first Mormon mission to Jamaica in January 1853. The missionaries, facing opposition from both black and white Jamaicans, returned to the United States after only a month on the island, having made only four converts. Latter-day Saints did not return to Jamaica for another 125 years. Drawing on the missionaries’ personal papers, church archives, local newspaper reports, and governmental records, I argue that the 1853 mission played a crucial role in shaping nineteenth-century Mormonism's racial theology, including the “temple and priesthood ban” that restricted priesthood ordination and temple worship for black men and women. While historians have rightly noted the role twentieth-century missions to regions of the African Diaspora played in ending the ban, studies of the racial restriction's early scope have been discussed in almost exclusively American contexts. The mission to Jamaica, precisely because of its failure, helped shape the ban's implementation and theological justifications. Failing to make any inroads, the elders concluded that both Jamaica and its inhabitants were cursed and not worthy of the missionaries’ time, which anticipated later decisions to prioritize preaching to whites and to scale back and ultimately abandon efforts to proselytize people of African descent.


Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 865-874
Author(s):  
Mrs. Jeni . S ◽  
Dr. J.G. Duresh

African American Literature can be defined as writings by people of African decent living in the United States.  The genre began during the 18th and 19th centuries with writers such as poet phillis Wheatley and Orator Frederick Douglass reached as an early highpoint with the Harlem Renaissance and continues with the authors such as Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and Walter Mosley, James Baldwin etc.  The themes and issues explored in African American literature are tradition, culture, racism, religion, slavery, segregation, migration, and feminism and more. This paper deals with the perspectives of clashes between black and white communities through the novel The Brown Dreaming girl by Jacqueline Woodson. It clearly explains about the Whites ill-treatment and how the blacks suffer under the hands of white people. The essential part of human kind is Identification and Freedom which has been completely wiped off from the hearts and minds of the black people.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grace Jacob ◽  
Monnica T. Williams ◽  
Naomi S. Faber ◽  
Sonya Faber

Black men and women encounter multiple forms of racism in American society and require numerous strategies to manage the stress associated with these experiences. This chapter reviews the current state of the literature regarding Black people and how they cope with racism. Findings demonstrate that Black people tend to cope with racism through social support, religion, avoidance, and problem-focused coping, with some gender differences in coping approaches. We also contrast functional versus dysfunctional coping approaches and underscore the importance of empowerment to promote well-being and social change. Limitations of this review include the predominance of American-based samples used in the literature, which often excludes other Black ethnic and national groups. Further, the experiences of other Black intersectional identities are not well represented in the literature and require more study as their experiences of coping with racism may differ.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-94
Author(s):  
Christina Landman

Dullstroom-Emnotweni is the highest town in South Africa. Cold and misty, it is situated in the eastern Highveld, halfway between the capital Pretoria/Tswane and the Mozambique border. Alongside the main road of the white town, 27 restaurants provide entertainment to tourists on their way to Mozambique or the Kruger National Park. The inhabitants of the black township, Sakhelwe, are remnants of the Southern Ndebele who have lost their land a century ago in wars against the whites. They are mainly dependent on employment as cleaners and waitresses in the still predominantly white town. Three white people from the white town and three black people from the township have been interviewed on their views whether democracy has brought changes to this society during the past 20 years. Answers cover a wide range of views. Gratitude is expressed that women are now safer and HIV treatment available. However, unemployment and poverty persist in a community that nevertheless shows resilience and feeds on hope. While the first part of this article relates the interviews, the final part identifies from them the discourses that keep the black and white communities from forming a group identity that is based on equality and human dignity as the values of democracy.


Author(s):  
Darrell Hudson

Health equity means that everyone, regardless of their abilities, economic status, or race/ethnicity, has the opportunity to reach their optimal level of health. However, the inequitable distribution of resources, power, and privilege in the United States means that historically marginalized communities bear a disproportionate burden of poor health and disease. The COVID-19 pandemic has compounded the problem for Black Americans: already bearing an unequal burden of social, economic, and health inequities and experiencing systemic racism in various sectors of American life, Black Americans have been at even greater risk of COVID-19 transmission and severity of the disease. I use critical race theory (CRT) to show how key social and historical factors fuel racial health inequities. Further, I use key tenets of CRT to argue that redressing historical legacies of racism cannot be done without using a critical, race conscious lens and lifting up the voices of Black people.


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