Yesterday's Issues-Today's Black Health Problems

http://www.reparationsthecure.org/articles/schafer1.shtmlToday's article takes a look at how our past reflects on Black folks
health problems of today.



The Survivors That slavery's survivors have suffered and continue to suffer the effects of slavery in the form of health problems far above the national average seems very clear. The problems are many: stress, hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease including heart attacks and stroke, cancer, trauma from gunshot wounds and knifings, drug addiction, neonatal deaths, obesity, and social problems such as teen pregnancies and gang affiliations.

How did it happen that a genetically dominant, self-sustaining group of independent people, who survived ocean voyages in the hold of slave ships where only 3% lived, has become this country's "sickest" people? I wondered, as an emergency room nurse, why I was seeing so many Blacks afflicted with disabling diseases when, as the descendants of the strongest survivors of the African Holocaust, they should be the healthiest of all people?

Africans were torn from their homeland, thrown into dungeons, shackled in the hold of a slave ship for months, suffered starvation, illness, pain and death. The survivors were sold like cattle to slavemasters and robbed of their dignity, their names, their heritage, and their pride. The women were raped or "bred", were separated from their men, and their children were sold at will. "House slaves" were pitted against "field slaves," light-skinned against dark-skinned, old against the young. The men were beaten into submission. Learned habits of repressed anger, frustration, dependency on the white slavermaster and fear of the white establishment continue to plague the community, passed from parents to child in some malignant heritage.


Black Realities

Today this rage and powerlessness in Black youth being raised in single parent households (and now a growing number who are being raised by grandparents because of incarcerated or drug addicted mothers) in poverty conditions, translates directly into gang affiliation, school dropout, drug addiction, teen pregnancy, and early death. Rather than offering help, America fills its jails with people of color, mostly Black. According to Rev. Jesse Jackson, 1 of 3 African American men aged 20-29 is in jail or prison or on parole or probation. Now the number of Black women behind bars is growing rapidly at a rate of 1 in 5. Because of unjust sentencing laws, more than 90% of those in jail on mandatory drug sentences are young African Americans and Latinos.

Devastating to African Americans today are the social and psychological effects of slavery and the continued myth of white supremacy. Newspapers, magazines, movies and television continue to depict Blacks as negative, comedic or threatening. Michael Medved, writing in Imprimis, says, "The true power of the media is the ability to redefine reality, to alter our expectations about what constitutes normal life." This is most evident in the portrayal of Blacks in the media. Consider the perception of police. A white woman grows up believing the police are her friends; you call them if you're in trouble. A Black woman says she never ever thought the police were her friends; when they show up in the community, it means trouble. A Black man knows that he is more likely to be pulled over by the police if he is driving down the street than a white man who is driving down the street. Black Los Angeles Prosecutor Chris Darden says he's not only been mistaken for the defendant's attorney in a courtroom, but has also been thought to be the defendant because of his color.

In my emergency room experiences, I've seen this discrimination in practice. A Black man was arrested and tested for alcohol following a traffic accident because police assumed the other driver, a white man, was driving the Mercedes that belonged to the Black man. An 18 year old white girl, driving drunk and without a seatbelt, demolished a car that hit a pole. She was sent home with doting parents after a sympathetic police interview. At the same time, a Black man driving drunk, also in a one-car collision with a curb, was handcuffed and taken to jail.



This Article Continues Here.



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