THE REAL GENOCIDE The New York Times, in an editorial expressing alarm that an "astonishing" number of African Americans believe in conspiracies with AIDS as a prime example could only understand the phenomenon as "paranoia." Educated white folks, to the degree they are aware of such matters, tend to be "amazed" by such beliefs. But what is truly amazing is that so many whites are so out of touch with the systematic attack by the government-medical-media establishment on the health and lives of African Americans. The stone wall of calculated ignorance and denial that blacks face every day is a fine surface on which to write conspiracies, and may explain why some people become vested in a plot scenario that seems to crystallize the damage. But the problem is far more powerful and pervasive than any narrow conspiracy theory can capture. And although the health horror this society imposes on African Americans is not a "mainstream" public issue, black people know what they are experiencing. They also know that the radical gap between the life expectancy of African Americans and that of white Americans was there even before AIDS burst onto the scene. A 1980 Health and Human Services Department report showed that there were 60,000 "excess deaths" among blacks. This is the number of black people who would not have died that year if blacks had the same mortality rate as whites. That figure marks more unnecessary deaths in one year alone than the total number of US troops killed during the entire Vietnam War. The black body count is a direct result of overwhelming black/white differences in living conditions, public health resources, and medical care. The infant mortality rate a good indication of basic nutrition and health care is more than twice as high among black babies as among whites, while black women die in childbirth at three times the rate of whites. There are also major differences in prevention, detection, treatment, and mortality for a host of other illnesses, such as high blood pressure, pneumonia, appendicitis and cancer. Comparisons are even starker when class as well as race is factored, and, of course, the health status of both Latinos and poor whites is worse than that of more affluent whites. The situation has worsened since 1980 with the advent of AIDS and the new wave of tuberculosis. TB, long considered under control in the US, began a resurgence in 1985. One big factor was the greater susceptibility of HIV infected people to TB. But TB is an important example for another reason: It has always been closely linked to poverty. Crowded tenements, homeless shelters, jails, inadequate ventilation, and poor nutrition all facilitate the spread of this serious disease. Given the distribution of wealth and privilege, it is not surprising that the rate of TB for black Americans is twice that for white Americans, African Americans are also assailed by a range of problems such as high stress, poor nutrition, and environmental hazards. One significant example of environmental hazards is the excessive blood levels of lead in children a condition with proven links to lowered academic performance and to behavioral disorders. In 1991, 21 percent of black American children had harmful quantities of lead in their blood, compared with 8.9 percent of all US children. In addition to disease, the high rate of black-on-black homicide a secondary but particularly painful source of needless deaths is in its own way a corollary of the frustration and misdirected anger bred by oppression.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 12:22:11 +0000