Urban News Features

Racial Disparities Linger in Disease Prevention

By former Congressman Ron Dellums

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Ron Dellums

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Black History Month is an opportunity to reflect on how far America and the African American community has come, and how much more we have to accomplish. Consider the field of health care; as the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Office of Minority Health said last year, “although black people have continued to make strides and shape the United States, health rates on average for chronic diseases, infections and death have taken a toll on the population.”

True, some health issues are linked to personal responsibility, such as diet and exercise. Yet other health issues in our community are impacted by the decisions of others – and it is these issues that we must work to correct.

Everyone knows that infants are uniquely susceptible to infections, and premature babies are especially vulnerable as their lungs are still developing. In addition, many have not yet acquired all of their mothers’ antibodies. This time of year, that puts them at greater risk of catching diseases like respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a common childhood infection – and also increases the risk of serious illness and hospitalization.

Take note: RSV has a disproportionate impact on the African American community. In the words of the President of the National Black Nurses Association, Debra A. Toney, PhD, RN, FAAN, “Not only are African Americans over-represented among infants who are premature and/or low birth weight, they are also over-represented within the ranks of almost all other RSV risk factors.”

Serious illness and hospitalizations are sometimes terrifying (and all too often expensive) for parents. While no vaccine exists to completely protect against RSV, preventative treatment options do exist, alleviating worry and greater expense down the road.

Unfortunately, it’s become increasingly difficult for families to access these treatments due to a change by the American Association of Pediatrics (AAP) in their “Red Book,” a book of best practices and treatment guidelines for pediatricians taken as seriously as the Bible. Reports have indicated that since 2009, the AAP has limited both the number of infants who are eligible for RSV prophylaxis, as well as the number of treatments that babies can receive – a reduction based not on science, but on “cost.”

The AAP’s guidelines are widely used by private insurance companies, as well as by Medicaid. Accordingly, what’s in there is what is covered – so when the AAP restricts coverage of RSV treatments, unintended consequence occur such as some insurance companies restricting their coverage.

Families with money, of course, can pay out of pocket for the preventative treatment if they’re turned down by their insurance company. Those without a few thousand dollars to spare, however, don’t have that luxury, and have to cross their fingers that their child’s case of RSV doesn’t become severe. In effect, we’ve created a two-tiered health care system.

Think about it: we’re trying to save health care dollars on the backs of defenseless infants. Is this the kind of health care system that our premature babies deserve?

Three weeks ago, the nation’s oldest and largest association of African-American physicians, the National Medical Association, issued a press release about the AAP guidelines, asserting “We cannot continue to experiment with our infants or support ‘off-label’ treatment via decreasing the length of treatment and dosing. The NMA will continue to advocate for increased research and demands the recommended duration of treatment be based on substantial clinical trials and thus scientific evidence.”

The NMA’s comments are nothing new; they issued a detailed, thoroughly researched consensus report in 2010 on the disease and its impact on minority communities. It has been two years later and this matter has yet to reach the level of serious dialogue.

Perhaps Black History Month will remind us all to stay engaged in this issue. It would only be appropriate to consider the NMA’s recommendations as we work to improve the health of African Americans.

Ron Dellums served in the U. S. Congress from 1971-1988 and was elected as the 45th mayor of Oakland, Calif.

Sorry Doesn't Always Make it Right: The Onion and a Young Girl

By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - In the midst of the Academy Awards drama on Sunday, February 24, one of the Onion’s writers (we don’t know who he is – I doubt a she would have stooped so low), described the lovely and talented child Quvenzhane’ Wallace with a filthy word that took her all the way out of her name.

Using a very crude word for female genatalia, the Onion writer observed that she was a c***. Excuse me! Blessedly hundreds of people shared their outrage in the electronic media so forcefully that the Onion’s CEO, Steve Hannah, apologized. But somehow sorry doesn’t always make it right. In my letter to the Onion, I’ve asked for reparations, or an effort to repair the harm that was done. I’m sharing my statement and hope you, too, will share it with the “leaders” of The Onion. Until they respond, I think it wholly appropriate to withhold support from them. As Dr. King once said, “to cooperate with evil is to be evil”. To besmirch a child, whether you are a satirical publication or not, is nothing but evil.

My letter:

President and CEO Steve Hannah (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
COO Mike McAvoy (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
(312) 751-0503 Fax 312-751-4137
#200, 212 Superior St, Chicago, IL 60611

Dear Mr. Hannah:

While your apology for the vile statement made by your staff regarding the wonderful and talented Quvenzhane’ Wallis is duly noted, it is an insufficient response to the heinous insult lobbed at a 9-year-old girl; additionally, the community of women and African American women in particular. Your apology is received, but not accepted. You must mitigate the damage that your comments caused, not only for Quvenzhane’, but also for the women who, reveling in her success, were damaged by the sucker punch we experienced when your writer found it acceptable to describe a 9-year- old girl in a crude term for genitalia, a term that most adult women would recoil at.

Your apology might be more readily received if,

1- The disciple, though the offensive writer, was detailed and their name revealed so that they can be monitored for their gendered racism in the future.

2- Your company made amends to both Quenzhane’ and the community that supports her by;

Offering the organizations that monitor gender and racial discrimination a financial contribution. My suggestion is that you direct at least $50,000 each to The Black Women’s Roundtable, The National Organization for Women, and the National Council of Negro Women. Additionally, I would suggest that you offer $50,000 to the charity of Quvenzhane’s choice.
Meeting with representatives of African American and women’s organizations in Washington DC on a date that is mutually agreeable, but no later than March 31, 2013 to discuss the process behind this insult and the ways that future occurrences will be prevented.
Share information on the number of women and people of color on your staff, and share the ways that they impact editorial decisions.

3- Your company provides scholarship opportunities to African American women students at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to indicate that you do not see young women in the disparaging ways, but as scholars. There are two HBCUs that are women’s institutions, Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. At least one scholarship for each of these institutions would be an effective way to apologize.

4- Your company provides speakers to the colleges that will have you to, at no fee to the colleges, explain the difference between satire and offense. To notify interested colleges, it is my suggestion that your company take out a full page advertisement in Diverse Issues in Higher Education to both reprint your apology and offer the opportunity for your staff to meet on colleges.

Please note that, as a former president of an HBCU focused on women, I was repelled by your writer’s comments. Taking them down and then apologizing is the simple way out for this offense. I call upon you to take proactive action to redress this wrong.

Let me also note that I have no invested interest in any of the organizations I have mentioned here (except that I am President Emerita of Bennett College for Women, and my association with young women makes this all the more offensive).

I am asking friends and colleagues to withdraw any support to The Onion until your apology is enhanced by action. I am also asking all women’s and African American organizations to join my insistence that your apology is insufficient.

I do look forward to your response.

If anyone from Chicago is reading, perhaps you could organize a picket outside their office! Sorry doesn’t always make it right.

Julianne Malveaux is an economist and author.

Voting Rights Act as Needed as Ever

By Jesse Jackson Sr.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The Supreme Court has heard yet another challenge to the Voting Rights Act in the case of Shelby v. Holder. On the same day, across the street in the congressional rotunda, a statue honoring Rosa Parks was nveiled. And this week, the nation will celebrate the 48th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the march from Selma to Montgomery that helped spur President Johnson to champion the act.

The Voting Rights Act has helped fulfill the nation’s commitment to inclusion — to a big tent democracy that guarantees to all citizens the right to vote. Yet many fear that the right-wing “Gang of Five” on the Supreme Court will once more display their scorn for judicial restraint and strike down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires pre-clearance of any voting rules that might impinge on minority participation in states and counties with histories of racial discrimination.

President Obama and his Justice Department have defended the act unequivocally. In 2006, a Republican Congress reauthorized the act for 25 more years, after holding 21 hearings and amassing more than 15,000 pages of evidence on continuing voting discrimination in the covered districts. The margin was 98-0 in the Senate (including the senators from Alabama, Shelby County’s home state) and 390-33 in the House. The Justice Department reported that between 1982 and 2006, it had used Section 5 a total of 2,400 times to block discriminatory changes in voting rules. Republican President George W. Bush signed reauthorization into law. In the current case, Republican-appointed justices at the District Court and the Circuit Court levels voted to uphold the law. If the Gang of Five acts to overturn it, it will be an act of disgraceful judicial usurpation in a matter of extreme importance to our politics and our democracy.

The Voting Rights Act has been central to the transformation that is making America’s diversity a strength, rather than a liability.

Ironically, it is this very progress that is used to attack the act. Shelby County claims that the areas covered by Section 5 should not be under special scrutiny because things have changed. The election of Barack Obama is used as evidence.

The sad reality, of course, is that since Obama’s election, our politics have become more, not less, racially polarized. Obama’s “rising American electorate” is grounded on the rising participation of minorities (along with single women and the young). After 2008, a more-conservative, more-Southern and more-white Republican Party set out to constrict voting in ways that would discriminate against minorities.

For example, of the nine states covered in their entirety by Section 5, lawmakers in six have passed restrictive new voting laws since 2010. Texas had its harsh voter identification law overturned under Section 5. Florida’s effort to reduce voting hours in a way that would discriminate against minorities was blocked. South Carolina had to make changes in its new restrictive laws. Anyone paying attention knows that the Voting Rights Act is more, not less, vital as political parties and leaders struggle to adjust to the inclusion of growing Hispanic and Asian-American populations and the rising participation of African Americans.

When passed less than a half century ago, the Voting Rights Act marked the beginning of real democracy in the South. It has helped make America better, but its work is not done. That was the finding of the Republican Congress and the Republican president, the elected branches of government in 2006. It was the finding of the district and appellate courts in this case. If the rule of law means anything in this country, that will be the decision of the Supreme Court.

One Trillion Dollar Lie

March 3, 2013

Blackonomics

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The One Trillion Dollar Lie
By James Clingman

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Joseph Goebbels

Watching the TV special that reviewed information contained in the book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War", by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, brought back memories of articles and radio shows I had done during the run-up to “shock and awe” in March 2003. It reminded me of how callous and shameless those high level politicians were and how low they would go to get this country into an unnecessary war.

It gave me pause as I thought of the nearly 5,000 American lives that were lost, the tens of thousands of soldiers who came home incapacitated, minus arms and legs, and the 100,000 Iraqi men, women, and children killed in a war that was supposed to “liberate” them. This war was made even more tragic in that it cost more American lives than were lost in the World Trade Center on 911.

The authors of Hubris, as well as interviews of key individuals involved in the Big Lie, point out the sheer and utter disregard for truth, integrity, and human life. From the neo-con gang, i.e. Feith, Wolfowitz, Perle, to Rumsfeld, Rice, Cheney, and President George W. Bush, one thing was crystal clear: They were going to war with Iraq come hell or high water. They obviously didn’t care about WMD and simply used the threat of WMD to scare everyone else into believing the biggest charade in history. I could hardly believe it when high level officials admitted on television, before the American public, that they were shocked at the lies that were being told by the Bush Administration.

When Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld are asked if they now believe they made a grave error by going into Iraq, they all say, “No, I think it was the right thing to do.” What hubris! It seems they have no consciences and no fear of the fact that they will someday have to account to a higher court for their actions, irrespective of what they “think.” Even now, after all the lies have come out and after most reasonable people know the Iraq war was not based on the premise put forth by Colin Powell at the United Nations, they still say they did the right thing. I don’t know how they sleep with the blood of thousands on their hands.

Of course, at the bottom of the Iraq mess was economic enrichment: no-bid contracts, the construction and maintaining of the largest embassy in the world, $9 billion dollars in cash still unaccounted for, Ahmed Chalabi getting his payoff, Halliburton, KBR, and all the others who made millions off the war in Iraq.

The hypocrisy that reigns now, especially among some of our politicians who earn a minimum of $174,000 compared to a soldier who makes less than $45,000, is embarrassing, insulting and, if you ask me, even sinful. To see the symbolic reverence and respect portrayed by politicians when they visit graves and hospitals, juxtaposed against their mistreatment, neglect, and ignoring the needs of veterans is unbearable. It’s as though veterans’ lives and sacrifices are only good for photo-ops.

Back to the stupid needless war in Iraq. We should be ashamed of our leaders for perpetrating the biggest fraud of the past century, well maybe at least the second biggest next to the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 – another Big Lie! Talk about legacies. Daddy Bush gave us Clarence Thomas; Dubya gave us the Iraq war; I wonder what Jeb Bush has up his sleeve for an encore.

The Big Lie was exactly that, and now we have the long awaited unmitigated truth about what happened and how some of us were made to believe the lie. The lie cost $1 trillion and many lives, and it was recited and recanted, in spite of the fact that many insiders knew it was a lie. But, the public, the electorate, the “people” believed the lie and were scared into thinking our soldiers were headed to Iraq to protect our shores and cities from a nuclear weapon Saddam did not have that would be fired at a place it could not reach. To use those ominous words of George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice, as lies go, they don’t get any bigger than a “mushroom cloud.” We the people are being treated like mushrooms; they keep us in the dark and feed us cow manure.

“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” - Thomas Sowell

Alarming Hunger and Poverty Among African-American Children

File Photo: Bread for the World

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Bread for the World

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Agriculture has released new data revealing that hunger and poverty in America remain high, especially among Black children.

The African-American and African-American child hunger and poverty rates are even greater than the national averages—sometimes nearly twice as high, states Bread for the World (BFTW), a D.C.-based organization specializing in hunger in America. BFTW has issued a special report on the numbers. According to the analysis more than one in seven Americans, or 15 percent of the entire population, live below the poverty line ($22,811 for a family of four with two children), according to the Census stats released in late 2012.

Hunger closely mirrors the poverty figures: 14.9 percent of households in the United States (50.1 million Americans, or one in six) are food insecure—meaning that the people in the household are unsure of how they will provide for their next meal at some point during the year.

Households with children are more likely to experience food insecurity. Around the country, nearly one in four children—16.7 million—lives in a food insecure family. More than a quarter of all children under age 5 lived in poverty in 2011.

The most recent food insecurity data released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture reveal that 25.1 percent of African-American households are food insecure. Among African-American households with children, 29.2 percent are food insecure, compared to 20.6 percent of all U.S. households with children.

Similarly, 27.6 percent of African-Americans live in poverty. The African-American child poverty figures are particularly disturbing: 38.8 percent of children under age 18 and 42.7 percent of children under age 5 live below the poverty line.

A specific 20 states have the highest African-American child poverty rates in the country. Those states and the rate of African-America child poverty are: Iowa 55.7; Ohio 50.5; Michigan 50.0; Mississippi 49.6; Wisconsin 49.1; Indiana 48.7; Louisiana 48.3; Kansas 46.2; Alabama 45.8;Minnesota 45.8; Kentucky 45.7; Arkansas 45.4; Illinois 44.8; Oklahoma 44.8; South Carolina 44.4; Tennessee 43.6; Washington, D.C. 43.2; Missouri 41.7; Florida 41.2; and Pennsylvania 40.8.

In Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania, African-American child poverty rates are double the overall child poverty rates. In Iowa, the poverty rate for African-American children is more than triple the overall child poverty rate, states the Bread for the World analysis.

As the economy continues to rebound, federal initiatives play a tremendous role in protecting African-American children and families from falling into hunger and poverty. These initiatives include the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).

During the recession of 2008, poverty and unemployment skyrocketed while the number of hungry people held relatively steady, due largely to programs like SNAP. In 2011, more than 3.9 million

African-American families received SNAP benefits.

Likewise, the health and potential of some of our most vulnerable community members are safeguarded through monthly packages of food that supply important nutrients to mothers and their infants and children under age 5. WIC served nearly 9 million women and children in 2012. The most recent racial and ethnic data, published in February 2012, found that 20 percent of women and children enrolled in WIC are African-American.

“In a land of plenty, it is unacceptable that so many of our children go hungry,” said Bishop Don Dixon Williams, associate for racial-ethnic outreach at Bread for the World. “With figures this alarming, we must ask ourselves why people of color tend to suffer more than others. And we must tell lawmakers to take actions that do not hold hungry black and brown children responsible for the nation’s financial gaps.”