“That Conversation about Race” category archive
“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0
Michael Parker, writing at The Philadelphia Inquirer, hears a rhyme from Down Under.
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*Mark Twain.
“The Past is . . .Not Even Past.”* 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Monnica T Williams discusses how racist stereotypes rooted in attempts to justify America’s original sin of chattel slavery have become accepted as fact in medicine. Specifically, she cites test used to diagnose asthma, a condition she must deal with. A couple of excerpts:
- A repiratory test called spirometry measures how well a person’s lungs are functioning.
- For Black people, the predicted normal values are adjusted 10–15% lower than for White people.
(snip)
A groundbreaking study by Diao and colleagues, published this year in The New England Journal of Medicine, showed that gold standard race-adjusted equations in lung-function tests underestimate the severity of Black patients’ lung problems and overestimate the severity of White patient lung problems, reinforcing inequalities in healthcare. These race-based calculations normalize lowered lung function for Black people, making them seem healthier than they are. In contrast, White people’s results are based on more sensitive classifications, leading to better access to care, support, and disability benefits.
Her entire article is worth your while. It illustrates how deeply racist stereotypes created to justify chattel slavery and theft of labor permeate and pollute our polity–even tainting so-called “hard” science–to this day.
As if the last election was not proof enough.
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A Notion of Immigrants, Mean for the Sake of Mean Dept. 0
It is difficult not to find oneself just maybe having a slight twinge of a suspicion that perhaps sadism is a Republican Family Value.
Dissonance 0
As I was preparing to hang the flag out–something I do for national holidays–I thought of others who fly the flag, maybe just not only on holidays as I do but every day, some of them even flying maybe multiple flags from their “I am an inadequate male” pick-up trucks.
I thought of how they congratulate themselves on being such patriots.
And I wondered, as they do that, do they think of the pledge, do they repeat the words
. . . and liberty and justice for all . . . .
to themselves, even as they vote for Donald Trump, the man who puts children in cages?
Unjust Deserts? 0
Thom takes exception to Elie Mystal’s column about the recent election, in which Mystal argues that “Trump is our reckoning.”
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Joy Reid pulls no punches.
Make no mistake.
The pundits and politicians who are trying to blame Kamala Harris’s losing the election on Democratic strategy or poor messaging or you-name-it are (often willfully) missing the point.
Harris, despite being the most capable (not to mention coherent) candidate, lost to America’s original sin of chattel slavery and the construct of white racial superiority that was formulated to rationalize it.
Any claim otherwise is bullsh from the pundit hand book on how to mislabel maliciousness and normalize narcissism..
The Rule of Flaw 0
I go to sleep worrying about the American dream.
I wake up to the American scream.
I am not sanguine.
Still Rising after All These Years 0
If at first you can’t secede, try, try again.
“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0
At the Portland Press-Herald, Victoria Hugo-Vidal hears a rhyme. Here’s a tiny bit of her column:
At the same time as Victor was hiding his heritage, on the other side of the family on the other side of the country, in upstate New York, my other great-great-grandfather, Garrett MacEachron, joined the domestic terrorist group known as the Ku Klux Klan.
I commend the entire piece to your attention.
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*Mark Twain.