Jul 14 2008
The American Medical Association and The New Yorker have some explainin’ to do.
Just when you thought Grey’s Anatomy’s Dr. Burke and Barack Obama had made strides in bridging racial divides in America, here come The New Yorker and the American Medical Association to throw in the proverbial monkey wrench in the gears of racial progress.
First, as some of you might have seen the most th July 21 addition of The New Yorker has its cover depicting Senator Obama in Muslim, Osama-like dress and wife Michelle rockin’ a big ol’ Afro puff circa 1968 and carrying a machine gun over her shoulder all while a disheveled and discarded American flag burns in a white house fireplace. The magazine insists it’s a satire of what The GOP has made its opposition into, but according to reports, neither side of the isle is laughing.
Then of course is this little matter of the American Medical Association’s apology for over a century of racial bias toward Blacks in medicine. As of press time, full details are not yet released, but it is assumed by those involved in the study which began in 2005 that large gaps in African-American health care, high rates of disease such as cancer and heart disease and a 2% African-American practitioner rate versus the 13% community population of African-American patients, questions seem white hot. Dr. Carl Bell is not positive but wonders if the reason he had such trouble getting into Med school after graduating from the University of Illinois with a major in Biology and minors in both Math and Chemistry in only two years with a B+ average might have had any little thing to do with his race…. hmmm?
Talking this all in from all sides, certain key points, strike me. First, both The New Yorker and the AMA make no attempt at assumption or supposition with these incidents. Both are out in the open air in so many words. The New Yorker depicted the Obama’s as terrorists without any qualms or hesitations. The AMA in much the same vein, showed that its data uncovered outright racist neglect of the Black community. Neither of these groups are working with guesses or opinions.
As someone who acknowledges systemic racism but also fully supports the Bill Cosby ethic of personal responsibility to help fix the wrongs in our world, I ask that all of you who read this to open your eyes and see that we still can be an even better people than we currently are. Thanks for listening and of course, keep waxing poetically!
(Listen to NPR’s report of the AMA’s findings).
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