Real reparations for African-Americans: health care reform

[Blue_Tires]

As the public debate over health care reform continues, many African-Americans are concerned that the minority of voices loudly denouncing a public option might sideline the real reform their community desperately needs.

From the cradle to the grave, African-Americans have poorer health outcomes: African-American infant mortality is more than double that of whites; African-American women make up 70 percent of new HIV/AIDS infections; three times as many black Americans die from diabetes as white Americans; and the life expectancy for whites is 78 years, compared with 73 years for all African-Americans and less than 70 years for African-American males.

There is a correlation between health outcomes and health coverage. Black Americans are uninsured at more than 11/2 times the rate of white Americans. Though over 80 percent of blacks live in working families, only 53 percent of black Americans have employer-sponsored health insurance, compared with 73 percent of white Americans.

Given the climate for health care reform, it's time for the African-American community to cash the check promised to us.

Shortly after the end of the Civil War on Jan. 16, 1865, Union Gen. William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order 15, which promised "forty acres and a mule" to freed slaves. Knowing that their prosperity was tied to possession of land, more than 40,000 freed slaves began working the 400,000 acres abandoned by white owners in South Carolina, Georgia and the Sea Islands.

In July of the same year, Congress created the Freedmen's Bureau, and specifically, Circular 13 ordered agents to set aside forty-acre plots for freed slaves.

However, the land was quickly taken back when Andrew Johnson, who had replaced Abraham Lincoln as president, pardoned Confederate soldiers and turned the land over to them. Freed men were told the land no longer belonged to them, and they must reconcile with their old masters.

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_13629079

[Number23]

1. Easily the most depressing article I've read this year.

"African-American infant mortality is more than double that of whites; African-American women make up 70 percent of new HIV/AIDS infections; three times as many black Americans die from diabetes as white Americans; and the life expectancy for whites is 78 years, compared with 73 years for all African-Americans and less than 70 years for African-American males."

The thing that gets me is how PREVENTABLE and manageable so many of these things are now (particularly HIV and diabetes) but black folks are still contracting and dying from these diseases at astonishing rates.

And yet, somehow somebody was able to brainwash that idiot into carrying a gun to a town hall and protesting against health care reform. Fool.