Black lives matter the history and existence of racial inequality in the united states Essay Example for Free

Black lives matter the history and existence of racial inequality in the united states Essaydetention up. Dont shoot.1 This is a refrain shouted by BlackLivesMatter activists throughout the United States. BlackLivesMatter is a movement that gained national momentum in 2014 after acts of legal philosophy brutality resulting in the closing of drear Americans such as Mike Brown and Eric Garner. In both of these cases, the respective police officers involved were not indicted for the death of American citizens.2 This prompted the reaction black lives matter the livelihood of black large number should and must be as important as that of white bulk. Throughout history, slew of African descent in the United States have not equally enjoyed the same look and opportunities as other Americans due to racism, defined by mankind health scholars Jennifer Jee-Lyn Garcia and Mienah Zulfacar Sharif as system of structuring opportunity and assigning value based on accelerate, that unfai rly disadvantages some individuals and communities, and advantages others.3 In the early 1900s, multiple doctors brought attention to the contrast in the morbidity and mortality of diseases, many that result from poor living conditions, among black and white Americans. Lawrence Lee, a doctor writing in 1914, remark that tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases and still-births ca manipulation a death-rate of 917.9 per 100,000 against a rate of 354.7 for whites.4 In 1927, a movement in favor of eugenics took hold, beginning with the Buck v. tam-tam ruling.5 This United States exacting Court case gave doctors the authority to designate certain people more exit to breed than others and supported the procreation of the supposed fit and curb that of the unfit through means such as forced sterilization.6 During this time, forty percent of the unfit people sterilized were non-white.7 However, BlackLivesMatter activists demonstrate that racialist agendas that ar viewed as histor y in truth have ongoing effects to this day that negatively impact the daily lives and public health of African Americans. Opponents use the social media hashtag AllLivesMatter, expressing the view that all people deserve equal rights and access to basic necessities, regardless of race. AllLivesMatter is distinct from the BlackLivesMatter movement in that it does not acknowledge the past tense and present inequity in the quality of life between white Americans and those of African descent. BlackLivesMatter has given voice to a historically oppressed class of people and opened a discussion on how the eugenics movement has compromised that of black Americans and how this can be corrected and how future racially-charged infractions can be prevented.The racialization of medicine has had a substantial role in the development of the eugenics movement. Garcia and Sharif define racism as system of structuring opportunity and assigning value based on race, that unfairly disadvantages some i ndividuals and communities and claims that racism as a social condition is a fundamental cause of health and illness.8 The eugenics movement is one that is founded on the racist ideology that was detrimental to the African American community. Negative eugenics was carried out through marriage restriction, forced sterilization, and confining the feeble-minded to colonies. The restriction of marriage through issuing marriage licenses was critical in the racist agenda of eugenics. It was illegal to have children outside of wedlock.9 Virginia in particular banned inter-racial marriage. By doing so, Virginia politicians and eugenicists were intentionally preventing people from having mixed race children, something they saw as undesirable.10 AllLivesMatter activists would make do that the eugenics movement was not focused on African Americans, as many of the victims of eugenics were white. In Buck v. Bell, a case heard by the United States Supreme Court that secured eugenic doctors abili ty to forcibly sterilize the feeble-minded, the defendant was Carrie Buck, a white woman.11 Proponents of AllLivesMatter would note that eugenic doctors instead targeted individuals of lower socio-economic status. Some of the diagnostic criteria for detecting feeble-mindedness included cold and clammy hands and excessive pallor or blushing.12 While many of the victims of the application of negative eugenics were of lower socioeconomic status, it cannot be unattended that the eugenics movement grew from calls to improve black public health in the early 1900s. Advancements in germ theory allowed for doctors to understand that diseases are transmissible regardless of race as a result, doctors emphasized the need for sanitary living conditions for black Americans.13 Historian Andrea Patterson claims that public health measures were hijacked by eugenicists14 rather than these public health measures benefitting blacks, they, in part, created an environment in which eugenicists had reas on to believe that people of particular racial background were predisposed to certain illnesses. Although Buck v. Bell enabled the eugenics movement to impact people of all races, the racist political regimes that preceded it supported the development of eugenics. Paternalism was a major contributing factor to eugenics establishment. In 1915, Doctor L. C. Allen posited that the negro health problem is one of the white mans burdens, and it is by no means the least of those burdens.15 It was his belief that the disproportionately high morbidity and mortality rates of diseases such as tuberculosis and syphilis among black Americans were the responsibility of the white population to resolve. Allen credited the strict supervision of slave owners over black slaves for the lack of illnesses related to an feculent living environment and sexually transmitted diseases while slavery was legal.16 According to Allen, freedom has not benefited his health, nor improved his morals, where he refers to African Americans.17 Without white slave owners to contain that African Americans bathe, clean their living spaces, and do not engage in promiscuous sex, Allen claims that African Americans did not properly take care of themselves. His answer to this comprehend problem is for white Americans to champion a public health reform by way of changing the reproductional curriculum for blacks. Allens proposed industrial education would consist of teaching African American children proper hygiene and cater to their future career prospects, which mainly consist of service or manual sedulousness roles.18 By singling out a minority group to be segregated for the purpose of a different education based on race, Allens industrial education plan would have been an institutionalized instance of structural racism. Black Americans would have been denied access to an equal education, and by virtue of that, they would be further limited to the jobs available to them. Although this plan did not c ome to fruition, the ideas behind it lingered. Eugenic doctors felt that it was for the betterment of all humankind to promote the procreation of those with what these doctors deemed desirable traits while at the same time diminishing or altogether ceasing the procreation of the unfit.19 The widespread belief that eugenics existed in order to improve the global gene pool is paternalistic. The socio-economic elite utilized their post of power to further their self-interested ideology at the expense of those below them, particularly African Americans.Mass incarceration of African Americans is a modern practice that in many ways is a continuation of eugenics. Victims of eugenic sterilization told their stories in a 2011 affirmation in North Carolina arranged by The Governors depute Force to Determine the Method of Compensation for Victims of North Carolinas Eugenics Board. One such victim was Elaine Riddick, a black woman. Her son, Tony Riddick commented on the ongoing general rac ism in the United States, saying, A boyish man nineteen age old, first time convicted, nonviolent offense, you give him fifteen to twenty years in prison. Now look at what happens, now he can no longer be a father, his mother loses a child.20 Though the testimony took place a few years before the BlackLivesMatter movement gained momentum, these sentiments are the same as those felt by activists today. BlackLivesMatter advocate and doctor bloody shame basset argues in BlackLivesMatter A challenge to the Medical and Public health Communities that there is the great injustice in the daily violence experienced by young black men. But the tragedy of lives cut short is not accounted for entirely, or even mostly, by violence.21 Indeed, as Tony Riddick pointed out, systemic racism has cost many black Americans the ability to lead a productive life in society and often the ability to reproduce. In the mid-twentieth century, this took the form of the eugenics movement. People designated feebleminded, a categorization for the so-called unfit of society, were often sent to colonies to live out their lives and forcibly sterilized.22 Though eugenics has been abolished, similar practices occur today. When a person is sentenced to a prison sentence that spans their anthesis reproductive years, they are segregated from the rest of society and are much less likely to raise a family.23 Tony Riddick drew a comparison between eugenics and mass incarceration, likening each to genocide.24 Flaws in todays criminal justice system have allowed a form of racial genocide to continue in the United States.A quick internet search of the hashtag BlackLivesMatter will bring up a sizable list of names that activists for the movement deplore as preventable deaths. Though many people know of Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and Mike Brown, lesser-known but equally important people are added to the list of casualties regularly. One such person is Joyce Cornell, a fifty-year-old black woman who di ed in jail on July 22, 2015. Cornell was arrested for failing to pay court fines, a minor offense. Cornell experienced severe sickness and vomiting and was not granted medical treatment or water. She passed away one day later from dehydration.25 These people, every black person who has lost their life early from preventable causes, represent a public health epidemic. Structural racism has decreased the life expectancy of black people living in the United States.26 As Garcia and Sharif argue, it is necessary to reshape our discourse and consider racism a public health issue in order to begin to besiege its effects.27 It is vital that positive change happens for the betterment of our fellow Americans. This process begins with recognizing that racism exists and that BlackLivesMatter.BibliographyAllen, L. C., M.D. THE NEGRO health PROBLEM. The American journal of Public Health, 1914. Accessed February 8, 2016.Bassett, Mary T., M.D., M.P.H. BlackLivesMatter A Challenge to the Medical and Public Health Communities. The New England Journal of Medicine 372, no. 12 (March 19, 2015) 1085-087. Accessed March 11, 2016.Buck v. Bell.274thed. Vol. 200. U.S. Supreme Court, 1927.Dorr, Gregory Michael. STERILIZE THE MISFITS cursorily Virginia Controls the Feebleminded. In Segregations perception Eugenics and Society in Virginia, 107-36. Charlottesville University of Virginia Press, 2008.Garca, Jennifer Jee-Lyn, Ph.D., and Mienah Zulfacar Sharif, MPH. Black Lives Matter A Commentary on Racism and Public Health. Am J Public Health American Journal of Public Health 105, no. 8 (August 2015) E27-30. doi10.2105/ajph.2015.302706.Governors problem Force to Determine the Method of Compensation for Victims of North Carolinas Eugenics Board. net Report to the Governor of the State of North Caroline (Pursuant to Executive Order 83). Raleigh, NC, 2011.Hutchinson, Woods. The Importance of Negative Eugenics Or the Prevention of Ill-Bornness.,. The American Journal of Public Health 3 ( 1913) 238-42.Knapp, Andrew, and Dave Munday. Lawyers Say Woman, 50, Died after Being deprived of Water at Charleston County Jail. Post and Courier. February 24, 2016. Accessed April 21, 2016. http//www.postandcourier.com/ word/20160224/PC16/160229636.Lee, Lawrence, M.D. THE NEGRO AS A PROBLEM IN PUBLIC HEALTH CHARITY. The American Journal of Public Health 5 (1915) 207-10.Patterson, Andrea. Germs and Jim Crow The Impact of Microbiology on Public Health Policiesin Progressive duration American South.Journal of the account of Biology42, no. 3 (Fall 2009) 529-59. doi10.1007/s10739-008-9164-x.1 Jennifer Jee-Lyn Garca, Ph.D. and Mienah Zulfacar Sharif, MPH, Black Lives Matter A Commentary on Racism and Public Health,Am J Public Health American Journal of Public Health105, no. 8 (August 2015) e27, doi10.2105/ajph.2015.302706.2 Garcia and Sharif, e273 Garcia and Sharif, e274 Lawrence Lee, M.D., THE NEGRO AS A PROBLEM IN PUBLIC HEALTH CHARITY.,The American Journal of Public Health5 (1915) 2 07.5 Buck v. Bell.274thed. Vol. 200. U.S. Supreme Court, 1927.6 Woods Hutchinson, The Importance of Negative Eugenics Or the Prevention of Ill-Bornness.,AJPH3 (1913) 238.7 Gregory Michael Dorr, STERILIZE THE MISFITS PROMPTLY Virginia Controls the Feebleminded., in Segregations Science Eugenics and Society in Virginia(University of Virginia Press, 2008).8 Garcia and Sharif, e279 Dorr, 11210 Dorr, 11111 Dorr, 12912 Dorr, 11313 Andrea Patterson, Germs and Jim Crow The Impact of Microbiology on Public Health Policies in Progressive Era American South,Journal of the History of Biology42, no. 3 (Fall 2009) 541, doi10.1007/s10739-008-9164-x.14 Patterson, 52915 L. C. Allen, M.D., THE NEGRO HEALTH PROBLEM.,The American Journal of Public Health5 (1915) 194.16 Allen, 19517 Allen, 19418 Allen, 20019 Hutchinson, 24020 Governors Task Force to Determine the Method of Compensation for Victims of North Carolinas EugenicsBoard. Final Report to the Governor of the State of North Caroline (Pursuant to Executive Order 83). Raleigh, NC,2011, D-1021 Mary T. Bassett, M.D., M.P.H., BlackLivesMatter A Challenge to the Medical and Public Health Communities,The New England Journal of Medicine372, no. 12 (March 19, 2015) 1085, accessed March 11, 2016.22 Dorr, 12023 Garcia and Sharif, e2824 Governors Task Force to Determine the Method of Compensation for Victims of North Carolinas EugenicsBoard, D-10.25 Andrew Knapp and Dave Munday, Lawyers Say Woman, 50, Died after Being deprived of Water at Charleston County Jail, Post and Courier, February 24, 2016, accessed April 21, 2016, http//www.postandcourier.com/article/20160224/PC16/160229636.26 Garcia and Sharif, e2827 Garcia and Sharif, e27