Racism is a public health crisis

Way back when I was a graduate student in Los Angeles, I interned for a while at a regional planning agency in downtown Los Angeles.  Some of my fellow interns were undergraduates, and one of them was an African-American.

Of all the interns, he was the only one who always showed up well-attired.  While the rest of us made it clear through our outfits that we were students, he came dressed as if he were a full-time employee.  I thought that maybe that was his thing.

Only decades later, it dawned on me that maybe he was well-dressed in order to make sure that many of us with our implicit biases would not mistake him for being a hooded mugger from whom we had to escape at least by crossing over to the other side of the road.  If that were the case, what a terrible burden that he had to deal with every single day!

Now, it is not that I have not been mugged.  Once, three guys surrounded me one late evening and I had to empty out the few dollars that I had.  I was now in a bind: I had no money to pay as fare for the transit bus, and it was quite a distance to walk to my crummy graduate student apartment.

A bus pulled up.  I told the driver that I had just been mugged, and that I had no money.  He waved me in.

Mugging was real.  But, to then suspect that every black young man is a mugger is where the racism kicks in.  And therefore people walking away from young black men is an explicit demonstration of that racism.  

Through his professional attire, my fellow-intern was perhaps signaling to those with explicit or implicit bias that he is simply one of us.

Racism is one damn public health crisis. 

As this commentary in The Conversation puts it, "Treating racism like the disease that the CDC says it is suggests boosting our investment in public health funding would be money well spent."

That's exactly what my county government resolved two days ago, following up on the CDC statement.  The resolution also makes an important public admission:

WHEREAS, the racist history of Oregon in particular, including the presence of the Black exclusion clause in the State’s constitution, has had lasting negative consequences for Black, Indigenous and People of Color (“BIPOC”) communities of the State and Lane County;

A terrible history that we have here in a "liberal" state.

If you thought that this was a unanimous resolution, then you don't know Oregon.   There are plenty of people, even my own neighborhood, who are racists.  It is not without reason that then-candidate tRump came to Eugene in May 2016!  Remember this post in which I described one effect of his visit?

So, yes, the county resolution was not unanimous.  There was one who voted no--Commissioner Jay Bozevich.

“If we’re already doing all of the work that is called for in this,” he said at the April 21 meeting, “I see this as almost an unnecessary piece of virtue signaling.” 

He added that he did support the definition of racism put forth by staff. 

As the report reminds us, "Lane County’s resolution comes weeks after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s April 8 statement that racism is a serious public health threat."

The CDC's statement was possible only because of the outcome of the elections last November.  Thankfully!

The former fellow-intern perhaps has a son or two who could be in their mid-20s now.  I would certainly want them to have all the rights and privileges that people like Bozevich take for granted.