City governments across the nation are moving to declare racism a public health crisis, although no one is quite sure what that means. Last week, Memphis City Council voted unanimously to pass a resolution that declared racism a public health crisis, joining about 50 others that have taken similar measures, including Boston, Indianapolis, Denver, Cleveland and Charlotte.
And it’s not just cities that are making such declarations; some school districts and local hospital systems are also getting in on the act.
At the same time, 1,000 CDC employees have signed a letter asking the agency to declare racism a public health crisis and to address racism within the organization. In their letter, they also call for diversifying senior leadership. They complain that black employees make up 10 percent of the leadership roles within the agency, but that’s actually pretty good when you consider that blacks make up 13 percent of the U.S. population.
How will this designation be used against us?
In most of these cases, the designations are coming in the form of resolutions and other non-binding documents, which means we can’t say for certain what they will accomplish, if anything. But the intention behind them is to convey that racism should be treated with the same urgency and resources devoted to actual physical health crises that are taking people's lives, like coronavirus or opioid addiction.
The public officials who are giving into demands for this ridiculous designation are doing it out of fear. After all, we’re seeing people lose their jobs and livelihoods for acts that have a tenuous link to racism, at best – and in some cases, none at all, like the lawyer and soccer player who found themselves without jobs because of their wives’ comments.
All of this seems like an attempt to socialize the healthcare system, get government funds and control people’s lives even more. There are no real rules or epidemiological definitions of a public health crisis, so cities will probably just make them up as they go along. Some say their health departments will hire and promote more people of color, and we all know how that usually ends up.
What else might they plan to do with this designation? Will they quarantine white people so they don’t infect others with their whiteness? Will people who don’t tweet support for Black Lives Matter be pushed to the back of the waiting list for doctor’s appointments? Will they take away everyone's guns on the grounds that they could be used for a hate crime? Will they use AI to try to predict who might have racist thoughts and deal with people accordingly?
Race baiting as a public health designation is completely insane, but it’s par for the course in a country where the CDC tries to take away Americans’ gun rights by declaring gun-related violence a public health crisis. What rights could we lose with racism as a public health crisis? We all know that liberals feel very threatened by freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the right to bear arms, among others, so those are probably at the top of their list.
There may be merit to some of the concerns about inequality in medical treatment, but this designation is not the way to go about it, especially not when there are even more pressing issues taking a greater numbers of lives. What about black-on-black violent crime – isn’t that a health crisis? After all, 94 percent of black victims from 1976 to 2005 were killed by other black people. In 2018, the figure was 88 percent.
And what about abortion? Abortion is the top cause of death for blacks in America, killing more than cancer and violence. In fact, more black Americans have died from abortions than every other cause of death combined since abortion was legalized in 1973 – 20 million, to be more precise. Where are the calls to label abortion a public health crisis?
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