Why are American racial and ethnic minorities disproportionately numbered among all the major health issues and diseases in our country? Is it because the stereotypes are true: they are lazy, unintelligent, reckless, and hedonistic? Is it because they are unemployable, uninsurable, and uneducable? Is it because they are ensconced in unhealthy behaviors endemic to their culture and would risk being ostracized were they to contravene or criticize those conventions in any way? Of course, not!
Health care in the United States is another bastion of institutionalized racism. Historically for decades, the health care system was racially segregated and people of color, particularly African Americans, were forced to seek service at a “colored” facility, even if none was nearby and even during emergency situations. Today, we’re not far from that dehumanization. The millions who lack health insurance, many of whom are persons of color, do not have access to the medical care they routinely need and are egregiously treated as second- and third-class citizens. In my opinion, it is unconscionable for a citizen of this country to be denied the fundamental means of survival because they lack participation in a structure that deliberately discriminates against certain categories of people and types of work—never mind those who are temporarily or perpetually jobless!
President Obama’s health care reform was never intended to fix a broken system. Thus, to put it in other words, it was scarcely designed to insure everyone, let alone significantly reduce medical costs. Instead of focusing on those perennially unable to secure basic medical care, Obama and Congresspersons elected to improve the circumstances of middle- and working-class folks, without regard to the most disadvantaged. The probity of a nation is determined by how the poorest are treated or served. The United States has a bad moral record in this regard. It is like everyone complaining about the skyrocketing cost of health care, yet turning blind eyes to millions to whom the doors of hospitals, physician offices, and pharmacies are tightly shut. I know my tendency to advocate for not only socialized medicine, but also completely free health access to all citizens, is far to the left of most people who self-characterize as liberal, but the more moderate stance of a single payer system has also been relegated to the radical junk heap.
There’s a part of me that laughs raucously over the attempts beginning in the 1990s to reduce the racial disparities in the health care system, first by the year 2000 and then by the year 2010. As the Center for Multicultural Education held various health symposiums and even a health conference in 2004, I tried not to be cynical or pessimistic over the possibility of success. I knew realistically that social structures, processes, and policies in the United States were hopelessly and inveterately ill-suited for such an appreciative overhaul. Besides, the goal of reducing health care disparities for minorities was never elevated to a federal endeavor, for we are not equipped, nor do we have the desire or will, to address and redress the plight of the oppressed and the indigent.
April is National Minority Health Month. My laughter is nothing short of cacophonous. Who cares?
