Category Archives: race

Racial categories and the meaning of race are given concrete expression by the specific social relations and historical context in which they are embedded

Public Sector Attacks Undermine Racial Progress

Aside

via Indypendent

In March 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. traveled to Memphis, Tenn. to support 1,300 striking sanitation workers who toiled for poverty wages in horrendous working conditions. Following King’s assassination there on April 4, the workers won legal recognition for their union.

Their victory was a landmark in the struggle of Blacks to reap the economic benefits of the civil rights movement. However, the modest gains that followed in the ensuing decades for some middle and working-class Blacks have been dramatically eroded in the past decade by a wave of home foreclosures and an official unemployment rate of 16.7 percent — a trend made worse by recent attacks on public sector workers and the services they provide.

Such is the case in New York, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City Council reached a budget deal in June that included layoffs of a thousand city workers. Most belong to District Council 37 whose membership is majority Black and Latino. The layoffs of school aides, parent coordinators and other non-teaching personnel, some of whom earn as little as $11,000 a year, are slated to begin Oct. 7.

Continue reading →

Of Mice and Medicine: How Investing in Medicaid Will Create Jobs

Aside

via Colorlines.com

As a follower of debates around health care policy, I often feel as if I’m watching three blind mice fumble about, trying to identify this enormous behemoth in their midst.

“It’s all about expansion of insurance coverage!” shrieks one, “We need to make sure that everyone has coverage under an insurance plan, one purchased in the marketplace. Punishing them if they don’t, just like car insurance.”

“No,” screams another mouse, “What good is insurance if it only buys you shoddy care? We need to invest in community health clinics, so that everyone has access to the primary care that they need!”

“Au contraire,” the third mouse spoke up, “The problem is rising costs, because people are not paying into the system, taxpayers end up bearing the brunt. Society should just let the uninsured die.”*

All three mice, like the back and forth between the President, Democrats and Republicans, bicker furiously to extend their particular perspective to the whole. But, one thing they can all agree on: something has to give. And, because the word of the day, post-Labor Day, has been about jobs after the summer’s craze for deficit reduction, even Democrats are cozying up to cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, in a manner previously unthinkable, ostensibly, to fund job creation.

Continue reading →

Vermont Breaks Ground in Health Coverage for Migrant Workers

Aside

via Colorlines

Vermont, land of rolling green hills dotted with black and white Holsteins and picturesque red barns. White people, everywhere, lots of them. Home of state-sanctioned town hall meetings that are models for participatory democracy. And now, the first state in our republic to enact universal health care for all. Two weeks ago, Gov. Peter Shumlin signed into law H. 202, “An act relating to a single-payer and unified health system.” It’s the first state to plunge into a single-payer system to implement national health care reform, which Harvard economist William S. Hsiao found was the best method to both reign in spiraling costs and diminish disparities.

Nationally, the need is perhaps more dire now than ever as safety net hospitals close down across the country. These hospitals are often places of last resort for care for the uninsured and for undocumented immigrants—populations that are disproportionately comprised of low-income people of color. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 44.4 percent of Latinos lack insurance, as well as 28.5 percent of black people and 21.2 percent of Asian Americans. In contrast, 16.5 percent of whites don’t have coverage.
Continue reading →