|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Excerpts |
|
|
Keith Hartgrove "Because of the color of my skin everybody knows when they see me, what I am. Or at least they think they know what I am based on my skin color. And not the content of my intellect, the content of my kindness or the person that I am. It's not really based on what's on the inside. And because of what's on the outside most people shut themselves off to what's on the inside. That's something I've had to deal with for 44 years. It's nothing new. It's nothing strange. I expect it. I don't accept it but I expect it. "My name is Keith Hartgrove and I'm a victim of quadruple by-pass surgery. I've survived three heart attacks, one of which according to the doctors, my heart stopped for a while and I had some extraordinary experiences during that period." |
|
Elizabeth Hartgrove "Keith grew up as an all around boy, he was very healthy and he played basketball and all the games that the kids played. And, Keith as a baby was born a vegetarian and that troubled us, it troubled me and it troubled my husband because we thought that children needed to have meat. And when he started to school I didn't know what I could send for his lunch. But it was peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and apples and all the vegetables and all the fruit and everything that I could give him, all proteins, he had cheese and everything. And, he grew up very strong and very healthy." |
|
Dr. Paula Johnson, M.D., M.P.H. "Cardiovascular disease in our population in general is the number 1 cause of mortality. But we know for African Americans is that not only do we die in greater numbers proportionately but we also die at younger ages. And what's interesting, a number of studies have been done to figure out, well, gee is it socioeconomic status, is it risk factors. It's probably some combination but no one can really explain away the total difference by looking at those factors, so that we can't fully explain that very significant disparity." |
|
Dr. John Rich, M.D., M.P.H. "We also know that a number of studies have demonstrated that African Americans in the health care system get a different class of care. For whatever reason providers seem to treat people of color differently, either in terms of diagnostic services or in terms of what kinds of interventions they get. So we recognize that race represents a more complex mix of factors than just whether your skin is black or what your ancestry is." |
|
Dr. Nancy Krieger "We can embody those aspects of inequality or conversely embody those aspects of privilege. And then end up with biological manifestations, biologic expressions as it were in this case of race relations. So that while there may not be innate fundamental differences between, say African Americans and Whites, there may be still biologic differences that are acquired because of the fact of living in a racist society." |
|
Dr. Vanesso Britto, M.D "Stress plays a very important role in all of our lives and certainly when youčre in a social environment that causes you to sort of be on guard, much of the time, whether or not you're even aware of it on a conscious level, has some physiological effect on our bodies, there's no question about it. So, the mind and body are connected and it would be hard to say that people would not be internalizing some of the stress that they encounter in their work-a-day lives in their social lives, in just about everything they do." |
|
Camara Phyllis Jones, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D. "I have a question that I've developed: How often do you think about your race:
never, once a year, once a month, once a week, once a day, once an hour or constantly.
In this group of white respondents, 50% said they never think about their race and only
3% said they constantly think about their race.
For the black respondents, 23% said that they constantly think about their race and if you take once a day or more frequently,
more than 50% thought about their race at least once a day.
Whereas a much smaller percent said never, it was actually 11% percent, which quite surprised me.
And I think those 11% probably are living in racially segregated settings
where they're not thinking about their race but are being impacted by institutionalized racism.
But it's quite a different thing, so you have a conversation about race,
it's easy for white people who don't think of themselves as having race to talk about race." |
|
Professor Cornel West "Race as a category only emerges at a particular historical moment.
There had been some color prejudice, there had been some color differentiation,
but race as a category was first introduced by Francois Bernier in a paper in 1688 in France
and doesn't become part of so-called scientific discourse until Linaeas in 1735 and his natural history.
And of course, he's one of the towering figures.
And by the 18th century you've got a full-scale discourse of racial hierarchy,
Europeans at the top, Africans at the bottom.
By the 19th century it becomes, not simply "science", but it becomes part of popular discourse in a way that
had not been the case two hundred years before. At all. You see.
Take a great African like Augustan, of the 4th and 5th century.
He was an African, probably roughly the same color I was, part of the Roman empire,
nobody made that big a deal about it, you see race didn't matter as much.
Hue hardly mattered as much, he was a roman, imperial, elite, from Carthage, Northern Africa, you see.
It didn't make that big a difference." |
|
Linda Clayton, M.D., M.P.H "What Michael and I found in our research is that the African American experience in the health system in many ways has paralleled our citizenship status. And as we know, we really did not get the voting rights until the mid to late 1960's and it was during that same period of time that the health care facilities in the United States were desegregated by law. So prior to that it was a completely segregated health system. And it really wasn't until the late 1960s that African Americans began to get even access to the lower tiers of the multi-tiered system in the United States and that tyranny exists today." |
|
W. Michael Byrd, M.D. M.P.H. "This is a 381 year old problem in the United States, deeply engrained in the medical social and the scientific western culture. And until real substantive corrective action are taken to approach it that way, then we are going to have a very very difficult time eradicating or correcting. And we're hopefully can begin perhaps engaging on the road toward justice and equity in health care for everyone in America." |
|
Gary L. Taylor, M.D. "We need to start putting our fears away and we need to start using our sixth sense to really figure out who has got our best interest at heart and who has not got our best interest at heart. And most importantly we need to stop being turned off by the entire system. Racism is never going to end, but that doesn't mean we should stop looking for good health care because there are too many racist individuals out there. Because if we do that we're going to lose the war, we'll win the battle but we'll lose the war and we're gonna die, continue to die young earlier than other people." |
|
Reverend Dr. Gregory G. Groover, Sr. "For every Keith Hartgrove there can also be thousands of other African American men and women who can experience the victory that was experienced by Keith. That's our quest, that's our mission. Keith is a living witness that it can be done but we all must be committed to it as well." |
|
copyright © 2002 Jay Fedigan |