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We are allowing Poor Children to be Unjustly over Medicated? Duh!
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On the front page of the New York Times last Saturday (December 14, 2009), Duff Wilson reported on a federally funded team of researchers from the Universities of Rutgers and Columbia who revealed that children covered under Medicaid are prescribed antipsychotic medications at a rate four times that of children who are covered under their parent’s insurance. In fact the article reported that
Medicaid children are more likely to receive the drugs for less severe conditions than their middle-class counterparts, the data shows.
The article goes further to ask whether these tactics of medicating children are simply a cost-effective technique to control the problems of poor children rather than using techniques and strategies created for children within a higher socioeconomic bracket. This is very important, for it validates what my research and book, released June 2009 and titled: White Prescriptions?: Black Males and the Dangerous Social Potential of Ritalin and Other Psychotropic Drugs critically discusses.
Within my book I looked at the Medicaid system in Illinois and Florida. More specifically I investigated a specific list of psychotropic medications as it related to Black males juxtaposed against the number of all other groups covered under the state systems. The data revealed that Black males were disproportionately medicated than all other groups prescribed these strong medications. A system of social control is in operation as it relates to children, specifically males of color within the U.S. The U.S. and the government have a history of diagnosing and medically treating marginalized children.
For example, on December 30, 1969, John D. Ehrichman, Domestic Affairs Advisor of then President Richard M. Nixon sent a request to the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. The president wanted the Secretary’s opinion as to the advisability of setting up pilot projects embodying some of [the] approaches presented by Arnold A. Hutschnecker, M.D., in his 1,600 page memo which advised the government to conduct nation-wide testing on all children six to eight years old. Such children would be put in special camps, and attend counseling sessions and day care centers that specialized in correcting their violent, delinquent tendencies. his national testing approach would attempt to detect and treat children who possessed homicidal and other violent tendencies.
Hutschnecker, who was at the time engaged in psychotherapy, hoped his proposal for nation-wide testing would allow those children identified as having problems to be subjected to corrective treatment. This line of thought and focus on these children continues today with the federal government, in combination with pharmaceutical companies, is continuously trying to prove the safety of and advocating the use of antipsychotic and other behavioral stimulant drugs in the behavior treatment plans for school age children. For example, in the 1990s, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) attempted to explain the occurrences of violence within the inner cities. Their basis was founded on the possible biological and genetic defects in Black Americans. They proposed to do numerous studies that would have involved intrusive measures such as spinal taps, brain studies, and blood tests. Strong opponents halted the initiative, which resulted in the later resignation of Fred Goodwin, former head of the NIMH. It has been reported [at opensecrets.org] that the total electoral contributions donated by pharmaceutical companies to state and federal electives in 1990 were $3,273,367. In 2006, the donations had blown through the roof to $19,598,807. In 2006, out of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, 388 received a total of $9,481,486. Out of the 100 Senators, 92 received a total of $4,592,729 in pharmaceutical contributions. In 2006, Senator Clinton was number fourteen on the top twenty list of senators who received contributions ($124,855). Within this period, the top six contributors were Pfizer, Inc. ($1,743,839), Amgen Inc. ($1,150,925), GlaxoSmithKline ($1,108,101), Johnson & Johnson ($747,215), Abbott Laboratories ($675,896), and Eli Lilly & Co. ($540,921). During the 2008 presidential primaries the top six were Amgen Inc. ($686,500), Pfizer, Inc. ($648,971), GlaxoSmithKline ($520,716), Johnson & Johnson ($480,921), Roche Group ($370,227), and Abbott Laboratories ($366,800). These are the makers of the behavioral stimulants like Paxil, Zyban, Wellbutrin XL, Cleocine Phosphate, Zoloft and etc. These contributions have had an undoubted effect on elected officials.
For example, in 2005, President George W. Bush launched an initiative for a nationwide mental health screening of all children K-12th grade. Due to the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (NFC), which was an Executive Order issued on April 29, 2002, his primary goal to create an integrated system of care that established identification, screening, and finally responding to metal health problems early within child welfare, public schools, criminal, and juvenile justice systems was enabled. Simply put, every child in the U.S. would be screened for mental health issues and forced prescribed care treatments. As of 2005, these measures have already been implemented in the states of Alaska; Arizona; Arkansas; California; Colorado; Connecticut; Delaware; Florida; Georgia; Hawaii; Idaho; Illinois; Indiana; Kansas; Kentucky; Louisiana; Maryland; Massachusetts; Michigan; Montana; Nebraska; New Hampshire; New Jersey; New Mexico; New York; North Carolina; North Dakota; Ohio; Oklahoma; South Carolina; Tennessee; Texas; Utah; Virginia; Washington; West Virginia; Wisconsin; and Wyoming.
This is an issue that should not be ignored but further investigated due to the lack of scholarship on the issue of medicating children. This also an issue that calls for scholars who are not afraid to look further than SES (socioeconomic status), but both race and gender.
Ignoring Systemic Racism: The House and Senate “Health Care” Bills
Posted by: | CommentsLaw Professor, Vernellia Randall, author of Dying While Black, has sent out a commentary (see link here) on the major weaknesses in the Senate bill 3590 and House Bill 3960 (health care reform bills) that have not gotten any significant media attention. She points out how they do not deal with structural and individual discrimination in medical care:
Racial discrimination in medical treatment is a significant problem. For instance, Blacks of similar income, education and severity of illness as Whites get different health care treatment. . . . For example, studies have shown that as compared to Blacks:
• Whites are 22% more likely to be hospitalized for ischemic heart disease;
• Whites are 57% more likely to undergo coronary-artery bypass surgery;
• Whites are 49% more likely to undergo coronary angioplasty;
• Whites are 25% more likely to have a mammography;
• Whites are 57% more likely to undergo hip-fracture repair.. . . . The ultimate health care reform bill must provide for an adequate legal structure that has the potential to eliminate racial discrimination in medical treatment. . . . To be effective the Senate bill must:
- Must specifically prohibit both intentional and disparate impact discrimination. In Alexander v. Sandoval, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its longstanding position that Title VI addresses only intentional discrimination. This is disastrous since most discrimination in health care is not intentional. Most physicians, hospitals and other providers, don’t set out to purposefully discriminate. Rather, they adopt policies and practices or they rely on stereotypes and bias to make decision and the net effect (the disparate impact) is to discriminate based on race.
- Must authorize individuals to sue on both the law and the implementing regulations. This effect discrimination (also called disparate impact) is prohibited by law through implementing regulation. Unfortunately, in Alexander v. Sandoval, the Supreme court held that an individual cannot sue (that is does not have a private right of action) on effect discrimination that only an agency can enforce the regulation. Thus, a person who knows that he or she has been discriminated against based on effect, can only file a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services and hope they follow through. The result has been that litigation based on racial discrimination in medical treatment is non-existent even though it is clear that it exists. The private right of action on implementing regulations must be clearly articulated in the law.- Must assure that all health care providers are responsible for non-discrimination. Title VI does not cover physician and other health care providers who do not take any federal financial assistance. They have been exempted by regulations which have provided that a payments to beneficiary for “contract of insurance”, such as Medicare B, are not federal financial assistance. Since some physicians do not take any other federal financial assistance, such as Medicaid, essentially these physicians and other providers are exempt from anti-discrimination law. This must be corrected – no provider should be allowed to discriminate without impunity. It is unfortunate that the Senate in its efforts to reform health care and make it more accessible and improve quality has failed to effectively address racial discrimination in medical treatment. This is unacceptable – you can’t improve the quality of health for all Americans and ignore racial discrimination in medical treatment.
You can see her full comments and sign a petition here. Also contact your senators and representatives about these serious omissions.
A Belated Pardon for John Brown, Heroic Abolitionist
Posted by: | CommentsDavid Reynolds, the author of an important biography of the white antislavery activist and abolitionist John Brown, did a NYT op-ed piece a few days back noting that this month marks the 150 anniversary of his hanging for organizing an insurrection against slavery. He gives historical background and calls for an official pardon for Brown. In October 1859,
With a small band of abolitionists, Brown had seized the federal arsenal there and freed slaves in the area. His plan was to flee with them to nearby mountains and provoke rebellions in the South. But he stalled too long in the arsenal and was captured.
Brown’s group of antislavery band of attackers included whites, including relatives and three Jewish immigrants, and a number of blacks. (Photo: Wikipedia) Radical 
abolitionists constituted one of the first multiracial groups to struggle aggressively against systemic racism in US history.
A state court in Virginia convicted him of treason and insurrection, and the state hanged him on December 2, 1859. Reynolds argues we should revere Brown’s raid and this date as a key milestone in the history of anti-oppression movements. Brown was not the “wild and crazy” man of much historical and textbook writing:
Brown reasonably saw the Appalachians, which stretch deep into the South, as an ideal base for a guerrilla war. He had studied the Maroon rebels of the West Indies, black fugitives who had used mountain camps to battle colonial powers on their islands. His plan was to create panic by arousing fears of a slave rebellion, leading Southerners to view slavery as dangerous and impractical.
We forget today just how extensively revered John Brown was in his day:
Ralph Waldo Emerson compared him to Jesus, declaring that Brown would “make the gallows as glorious as the cross.” Henry David Thoreau placed Brown above the freedom fighters of the American Revolution. Frederick Douglass said that while he had lived for black people, John Brown had died for them. A later black reformer, W. E. B. Du Bois, called Brown the white American who had “come nearest to touching the real souls of black folk.” . . . . By the time of his hanging, John Brown was so respected in the North that bells tolled in many cities and towns in his honor.
And then there were the Union troops singing his praises for years in the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Brown’s comments to reporters at his trial and hanging suggest how sharp his antiracist commitment was. For example, Brown’s lucid comment on his sentence of death indicates his commitment to racial justice: “Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments,—I submit, so let it be done!”
Reynolds notes that Brown was not a perfect hero, but one with “blotches on his record,” yet none of the heroes of this era is without major blotches. Indeed,
Lincoln was the Great Emancipator, but he shared the era’s racial prejudices, and even after the war started thought that blacks should be shipped out of the country once they were freed. Andrew Jackson was the man of his age, but in addition to being a slaveholder, he has the extra infamy of his callous treatment of Native Americans, for which some hold him guilty of genocide.
Given his brave strike against slavery, Reynolds argues, he should be officially pardoned, first of course by the current governor of Virginia (Kaine). But
A presidential pardon, however, would be more meaningful. Posthumous pardons are by definition symbolic. They’re intended to remove stigma or correct injustice. While the president cannot grant pardons for state crimes, a strong argument can be made for a symbolic exception in Brown’s case. . . . Justice would be served, belatedly, if President Obama and Governor Kaine found a way to pardon a man whose heroic effort to free four million enslaved blacks helped start the war that ended slavery.
Brown did more than lead a raid against slavery. We should remember too that in May 1858, Brown and the great black abolitionist and intellectual Martin Delaney had already gathered together a group of black and white abolitionists for a revolutionary anti-slavery meeting just outside the United States, in the safer area of Chatham, Canada. Nearly four dozen black and white Americans met and formulated a new Declaration of Independence and Constitution (the first truly freedom-oriented one in North America) to govern what they hoped would be a growing band of armed revolutionaries drawn from the enslaved population; these revolutionaries would fight aggressively as guerillas for an end to the U.S. slavery system and to create a new constitutional system where justice and freedom were truly central. (For more, see here)
Today, one needed step in the antiracist cause is for all levels of U.S. education to offer courses that discuss the brave actions of antiracist activists like John Brown and Martin Delaney, and those many other, now nameless heroes who marched with them. And how about a major monument in Washington, DC to celebrate them and all the other abolitionist heroes? We have major monuments there to slaveholders, why not to those who died in trying to overthrow slavery?
Celebrating Human Rights Day — Accenting Non-Discrimination
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The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights website celebrates today, Human Rights Day, with this statement on some sixty years of efforts to end many kinds of 
photo credit: FantasticBabblings
discrimination across the globe.
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. These first few famous words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights established 60 years ago the basic premise of international human rights law. Yet today, the fight against discrimination remains a daily struggle for millions around the globe.
“Our main objective is to help promote discrimination-free societies and a world of equal treatment for all,” says the High Commissioner [Navi Pillay] who this year will mark Human Rights Day in South Africa. She encourages people everywhere – including the UN family, governments, civil society, national human rights institutions, the media, educators, and individuals – to seize the opportunity of Human Rights Day 2009 to join hands to embrace diversity and end discrimination.
The realisation of all human rights – social, economic and cultural rights as well as civil and political rights – is hampered by discrimination. All too often, when faced with prejudice and discrimination, political leaders, governments and ordinary citizens are silent or complacent. Yet everyone of us can make a difference. You are encouraged to celebrate Human Rights Day by advocating non-discrimination, organizing activities, raising awareness and reaching out to your local communities on 10 December and throughout 2010.
Human Rights Day [examples]:
South Africa: * Students from around the world will take part in the first World Human Rights Moot Competition organized by the University of Pretoria with the support of the OHCHR. They will argue a fictional human rights case on the principle of non-discrimination before the High Commissioner presiding over a panel of high level judges. New York: * UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will open, “Race, Poverty and Power: A Panel Discussion on Discrimination in Development” (PDF). This event will provide a forum for a critical examination of the relationship between ‘race’ and development.… All human rights work can be viewed through the non-discrimination lens. It prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, colour, gender, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, disability, property, birth or other status.
I have recently summarized some relevant history here:
The struggle to deal with the Nazi Holocaust, together with ongoing struggles for human rights by people in many countries led to the pathbreaking Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in late 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly with no negative votes and eight abstentions. This important international agreement stipulates in Article 1 that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” and in Article 7 that “all are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.” Article 8 further asserts, “Everyone has the right to an effective remedy…for acts violating the fundamental rights,” and Article 25 states that these rights extend to everyday life: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing.” Since 1948 numerous international covenants on economic, social, and political rights have been signed by most United Nations members, and agencies like the UN Commission on Human Rights have been established to monitor human rights globally. The UN International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), put in force in 1969, specifically requires governments to make illegal the dissemination of ideas of racial superiority and the operation of organizations set up to promote discrimination. This convention, first ratified by some nations in the 1960s, was ratified by the United States only in 1994. Today CERD commits the U.S. and other governments to “adopt all necessary measures for speedily eliminating racial discrimination in all its forms and manifestations.”
In the mid-1970s two additional agreements–the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)—were approved by many countries and added to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to create an what is often termed an International Bill of Human Rights. However, while the ICESCR was signed by the U.S. government in 1979, it has not yet been ratified by the U.S. Senate. The U.S. Senate did ratify the ICCPR in 1992, but with fourteen reservations, declarations, and understandings, so many that much of that Covenant was thereby invalidated for the United States. Nonetheless, these United Nations covenants represent major international responses to, as Judith Blau and Alberto Moncada suggest, “genocide, oppressive labor practices, the antiapartheid movement, national independence movements, liberation movements of colonized people, and atrocities committed against civilians” and to the “civil rights movement in America, the feminist movement, and the newly empowered voices of indigenous groups and landless peasants.”
Native Americans Get a Little Justice in Trust Lawsuit, Maybe
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Well, after a century or more of ripping off Native Americans’ trust accounts the U.S. government, that is the U.S. Justice Department, has finally agreed to a
a $3 billion settlement with Indian tribes. This marks the end of a 13-year lawsuit brought against the government by Indian tribes over billions of dollars in valuable land and oil royalties. The class action lawsuit Cobell v. Salazar alleged that the federal government mismanaged more than 300,000 American Indian trust accounts for more than a century. The American Indians claimed they were deprived of money they should have received for sale or usage of land for oil, gas, grazing and timber overseen by the Interior Department since 1887.
Under this agreement half a million account holders will receive some compensation, plus a modest Indian Education Scholarship Fund, possibly as much as $60 million, will be set up for Native American youth. All of this is conditioned of course on the court and the Congress agreeing.
Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff and executive director of the Native American Community Development Corp. (and a tireless campaigner for this justice) pointed out in this NPR report that numerous
plaintiffs have died since the suit began to wind its way through the courts in 1996. The original lawsuit was filed by Cobell and four other Indians on behalf of present and past beneficiaries of individual Indian trust accounts, including 300,000 then-current IIM account holders.
I have summarized some of this lawsuit’s history and historical contextin chapter six here:
In this lawsuit these Indian plaintiffs have sought a financial accounting and reform of the government’s trust account system, which had been mismanaged for a century. To this point in time, the U.S. government has fought their lawsuit. Soon after it filed, a federal judge ordered the departments of Interior and Treasury to produce records for the trust accounts for the named plaintiffs, which they did not do. These trust accounts stem from land allotments made to individual Indians in the nineteenth century. Profits from the land—such as leasing fees and royalties for oil, logging, and other land uses—should have been held in trust by the government, but poor or no records were kept. A federal judge referred to this as “fiscal and government irresponsibility.” In 2006 an Indian Trust Reform Act was introduced in Congress, but has yet to pass. If passed, this legislation would have provided $8 billion as a settlement (plaintiffs have requested $47 billion) to individual trust account holders and give some Indian groups control over trust assets on reservations.
The federal government gets off very easy in this settlement, and Native Americans once again get exploited.
Racist Practices, Racial Segregation: Impact on the Subprime Housing Disaster
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The Economic Policy Institute just put out a major report, Segregation and the Subprime Lending Crisis, linking whites’ racial-segregation practices and the subprime mortgate crisis. The lead author is one of our major housing researchers and activists, 
Greg Squires. (The other authors are Derek S . Hyra and Robert N . Renner.)
The well-documented report begins this way:
While there has been widespread recognition that racial minorities are among the hardest hit by the subprime mortgage crisis, racial residential segregation has not been considered a factor behind the crisis in minority communities. Blame is being directed at ill-informed consumers, lax underwriting by loan originators, the failure of regulatory agencies, predatory lending practices, greedy investors, misguided appraisers and credit rating agencies, job loss in economically distressed regions, and a range of other institutional and individual factors.
The report then accents how the debate on the subprime crisis mostly ignores the centuries-old reality of residential segregation:
. . . apart from the mere percent of African Americans or Hispanics living in a metropolitan area, the more racially segregated these groups are in a metropolitan area, the more subprime loans that area is likely to have. Racial segregation is a signifcant predictor of the share of subprime loans, even after controlling for the percent of minorities, credit score, median home value, poverty, and education. Black segregation has a stronger effect than Hispanic segregation. These findings reveal that segregation explains, in part, the high rates of subprime lending in America’s most segregated metropolitan areas. Major findings include: A 10% increase in black segregation, on average, is associated with a 1.4% increase in high-cost lending. In a highly segregated black area, the percent increase in high-cost loans is 7%; in a highly segregated Hispanic metropolitan area the increase is 4.2%. Metropolitan areas with higher education levels have a lower proportion of high-cost loans.
Numerous research studies have shown that over the centuries, including recent decades, housing segregation is heavily shaped by the discriminatory practices of white homeowners, real estate operatives, and banking officials. We also have much evidence that the fair housing laws in this country have mostly been unenforced, in the past and in the present. Millions of cases of housing discrimination targeting Americans of color are perpetrated each year, mostly by whites.
In this substantial report there is much important information on the linkages between housing segregation and the subprime crisis, with solid statistical analyses showing these linkages. In my view the report’s main weakness comes in its analytical framework, with no mention of racism or systemic racism in the report. Once again too, the role of white real estate actors in all this is only implied, not explicitly stated. Like most such reports white actors are not named as white, including when these actors are in the subject position in key sentences about housing segregation. I have thought of doing a research paper or book examining our now extensive research writings on racial discrimination titled something like, “why are whites are only implied.”
Hate Crimes Legislation Passes Congress (UPDATED)
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Bruce DeBoskey, an Anti-Defamation Mountain States Regional Director, has reported and analyzed some good news, the fact that the US House and US Sentate have, after years of white conservatives blocking it, passed the Hate Crimes Prevention Act (introduced in Congress in 1999:
It has been 11 years since Matthew Shepard was beaten, tied to a lonely Wyoming fence, and left to die because his attackers hated gay men. That same year, James Byrd, Jr., was dragged to his death behind a pickup truck in Jasper, Texas, a victim of a racially motivated crime. One of Byrd’s attackers wore tattoos including the image of a black man hanging from a tree. Shepard and Byrd were not the only victims of those horrible crimes. In both cases, the murderers were not simply committing a crime against Shepard or Byrd; they were sending a chilling message to everyone who shared the characteristics of the victims. . . . The most recent FBI statistics show that there were 7,624 hate crimes in 2007. That’s almost one hate crime for every hour of every day. Most of those crimes were based on race, and many victims were targeted because of their religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation. Crimes against Latinos are on the rise, fueled in part by demonizing rhetoric about undocumented immigrants.
It took a long time, but now — finally — the United States Congress has sent a resounding message of support to victimized groups, a serious warning to those who would be perpetrators and a statement of safety and security to all who live in this country. Last week, Congress passed the “Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act,” and sent it to President Barack Obama, who has indicated that he will sign it into law.
The FBI stats are considered to be quite low, since many police agencies do not report or report zero crimes. The Southern Poverty Law Center has long joined with many law enforcement and civil rights officials to get this legislation passed, and they have estimated the number of such crimes at 50,000, much higher than the FBI.
UPDATE:
President Obama just signed the legislation. After years of Republicans blocking it. Yet another sign of change that we can use in the areas of anti-oppression action and law enforcement.
Jimmy Carter: Wilson’s Outburst ‘Dastardly’ and ‘Racist’
Posted by: | CommentsFormer President Jimmy Carter absolutely correct in his assessment of the outburst by Congressman Joe Wilson during President Obama’s speech to the joint session of Congress last week. Wilson shouted “You lie!” during Obama’s speech to Congress last Wednesday.
Carter, responding to a question submitted Tuesday night at a town hall held at his presidential center in Atlanta, said that Wilson’s outburst to President Barack Obama last week was an act “based on racism.” Carter says Wilson’s comment was part of an “inherent feeling” of some in this country who feel that a black man should not be president. Carter called Wilson’s comment “dastardly” – a great word that we don’t see used often enough – and said the president should be treated with respect.
Wilson, a South Carolina Republican member of Congress, was formally rebuked Tuesday in a House vote divided by party lines.
In this short (1:57) excerpt of an interview with MSNBC’s Brian Williams, Carter responds to what he recognizes as the racist climate against President Obama:
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