The Lincoln Offensive

2020 ◽  
pp. 271-304
Author(s):  
Johanna Fernández

To dramatize deplorable health conditions and the race and class origins of pre-existing conditions, the Young Lords took-over Lincoln Hospital in July 1970. The occupation forced the construction of a modern medical building and creation of one of the Western world’s first acupuncture drug treatment centers. Cited as the first of its kind in American medicine, the group incited a public clinical hearing where a lay audience cross-examined doctors after the death of a Puerto Rican woman, the result of an abortion procedure conducted by an unsupervised medical resident. The Lords organized with non-medical hospital staff in the Health Revolutionary Unity Movement (HRUM) and white radical doctors in the Pediatric Collective under the banner, Think Lincoln. Together they drafted the earliest known Patient Bill of Rights. In the wake of late 60s draconian cuts in social spending, they and others staved off the advent of neoliberal social policies in the late 1970s. Historians interpret sixties revolutionary nationalism as a rejection of coalitions with white Americans. These alliances suggest otherwise. But the Lords challenged power dynamics in cross-racial and cross-class alliances, rejecting uninterrogated racial prejudices and liberal tendencies of middle-class white radicals and the potential for their disproportionate influence in coalitions.

2020 ◽  
pp. 193-232
Author(s):  
Johanna Fernández

The Young Lords applied to the U.S. context the worldview known as Third World socialism—the ideas and strategies for liberation that emerged during wars of decolonization in Vietnam, Cuba, Algeria. These drew from Marxism, Maoism, Franz Fanon, and Lenin. In the US, radicals argued that racialized groups—including black Americans, Native Americans, Chicanos, Asian Americans, and Puerto Ricans—were internal domestic colonies, politically and economically underdeveloped and dispossessed of their rights to self-determination. While Third World revolutions iconized peasant guerrillas, organizations like the Black Panthers and the Young Lords identified the lumpenproletariat as the most revolutionary class in society. At a moment when economic restructuring and the flight of industries to the suburbs produced permanent unemployment and greater economic and racial segregation in the city, the activism and politics of grassroots radicals like the Young Lords reflected the distinctive social features of their urban environments. The Revolutionary Nationalism of urban radicals was tied to the vast relocation of white Americans from city to suburb. In this environment, the ideal of people of color fighting together with white Americans for change grew more and more difficult to enact as the daily lives of these populations grew further and further apart.


Author(s):  
Kathryn Kish Sklar

This chapter explores the intricate connections between the politics of gender, race, and class in Clinton's presidential bid. Leading nineteenth-century feminists such as Angelina Grimké, the daughter of South Carolina slaveholders who became one of the most popular public speakers in the antebellum North, championed both antiracism and antisexism, refusing to privilege the freedom of one group at the expense of another. This chapter argues that in 2008, Clinton made a different choice. In her determination to pass the “masculinity test” for commander in chief, Clinton molded herself into the candidate for “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” failing the “race test” and setting back the cause of unity and justice for all Americans.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. e0246369
Author(s):  
Sarah Lawrence ◽  
Dave Namusanya ◽  
Andrew Hamuza ◽  
Cornelius Huwa ◽  
Dennis Chasweka ◽  
...  

Background Child mortality rates remain unacceptably high in low-resource settings. Cause of death (CoD) is often unknown. Minimally invasive tissue sampling (MITS)–using biopsy needles to obtain post-mortem samples–for histopathological and microbiologic investigation is increasingly being promoted to improve child and adult CoD attribution. “MITS in Malawi” is a sub-study of the Childhood Acute Illness & Nutrition (CHAIN) Network, which aims to identify biological and socioeconomic mortality risk factors among young children hospitalized for acute illness or undernutrition. MITS in Malawi employs standard MITS and a novel post-mortem endoscopic intestinal sampling approach to better understand CoD among children with acute illness and/or malnutrition who die during hospitalization. Aim To understand factors that may impact MITS acceptability and inform introduction of the procedure to ascertain CoD among children with acute illness or malnutrition who die during hospitalization in Malawi. Methods We conducted eight focus group discussions with key hospital staff and community members (religious leaders and parents of children under 5) to explore attitudes towards MITS and inform consent processes prior to commencing the MITS in Malawi study. We used thematic content analysis drawing on a conceptual framework developed from emergent themes and MITS acceptability literature. Results Feelings of power over decision-making within the hospital and household, trust in health systems, and open and respectful health worker communication with parents were important dimensions of MITS acceptability. Other facilitating factors included the potential for MITS to add CoD information to aid sense-making of death and contribute to medical knowledge and new interventions. Potential barriers to acceptability included fears of organ and blood harvesting, disfigurement to the body, and disruption to transportation and burial plans. Conclusion Social relationships and power dynamics within healthcare systems and households are a critical component of MITS acceptability, especially given the sensitivity of death and autopsy.


Author(s):  
Johanna Fernández

Against the backdrop of America’s urban rebellions in the 1960s, an unexpected cohort of New York radicals unleashed a series of urban guerrilla actions against the city’s racist policies and contempt for the poor. They occupied a hospital, took over a church, paralyzed traffic with uncollected garbage, tested children for lead poisoning, defended prisoners, fought the military police, and fed breakfast to poor children. Their dramatic flair, uncompromising vision for a new society, and skill in linking local problems to international crises riveted the media, alarmed New York’s political class, and challenged nationwide perceptions of civil rights and black power protest. The group called itself the Young Lords. Utilizing oral histories, archival records, and an enormous cache of police records released only after a decade-long Freedom of Information Law request and subsequent court battle, Johanna Fernández has written the definitive history of the Young Lords, from its roots as a Chicago street gang to its rise and fall as a political organization in New York. Led by working-class Puerto Rican youth and modelled after the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords confronted race and class inequality and questioned U.S. foreign policy. Their imaginative protests and media savvy tactics won reforms, popularized socialism, and exposed America’s imperial project in Puerto Rico. Fernández challenges what we think we know about the sixties. In riveting style, she demonstrates how the Young Lords redefined the character of protest, the color of politics, and the cadence of urban culture in the age of great dreams.


2020 ◽  
pp. 233-270
Author(s):  
Johanna Fernández

Influenced by Che Guevara’s writings on revolution and self-transformation, the Young Lords launched the “revolution within the revolution”— a deliberate struggle to name and challenge manifestations of power dynamics, racism, sexism, and homophobia in their ranks. The trademark slogan of second wave feminism, “the personal is political,” articulated the challenge. Among the Lords, an increase in female membership propelled a fierce struggle against male chauvinism that well-positioned women to have their voices heard, leadership respected, and demands met. To that end, the group edited its program and platform; drafted rules against sexism; Denise Oliver was appointed to its formal leadership; and formed men’s caucus and women’s caucus to discuss gender oppression internally. Influenced by Franz Fanon, the Lords also challenged anti-black racism in the psyche of the oppressed, including widely used language that devalues curly hair, dark complexion, African facial features and the tendency among Puerto Ricans and Latinos to deny their ethnicity and blackness and distance themselves from black Americans. The Young Lords prioritized Afro-Latino leadership, including that of Felipe Luciano; theorized race ideology in Latin America; and made public a conversation about race that had been confined to hushed whispers among Puerto Ricans and Latinos.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1959 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-166
Author(s):  
E. PERRY CRUMP

The present position of the Negro physician in American medicine is by no means fortuitous, nor is it the result of timely official decree. Historically, the Negro doctor has faced the same rugged pattern of uphill struggle for initial training opportunities, for hospital staff privileges in the care and follow-up of his patients, and for recognition by and integrainto the major medical society (A.M.A.) in this county, as has his lay counterpart in analogous nonmedical settings. In a well arranged, highly authentic book of some 400 pages, Dietrich C. Reitzes tells the story under the title, Negroes and Medicine.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-137
Author(s):  
Claire Ducournau

FR. Cet article propose une analyse transversale de portraits de boxeurs noirs publiés dans des magazines africains de langue française entre 1953 et 1975. En suivant les représentations discursives et visuelles données de ce type de sportif dans deux périodiques illustrés diffusés en Afrique, Bingo (1953-1991) et La Vie africaine (1959-1965), comparées à celles qu’en a proposées au même moment Paris Match, il cherche à montrer, dans une perspective foucaldienne, comment ces dernières sont traversées par des dynamiques de pouvoir plus générales articulant des rapports sociaux de sexe, de race et de classe dans un contexte d’effritement de l’empire colonial français. Examinant les formes et la plasticité des textes et des images mettant en scène des boxeurs américains et africains d’un magazine à l’autre, l’article défend l’hypothèse d’une spécificité et d’une intensité du portrait de boxeur dans ce segment de la presse autour de 1960, avec ses topoï et ses référentiels. Après avoir décrit cet espace de publication périodique diversifié et concurrentiel, il propose une typologie des articles sur la boxe dans lesquels on retrouve, en dépit de leur variété et de leur mélange, des traits réguliers propres au portrait, forme de métagenre situé entre et au-delà des genres journalistiques usuels. La mise en scène médiatique des biographies de ces athlètes subalternisés, débordant la rubrique sportive, permet de donner un sens à des luttes tant pugilistiques que sociopolitiques, dans un contexte d’autonomisation du champ sportif français. Quoiqu’apparaissant comme des symboles de résistance, leurs corps y sont traversés par des dominations de race (sous la plume de bien des journalistes français, le Noir reste l’autre), de genre (quoique ne validant pas toutes les normes de masculinité hégémonique, ces portraits ne bousculent pas l’ordre genré), et de classe (les parcours de ces sportifs issus de milieux sociaux plutôt favorisés n’excluent pas des mécanismes (néo)coloniaux donnent la part belle à leurs entourages blancs). *** EN. This article offers a cross-sectional analysis of portraits of black boxers in African magazines written in French and published between 1953 and 1975. The analysis is based on the study of the discursive and visual representations of the figure of the athlete in two illustrated periodicals distributed in Africa, Bingo (1953-1991) and La Vie africaine (1959-1965). By comparing them with those offered by French magazine Paris Match on the same period of time, the article seeks to demonstrate, from a Foucauldian perspective, how the latter are imbued by more generic power dynamics articulating social relations of gender, race and class, in the context of a crumbling French colonial empire. Examining the forms and the plasticity of texts and images featuring American and African boxers in each magazine, this research argues that portraits of boxers in this segment of the press in the 1960’s formed a specific genre, with its own characteristics, levels of intensity, specific topoi and references. After describing the diverse and competitive market of periodical publishing, we suggest a typology of articles on boxing, which identifies, despite their variety, common strokes specific to the portrait genre. Thus, it constitutes a form of metagenre situated between and beyond the standard journalistic genres. The staging in the media of the lives of these objectified athletes goes beyond the sports section, and heightens both pugilistic and socio-political struggles in the context of the growing importance of the French sports scene internationally. Though appearing as symbols of resistance, their bodies bear the marks of subjection through race (under the pen of many French journalists, the Black man remains “the other”), gender (although not validating all the norms of hegemonic masculinity, these portraits do not challenge the gender order), and class (the fact that most athletes are from well-off families does not exclude the (neo)colonial mechanism which consists in giving more attention than required to their white entourage). *** PT. Este artigo oferece uma análise transversal de retratos de boxeadores negros publicados em revistas africanas de língua francesa entre 1953 e 1975. Seguindo as representações discursivas e visuais desse tipo de atleta em dois periódicos ilustrados distribuídos na África, Bingo (1953-1991) ) e La Vie africaine (1959-1965), em comparação com as propostas ao mesmo tempo por Paris Match, o trabalho procura mostrar, a partir de uma perspectiva foucaultiana, como estas últimas são atravessadas por dinâmicas de poder mais gerais que articulam as relações gênero, raça e classe em um contexto de desmoronamento do império colonial francês. Examinando as formas e a plasticidade de textos e imagens de boxeadores estadunidenses e africanos de uma revista para outra, o artigo defende a hipótese de uma especificidade e de uma intensidade do retrato de um boxeador neste segmento da imprensa por volta de 1960, com seus topoï e suas referências. Depois de ter descrito este espaço diversificado e competitivo de publicação de periódicos, propõe uma tipologia de artigos sobre boxe em que encontramos, apesar da sua variedade e da sua mistura, traços regulares próprios do retrato, uma forma de metagênero situada entre e para além de gêneros jornalísticos habituais. A encenação midiática das biografias desses atletas subalternos, extrapolando a seção de esportes, permite dar sentido às lutas pugilísticas e sociopolíticas, em um contexto de empoderamento do campo esportivo francês. Embora apareçam como símbolos de resistência, seus corpos são atravessados pela dominação racial (para muitos jornalistas franceses, o negro continua sendo o outro), gênero (embora não validem todas as normas da masculinidade hegemônica, esses retratos não perturbam a ordem de gênero), e de classe (os percursos desses atletas de origens sociais bastante privilegiadas não excluem os mecanismos (neo) coloniais que dão lugar de destaque às suas comitivas brancas). ***


Author(s):  
Charles Ellis ◽  
Molly Jacobs

Health disparities have once again moved to the forefront of America's consciousness with the recent significant observation of dramatically higher death rates among African Americans with COVID-19 when compared to White Americans. Health disparities have a long history in the United States, yet little consideration has been given to their impact on the clinical outcomes in the rehabilitative health professions such as speech-language pathology/audiology (SLP/A). Consequently, it is unclear how the absence of a careful examination of health disparities in fields like SLP/A impacts the clinical outcomes desired or achieved. The purpose of this tutorial is to examine the issue of health disparities in relationship to SLP/A. This tutorial includes operational definitions related to health disparities and a review of the social determinants of health that are the underlying cause of such disparities. The tutorial concludes with a discussion of potential directions for the study of health disparities in SLP/A to identify strategies to close the disparity gap in health-related outcomes that currently exists.


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