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‘We have reached a critical point.’ Declare racism a public health crisis
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Susan Campbell Jan. 9, 2021 Updated: Jan. 9, 2021 5:18 p.m.
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Sen. Saud Anwar, a proponent of the bill repealing the religious exemption from mandatory vaccinations, speaks to opponents of the bill.
Sen. Saud Anwar, a proponent of the bill repealing the religious exemption from mandatory vaccinations, speaks to opponents of the bill.
Photo: Dan Haar
The pandemic and this week’s attempted coup have burned through a thin veneer. Wednesday’s footage from D.C., when the U.S. Congress was supposed to pro forma count the electoral votes from November’s election, showed members of a white mob (with at least two Connecticut state flags among them) storming the U.S. Capitol.
As Congress members and staff were moved to safe locations, insurgents who embrace Donald Trump’s false claims of a rigged election raced through the halls, vandalized the Capitol, waved a Confederate flag, left ropes fashioned into nooses, and terrorized some security officers.
One mob member from California was shot and killed. A few hours into the siege, Trump, who’d spent years ginning up for just such an event, went on social media and posted a video in which he told the mob that he loved them. The terrorists stayed on Capitol grounds for more than three hours while the rest of us held our breath.
As officials announced the all-clear, footage showed rows of insurgents mugging for the camera, acting as if they’d just been on a really cool field trip. And then? They meandered back to their hotel rooms - despite a 6 p.m. curfew.
Later that day, law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, asked for help identifying the perpetrators using hours of security camera footage, and selfies posted on social media by the insurgents themselves, because mask-free insurgents are both proud, and stupid. That’s what most of us (white people) saw. People of color saw something else. They saw security officers opening gates and posing for pictures with the pretend-soldiers, and it wasn’t hard to see the contrast between that footage and footage of police reactions at Black Lives Matter protests, or police response to Black men selling cigarettes (Eric Garner), or their response to Black women watching television in their own homes (Breonna Taylor).
Perhaps those Black people should have stormed the Capitol, so they, too, could have been done their business and then jubilantly gone home. Could the contrast be clearer?
Genteel Connecticut remains one of the most segregated states in the union. Roughly 70% of the state’s Black residents live in 12 municipalities, and zoning codes make sure things stay that way. The coronavirus has taken us all by the neck, but it’s squeezed hardest communities of color, where people may not have the luxury of working from home, keeping their distance from others, or even purchasing effective masks.
Families who were already struggling have been pushed over the edge by the virus. State Sen. Saud Anwar (D-South Windsor) is proposing legislature that will declare racism a public health crisis. He suggested it to Gov. Ned Lamont in June, and now he wants to codify it.
Some towns, including South Windsor, of which Anwar once was mayor, and New Haven, New London, and Hamden already made such declarations. Anwar’s bill would establish a commission - similar to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission - whose members will study how racism infects and infuses the state, and then make recommendations for resolutions.
Prior to the end of apartheid in South Africa, 20% of Black babies died before their first birthday. At the same time, life expectancy for a Black South African was 55 years, compared to 70 for a white South African. The numbers are equally damning in the Nutmeg State, where, says Anwar, a baby born to a Black mother is four times more likely to die in the first year of life than a baby born to a white mother. Conversely, maternal mortality rate is far, far greater for mothers of color than for white mothers.
Patients of color are also less likely to be given pain medication than are white patients when they go to the doctor for a broken bone.
People of color are far less likely to go without seeing a doctor in Connecticut because they are uninsured or under-insured and can’t afford an office visit - with predictable results. Connecticut has a higher-than-average number of people with asthma. The majority of those patients are Black, and they more often end up in emergency rooms than white patients. And this is all pre-pandemic.
These numbers don’t reflect genetics, said Anwar. It’s environment, and it’s an outcome of having the bulk of our residents of color living in cities, where housing stock tends to be older, and more prone to conditions - mold, dust -- that exacerbate respiratory issues.
As South Africa was coming to terms with its racist past, the country relied on the Commission, a court-like body that examined human rights violations, and in some cases, allowed the victims of those violations to meet their perpetrators. South Africa continues to struggle, but the commission brought the sins of the ruling party into the open.
For children of color in genteel Connecticut, “from the moment of their birth, all the cards are stacked up against them,” said Anwar. “We have not done a good enough job in protecting human survival and healthy living.”
Anwar says this isn’t simply a moral argument. It’s an economic one. Poor health outcomes impact our public health system. People who grow up unhealthy aren’t able to enter and stay in the work force, or attend school, or reach their full potential.
“We have reached a critical point in our state,” he said. “The status quo is not sustainable.
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