Social Issues

The Government Experiment that Killed over 100 people

“About the USPHS Syphilis Study.” Tuskegee University.

“The U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee.” U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office of Science.

Ada McVean. “40 Years of Human Experimentation in America: The Tuskegee Study.”

Austin Frakt. “The Legacy of the Tuskegee Study.” Harvard Global Health Institute.

Allan M. Brandt. “Racism and Research: The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.” The Hastings Center Report.

In 1932, the United States government quietly began a long-term medical study in the rural south. But by the time it was over, over 100 people were dead. 

Syphilis has plagued mankind for centuries, and it comes with some brutal symptoms. Anyone unlucky enough to catch the disease could experience loss of sight and hearing, dementia, and finally, heart failure. And in 1932, the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama began an experiment to study syphilis in Black American men. While there wasn’t a known cure for syphilis at the time, there were treatments to slow it down... But the government researchers never had any intention of actually treating their subjects. 

The institute recruited 600 Black men from the rural south: 399 with syphilis and 201 without. However, the men weren’t told that they were part of a study. Instead, the Tuskegee Institute told the participants they were part of a program to receive treatment for “bad blood,” a term for a variety of illnesses at the time. 

Over the course of the study, the men were given a number of intentionally ineffective treatments as doctors watched syphilis destroy their bodies. Even after penicillin was discovered to cure the disease in the early 1940s, it was never provided to the Tuskegee Institute's so-called “patients.” In fact, researchers went so far as to reach out to local doctors and the Alabama Department of Health to ensure none of the men were accidentally treated. 

This horrifying experiment continued until 1972 when a whistleblower from the Public Health Service exposed the unethical research. For many, though, it was already too late. 128 of the men had already died from syphilis. Dozens of their wives had become infected. At least 19 subjects' children had been born with the disease. All death and suffering that the government could have stopped - but they didn't.

In the years after the experiment was exposed, the government apologized and gave some money to the families of the victims... but these gestures don't absolve the government of the pain and suffering they intentionally caused. And that’s why it’s so important to study history like the Tuskegee Experiment - because we can’t bring the dead back to life; we can’t undo their suffering. But we can use that knowledge to try and prevent it from ever happening again.

The Birth of a Nation and The Rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan

"The Birth of a Nation: Film by Griffith [1915].” Encyclopedia Britannica.

“Second Ku Klux Klan and The Birth of a Nation.” Digital Public Library of America.

“Revival of the Ku Klux Klan.” Encyclopedia Britannica.

“The Birth of a Nation.” Souvenir playbill from early showings. (1915)

Katherine Lennard. “Old Purpose, "New Body: The Birth of a Nation And The Revival Of The Ku Klux Klan.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

Brian Gallagher. “Racist Ideology and Black Abnormality in the Birth of a Nation.” Phylon.

Conrad Pitcher. “D. W. Griffith's Controversial Film, ‘The Birth of a Nation’.” Oxford American Historians Magazine of History.

Alexis Clark. “How 'The Birth of a Nation' Revived the Ku Klux Klan.” History.

Douglas R. Egerton. “The Wars of Reconstruction.”

In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson hosted the very first movie showing in the White House. It was an epic film at over three hours long, pioneering new cinematic techniques which still affect movies today… and it helped revive the Ku Klux Klan throughout the United States. 

Although "The Birth of a Nation" may have been praised as a cinematic masterpiece, the history of this movie is fraught with well-deserved controversy. But to understand what made this movie so influential in the rebirth of the Klan, we have to go back in time another fifty years before its creation. In the years following the U.S. Civil War, the federal government established a number of policies collectively known as “Reconstruction,” the goal of which was to help rebuild a unified, economically successful nation with “justice for all.” 

But southerners felt attacked by Reconstruction as, among other things, its policies often put formerly enslaved men in positions of power over the White majority. On a smaller community scale, many poor White southerners were violently upset that enslaved people, the social group which had always given them at least some superiority just by being a lower class, were now supposed to be their equals. This rapid change in the social structures of the U.S. South led a growing number of bigoted, poorly-organized members of White communities to create a terrorist group intent on restoring the former social order: the Ku Klux Klan. 

The Klan terrorized Black families and restricted voting access, doing everything in their power to ensure that Black Americans did not rise to any level of social or economic  equality. But when Reconstruction ended in the 1870s, southern states were free to implement racist policies without any real oversight. So as state governments increasingly did the Klan’s work for them, the KKK dissolved. Over the next few decades, historians, including future President Woodrow Wilson, began to push a false narrative of the “Lost Cause;” that the Civil War was a “War of Northern Aggression” and that Reconstruction was an attempt to punish the South. This was accompanied by a heavy dose of bigoted Darwinism as many pseudoscientists claimed that there was an evolutionary gap between people of African and European ancestry. Then came "The Birth of a Nation". 

In this film, director D.W. Griffith followed a fictional White South Carolinian family as they navigated the Civil War and Reconstruction through a wildly distorted perspective of White suppression, Black savagery, and punitive Reconstruction. It probably goes without saying, but "The Birth of a Nation" is rampant with blackface and disgusting caricatures of Black Americans. A mixed-race character was even described in promotional material as a “half-breed.” Throughout the film, the KKK is shown as a well-organized knight in shining armor protecting White southerners, most specifically White women and their “virtue.” And it was this image of the Klan which captured the imagination of William J. Simmons, who recreated the KKK in the image of "The Birth of a Nation". Just weeks after Simmons held a rally on Stone Mountain to signify the rebirth of the Klan, he had factories in Georgia creating the now-iconic white hoods and robes which had been introduced in the film. 

By showing the film at the White House, President Wilson had endorsed it, and that endorsement was used to show "The Birth of a Nation" in theaters and at Klan recruitment meetings for years to come. Because of the influence of "The Birth of a Nation", the KKK was able to rise to its largest numbers in history by the mid-1920s, with a membership larger than even the years of Reconstruction or the Civil Rights Era of the 1950s and 60s. And they used their numbers to commit numerous terrorist acts against ethnic and religious minority communities across the United States. 

The history we teach people has an impact. And as a growing number of teachers and schools are being increasingly attacked for teaching the true history of ethnic oppression in the United States, it’s important to reflect. "The Birth of a Nation" shows just how dangerous it can be to manipulate history to meet a narrative that’s more comfortable for the majority. So please, support teachers and creators that value truth over comfort. Because those that don’t study the truth of history are doomed to repeat it. 

Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit, and the War on Drugs

Nancy Kovaleff Baker. “Abel Meeropol (a.k.a. Lewis Allan): Political Commentator and Social Conscience.” Journal of American Music.

Donald Clark. “Billie Holiday: Wishing On The Moon.”

“The Long Night of Lady Day.” (1984) Dir. John Jeremy.

Stuart Nicholson. “Billie Holiday.”

John H. Halpern and David Blistein. “America's War on Dr[u]gs Has Treated People Unequally Since Its Beginning.” Time Magazine.

Liz Fields. “The Story Behind Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’.” PBS.

“Strange Fruit: The Most Shocking Song Of All Time?” British Broadcasting Corporation.

“Chasing the Scream.” Johann Hari.

Billie Holiday’s song, “Strange Fruit,” was an anthem against racial violence at a time when the hate crimes against Black Americans were on the rise throughout the nation. But the popularity of the song brought unwanted attention to Billie, and some say that’s the reason the government killed her.

Strange Fruit was originally written not as a song by Billie Holiday, but as a poem by schoolteacher Abel Meeropol after seeing *this photo* of a brutal lynching of two men in 1930. Abel’s wife later composed music for the poem, and when Billie Holiday came across the song, she was deeply moved. As she later recalled in her autobiography, the song reminded Billie of her own father’s death; while he hadn’t been lynched, the WWI veteran had been denied treatment at a Texas hospital due to his race. By the time he finally received treatment in the segregated wing, it was too late. He died soon after being admitted. So Billie began performing Strange Fruit at the end of her nightclub performances. She would have the lights turned all the way down except for a single, dim spotlight on her face. The waiters stopped serving and silenced the crowd as Billie sang her last song, and the lyrics were devastating. Its brutal imagery of blood-soaked trees and lynched bodies rotting in the branches was a visceral protest against the racism that came with the end of Reconstruction and the resurgence of the Klan. But as the song became more popular, it brought unwanted attention from the U.S. government. 

The song’s author, Abe Meeropol, was questioned by congress about whether the Communist party had paid him to write the song, and according to one journalist, the song played a major role in an apparent government crusade against Billie. The director of the Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger, allegedly saw Billie as everything wrong with the U.S.: a strong, successful Black jazz musician who wasn’t shy about her experiences with drugs and alcohol. And if you couldn’t see where this was going, he was also a miserable racist. While he suggested that known drug user Judy Garland take a vacation so she wasn’t high on set, he handled Billie Holiday very differently, even going so far as to send undercover agents into Billie’s life to try and sell her heroin. 

Anslinger’s attempts to incriminate Holiday eventually succeeded when she was found guilty of possessing narcotics in 1947. And while she begged to be sent to rehab, she was instead sent to prison for a year. Billie spent the rest of her life in conflict with her addiction and Anslinger, who continued his crusade against her for the next 20 years. When Holiday finally became so ill that she sought treatment, she was given methadone to help with her opiate withdrawals. And Billie seemed to be getting better - she was gaining weight, she looked healthier… Then two officers entered Billie’s room and claimed to find heroin. She was handcuffed to her hospital bed, her record player, flowers, and magazines taken away, forbidden from seeing any visitors, and taken off her treatment for withdrawals. It took a judge’s order to remove the handcuffs and the officers that kept visitors away, but it was too late. According to one friend who was with Billie toward the end, it seemed as if the arrest had finally broken Billie’s spirit. Billie Holiday soon slipped into a coma and passed away at the age of 44. Thousands attended Billie’s funeral, and despite her death, Billie’s legacy lives on decades later with songs like Strange Fruit, which was declared Time Magazine’s “Song of the Century” in 1999.

What Happened to "40 Acres and a Mule"?

“Debt Slavery.” Encyclopedia Britannica.

Whitney Benns. “Prison Labor in America: How is it Legal?” The Atlantic. 

Barton Myers. “Sherman’s Field Order No. 15.” New Georgia Encyclopedia. 

Henry Louis Gates Jr. “The Truth Behind ‘40 Acres and a Mule’.” PBS.

Many students have been taught about U.S. President Abraham Lincoln's unfulfilled promise to give formerly enslaved Americans “40 acres and a mule.“ But what if I told you that the problem wasn’t that the government didn’t give Black Americans the promised land – but that we took it back?

Despite Lincoln’s association with “40 Acres and a Mule,” the idea of providing land to formerly enslaved Americans originally came from a group of Black community leaders who met with General Sherman and the United States War Secretary in Savannah, Georgia. Days after the meeting in January of 1865, General Sherman issued Special Field Order 15, which set aside 400,000 acres (Over 1500 square kilometers) of seized Confederate land for redistribution to recently emancipated Black Americans. Although the order didn’t explicitly mention providing a mule to each emancipated family, Sherman instructed his soldiers to lend their war mules to the new landowners as the Civil War came to a close. But with Lincoln’s assassination in April of 1865, the program came to a sudden and devastating end. As the former Vice President (and Southern sympathizer) Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency after Lincoln’s death, he ended Special Field Order 15 and its redistribution of land. But that wasn’t enough for Johnson. So he went one step further by demanding that the Black landowners return their land to the plantation owners, and by the fall of 1865, about 40,000 Black Americans had lost the land where they had hoped they could start again. Without their own land to work, many Black Americans in the South found themselves in a form of debt slavery called “sharecropping,” while others were arrested for minor and made-up crimes and rented out like livestock by the local sheriff - a practice still that exists in various forms in American prisons. Today, some people dismiss slavery as being “a long time ago,” but the decisions made by private Americans and their governments in the years after the war have continued to affect American society ever since. 

"You Have the Right to Remain Silent"

Don Samuel. “Confession - Right to Counsel: Favorable and Noteworthy Decisions in the Supreme Court and Federal Appellate Courts.” Casetext.

“The Right to an Attorney in a Criminal Case.” Justia.

“The Right to Silence for Criminal Suspects.” Justia.

Miranda v. Arizona. 384 U.S. 436 (1966)

Edwards v. Arizona. 451 U.S. 477 (1981)

Berghuis v. Thompkins. 560 U.S. 370 (2010)

Doyle v. Ohio. 426 U.S. 610 (1976)

Salinas v. Texas. 570 U.S. 178 (2013)

Wainwright v. Greenfield. 474 U.S. 284 (1986)

United States v. Okatan. 728 F.3d 111 (2nd Cir. 2013)

State v. Lee. Case 3987. (2020)

State of Utah v. Gardner. 20160028-CA. (2018)

State of Utah v. Medina. 20170328-CA. (2019)

People get arrested in movies and tv shows all the time, and it normally goes something like this: [You have the right to remain silent, repeated clips]. But being told you have the right to remain silent isn’t just for television - it’s an important part of your rights when you’re in the United States. 

In the US, any individual who is being or will be interrogated by the police must be informed of their Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights in what is normally called a “Miranda warning;” You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law, you have the right to an attorney, and if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided to you. This all started after the Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona, in which a suspect had been convicted based on a confession he gave when he didn’t know he had the right to legal counsel. But nearly 60 years after Miranda warnings became standard practice, it seems that many people still don’t understand the right to remain silent. For example, you almost always have the right to remain silent when interacting with an agent of the government – not just after you’ve been arrested. And that’s important to remember because any information you willingly share with police, even before you’ve been read your rights, can be used against you. And despite what you may have heard about it making you look guilty, requesting a lawyer before speaking with the police cannot be used against you in court. Now, this doesn’t mean that you should ignore questions or lawful commands from an officer, so if you decide that you don’t want to talk until you have a lawyer, you do need to make it clear to the police that you won’t be answering any questions without an attorney present. Lastly, once you’ve said you don’t want to answer questions without a lawyer, you need to actually stop talking. After you ask for a lawyer, police can’t question you anymore but they can and will use any information you give up voluntarily. Many people have gone to jail because they said they’d stop talking but they never actually shut up. So just remember: you have the right to remain silent but that means that, after requesting an attorney, you actually have to remain silent. If you have other questions about Supreme Court cases or your constitutional rights, drop them in the comments.

How Did Desegregation Hurt Black Students?

Katherine Schaeffer. “America’s Public School Teachers are Far Less Racially and Ethnically Diverse Than Their Students.” Pew Research Center. 

Mallory Lutz. “The Hidden Cost of Brown v. Board: African American Educators' Resistance to Desegregating Schools.” Online Journal of Rural Research & Policy. 

Elizabeth Heubeck. “Recruiting and Retaining Teachers of Color: Why It Matters, Ways to Do It.” Education Week. 

In 1954, the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board declared that “separate is inherently unequal“ and began the process of federal desegregation of public schools in the US. But although integration was intended to close racial gaps in public education, especially concerning funding, it created another gap in the forced exodus of Black educators. 

Throughout the United States, White parents wouldn’t allow their children to be taught by Black teachers. As a result, over 38,000 Black educators were fired during the process of integration. With Black teachers gone, Black students lost role models, community leaders, and educational advocates, which had up until that point played a major role in Black education in the United States. And although this process began nearly 70 years ago, this removal of Black teachers has seriously inhibited equitable representation of all non-White teachers. This is because after the exclusion of Black teachers, education became a White-dominated field. Generations of students of color never got to see themselves in education because no one who looked like them was there to model success in the field. As the effects of White domination in education have compounded over the decades, we have ended up with a teacher population that is entirely non-representative of the students they serve. In the 2017-2018 school year, only 21% of public school teachers were people of color. However, students of color now make up 53% of public schools. And this lack of representation means that students of color are likely losing out on a lot of the educational advocacy that their White peers receive. This is not to say that White teachers are evil, but it does force me to consider my own school experience. I was taught overwhelmingly by people who looked like me, and that made it easy to see myself as a teacher. I didn’t have to deal with inappropriate comments about the style of my hair, the shape of my eyes, or where my family was from. I didn’t have a Black teacher until my first year of college. But if I didn’t look like me, that means I would have gone 13 years in public education without representation. 13 years without someone who looked like me showing that I could be successful doing what I wanted to do. There are no easy solutions to this problem, but we are not going to have any solutions at all if we cannot first address how imperative it is to diversify education in the United States. 

Remebering the Birmingham Church Bombing

Jay Reeves. “Case Closed; Cherry Guilty.” Times Daily. (2002)

“Birmingham Church Bombing.” History.com.

“Baptist Street Church Bombing.” Federal Bureau of Investigations.

Ray Jenkins. “Birmingham Church Bombing Conviction Ended an Obsession of the Prosecutor.” The Day. (1977)

Sarah Collins Rudolph. “Birmingham Bombing Survivor Lived With Rage…” MSNBC. (Interview, 2021)

One Sunday morning in the summer of 1963, Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley made their way to 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. They never made it back home.

A little after 10 o’clock in the morning, Sunday School had ended and some of the children in the church were changing into their choir robes in the basement. As Addie Mae was tying Denise’s sash to get it just right, an explosion ripped through the church, tearing a jagged hole in the wall and leaving a crater in its wake. These four little children between 11 and 14 years old were immediately killed by the blast, which also injured more than a dozen others. But this explosion was no accident. Earlier that morning, four known members of the Ku Klux Klan had planted a dynamite bomb on a timer below the back steps of the church. In a single, terrifying moment, this little church in Birmingham, Alabama had gone from a pillar of the community to the site of a terrorist attack - due solely to the race of its congregation. There was one survivor in the basement, however: Sarah Collins, the younger sister of Addie Mae. In 2021, Sarah recalled the events of that terrible summer day. “I heard a loud noise - boom! It was so loud, all I could do was holler, ‘Jesus! Addie! Addie! Addie!’ But she didn’t answer.” Although she survived, Sarah was terribly injured in the explosion, which had propelled almost two dozen shards of glass into her face and eyes.

The bombing shook the nation to its core, and the attention that it brought also caused an outpouring of support from previously complacent Americans. When Dr. King spoke at the funeral held for three of the victims, he did so in front of a crowd of thousands. However, even the nationwide outcry wasn’t enough to lead to any immediate action by the police. It took two years before the FBI would name the suspects in the murders, and even then, they weren’t charged. In 1968, the FBI closed the case without justice for Denise, Cynthia, Carole, and Addie Mae. But in 1971, Alabama elected a new governor: William Baxley. Within a week of his inauguration, Baxley reopened the case, and throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s, investigations continued until three of the four murderers had been sentenced to life in prison. The fourth had died before charges could be brought. 

When we talk about events like the Birmingham Church Bombing, it’s important to remember that this isn’t ancient history. And the social atmosphere that gave Klansmen the idea that they could commit such a heinous act with impunity lives on in the US today. We see it in the government-sanctioned murders of Black Americans, in the frequent use of “law and order” as an excuse for inaction, and in the legislation meant to keep People of Color out of the voting booth. And as long as that legacy of hatred, however small, lives on, we won’t be a nation with “justice for all.”

The War on Drugs

German Lopez. “Was Nixon's War on Drugs a Racially Motivated Crusade? It's a Bit More Complicated.” Vox. 

“The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy.” Office of the Inspector General. 

“War on Drugs.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 

“Opposing Mandatory Minimums.” Equal Justice Under Law. 

“The War on Drugs.” The Global Commission on Drugs. 2011.

America’s war on drugs has been an absolute failure from the beginning. But what if I told you that the war on drugs was never supposed to be successful? You see, the federal government’s campaign against drug use was always about controlling the citizens of the United States. As early as the 19-teens, the US government was using drug laws to break up gangs and boost their careers at the cost of users’ freedom. But perhaps the best-known example comes from the presidency of Richard Nixon, who was facing both the anti-war hippies and the black power movement. Thousands of young men had died in Vietnam and Black Americans were, just like today, fighting for their rights. But instead of actually trying to address these issues, Nixon helped create the war on drugs. As one of his advisers later said in an interview, “We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities." The one positive in this initial anti-drug push was that Nixon’s policies were guided towards some version of rehabilitation and public health concerns. But since the 70s, we have completely abandoned rehabilitation in favor of criminalization and hypocrisy. While Nancy Reagan was telling kids across the US to ”just say no” to drugs, her husband’s administration was partnering with Colombian gangs, which resulted in a “crack explosion” in Black neighborhoods. Later “tough on crime” initiatives from the Clinton and Bush administrations created mandatory life sentences for repeat minor offenses, and there are still people rotting in jail because of these political decisions. It’s time for the US to make it right. 

Race, Wealth, and College Admission Tests

Scott Jashick. “SAT Scores Are Up, Especially for Asians.” Inside Higher Ed. (2018).

Scott Jashick. “SAT Scores Drop: Declines Take Averages Down to Lowest Point in Years. (2015). 

Valerie Strauss. Can Coaching Truly Boost SAT Scores?” The Washington Post.

Lauren Camera. “White Students Get More K-12 Funding Than Students of Color.” U.S. News and World Report.

Are the SATs and ACTs racist? College admissions tests like the ACT and SAT are used to determine which students deserve a college education in the United States, and, on the surface, they’re racist tools. White and Asian Americans consistently score higher than all other ethnic groups in the U.S., placing Black, Latine, and Native Americans at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to college admissions. But race isn’t the only determining factor with these tests. So what is this other factor? Family income. Poverty is one of the highest indicators of college admission test scores, due both to the accessibility of test prep and the quality of education a poorer family can attain. So what should we do? Just get rid of the SAT and ACT? Some colleges are already making these tests optional, and it isn’t impacting their students’ success. But getting rid of the tests doesn’t solve the root of the problem - that public education is under-serving poor communities and communities of color. While there’s more nuance than I can cover here, college admission tests themselves aren’t racist - they’re just exposing the privilege of the White and wealthy in the United States. 

Rembering a King

Martin Luther King Jr. “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”

So, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is just around the corner and, in my past experience, that means that a bunch of White people are going to be sharing a handful of quotes from Dr. King focused on peace, love and harmony. And while it may be well-intentioned, this version of remembrance does a huge disservice to the life and legacy of the Reverend Dr. King. It holds on to what the White ruling class has determined to be the most palatable version of Dr. King - not the Dr. King who advocated breaking unjust laws, not the Dr. King who said he was finished waiting for the right time to pursue justice, and not the Dr. King who said that Black America’s “great stumbling block [is] the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice…” As Dr. King’s daughter said two years ago, "The authentic, comprehensive King makes power uneasy & privilege unhinged." Dr. King was murdered for what he said and did. So if you’re going to share some of his wisdom, share the authentic, comprehensive Dr. King that still scares those in power - not the version that those in power want us to learn about.

The Need for Prison Reform

John Gramlich. “America’s Incarceration Rate Falls to Lowest Level Since 1995.” Pew Research Center.

Samuel R. Gross, et al. “Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States.” National Registry of Exonerations.

“Demographic Differences in Sentencing.” United States Sentencing Commission.

“How Much do Prisoners Make in Each State?” Kent State.

Wendy Sawyer. “Food for Thought: Prison Food is a Public Health Problem.” Prison Policy Initiative.

“Criminal Justice Fact Sheet.” NAACP.

M. Szmigiera. “Countries With the Most Prisoners 2021.” Statista.

The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, both in terms of population percentage and in sheer numbers. And this is made even worse by the fact that America’s prison system is disproportionately filled by minority populations. As of 2020, Black Americans were more than 5x times as likely to be imprisoned as White Americans. There are a lot of reasons for this, including community poverty, disproportionate policing and arrests of people of color, and inequality in sentencing. For example, on average, Black Americans are still receiving sentences that are nearly 20% longer than their White counterparts. But race is not the only major issue in our prisons. Incarcerated Americans are often subjected to near-slave labor, paid pennies for their work. They are fed maggot-infested food that doesn’t meet nutritional requirements, and they are subject to a variety of abuse from their incarcerators. Thankfully, the US prison population is finally declining for the first time in decades, but there’s still a lot of work to do. For more information about prison reform and what you can do to help this movement, check out the Center for Prison Reform or the sources above.

Racism in U.S. Healthcare

Kelly M. Hoffman et al. “Racial Bias in Pain Assessment.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (2016)

Christina Amutah et al. “Misrepresenting Race — The Role of Medical Schools in Propagating Physician Bias.” New England Journal of Medicine. (2021)

Monique Tello. “Racism and Discrimination in Health Care: Providers and Patients.” Harvard Health Blog.

By definition, racism seeps into the very structure of our society. Our laws, our courts, and our education. But one area where racism prevails is hardly ever discussed: healthcare. From pain tolerance to disease prevalence, American doctors do not provide the same level of care for their Black patients - and it’s a trend that begins when they’re still in school. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, doctors are still being taught inaccurate and skewed information about their future Black patients, including the idea that Black people don’t feel pain in the same way that White people do; an idea which was very popular during slavery because it justified the torture that was being done to Black people’s bodies. Many of the problematic medical ideas about Black patients are similarly based on racial history, not medical science. But they’re being taught to generation after generation of doctors because the system hasn’t purged this misinformation - even though we know that it causes Black Americans to “experience more illness, worse outcomes, and premature death.” 

Simplifying Critical Race Theory

What is Critical Race Theory? Critical Race Theory is a way of understanding how both past and present societies have been affected by race, and it’s based on another idea called Critical Theory, which analyzes how wealth and class affect people from different groups. For example, the United States was founded by wealthy landowners. As a result, they created a society which benefited wealthy landowners. 

Critical Race Theory just takes this idea and applies it to race. Because the United States was founded with slavery in mind, African Americans in the US were denied many rights from the beginning. After the end of slavery, former slaves still held no property and were often subjected to imprisonment or pay so low that they remained in debt to the plantations. 100 years later, segregated Black schools and their poor funding continued to disadvantage Black America. Critical Race Theory is just one way of looking at how these types of issues have prevented Americans in the racial minority from accumulating wealth and social power in the same way that White Americans have. 

CRT and Manufactured Outrage

Why are people so angry about Critical Race Theory? The reason people are upset about Critical Race Theory, other than a lack of understanding, is because it forces White Americans to consider that their financial or social success may not be just from their hard work, but from their race too. And this doesn’t mean that the hard work of White Americans isn’t valid, it just means that an African American or Mexican American would likely have had to work much harder to get to the same point.

the Horrors of Native American Boarding Schools

Erin Blakemore. “A Century of Trauma At U.S. Boarding Schools for Native American Children.” National Geographic.

Andrea Smith. “Soul Wound: The Legacy of Native American Schools.” Amnesty International.

Mary Annette Pember. “Death by Civilization.” The Atlantic.

The abuse of Native Americans by the U.S. government probably goes deeper than you think. Content warning for various types of abuse.

Native American boarding schools were established and sponsored by the U.S. government from the early 1800s through the 1900s with the intention of making Native Americans as “white” as possible. Native American children were forcibly taken from their homes and completely stripped of their culture. Their traditional clothes and names were taken away, their hair was cut, and they were forbidden from speaking their native language or practicing their religion. As if cultural genocide was not enough, students at these boarding schools were subject to sexual, physical, and mental abuse. The overcrowded dormitories led to the rapid spread of diseases, such as measles and tuberculosis, and these infections often led to death and an unmarked grave. It’s beyond time to make things right.