COVID-19 VACCINE IS HERE,
BUT WILL BLACKS TAKE IT?
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
The vaccine to fight the deadly coronavirus is here, but will Blacks line up to take it?
If history is any teacher, not immediately. Indeed, many will share the online views of Irene F. from Brooklyn on Facebook .
“No. I will wait it out, just like I did the Flu vaccine,” the retired office coordinator wrote. “I waited for years to see how it would affect others. I got my first flu vaccine in 2018.”
Given how African-Americans statistically account for almost one-third the COVID-19 cases here in North Carolina and across the country, one would naturally think that Blacks would be among the first in line to receive a lifesaving dose.
As of this week, there are almost 15 million cases in the United States, with almost 300,000 deaths. Hospitals across the nation are running out of ICU beds, and new statewide restrictions are being enforced to limit the spread.
But as history has shown, Blacks are all too familiar with being lied by government health agencies, and the legacy of that lying is not easily forgotten.
In a recent Dec, 6th NY Times column titled, “How Black People Learned Not to Trust,” opinion writer Charles M. Blow chronicled the many racist abuses the American medical profession has committed against Black populations.
From the mid-1800’s when a man in Alabama named James Marion Sims built a reputation by performing surgical experimental procedures on Black enslaved females without the use of anesthesia, to former slaves being allowed to die of infections after the Civil War because white doctors and governments isn’t want to treat them, to the forced sterilizations of mostly young Black females here in North Carolina and elsewhere under the banner of combating mental deficiencies, to the infamous 1932 Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphllis in the Negro Male” by the federal Public Health Service ( now known as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ).
The retelling of that hateful episode is often wrong in the Black community, however. Hundreds of Black men in Tuskegee, Alabama were never injected with syphllis, but rather, were observed for the effects of the sexually transmitted disease over 40 years, but made to believe that they were being treated for it.
According to the most recent Pew Research Center survey, 60% of all Americans say they will take the vaccine when available, but 21% said they do not intend to and are “pretty certain” more information will not change their minds.
Among African-Americans, 71% said they knew someone suffering from COVID-19 in the hospital.
“Black Americans continue to stand out as less inclined to get vaccinated than other racial and ethnic groups: 42% would do so, compared with 63% of Hispanic and 61% of White adults, The Pew report adds.
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FEDERAL APPEAL COURT
REVERSES VOTER ID RULING
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
After a slew of NC voter ID victories for the NCNAACP, the tide may be starting turn in the opposite direction.
A three-judge panel of the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ordered the reversal of a lower court decision on the 2018 voter ID law last week, saying in part, that a Black federal judge made “numerous errors” in not allowing voter ID for the 2020 elections.
That federal appellate panel consisted of two Trump judicial appointees, and one Obama appointee..
It was Dec. 31st, 2019 when US District Court Judge Loretta Biggs granted the NC NAACP and other local branches’ motion for a preliminary injunction in their case NAACP v Cooper, stopping the 2018 voter ID law for the Nov. 2020 elections via a preliminary injunction.
But in it’s reversal last week, the appellate three-judge panel ruled the Judge Biggs had made “fundamental legal errors,” and “…had incorrectly relied on past intentionally racially discriminatory actions of the [NC] legislature,” including that it had past the 2013 voter ID law which had been previously determined by the Fourth U.S. Court of Appeals as to have discriminated against Black NC voters with “surgical precision.”
In the new ruling, the panel said that the courts can’t use past history to determine if a legislature is passing racially biased legislation.
“A legislature’s past acts do not condemn the acts of a later legislature, which we must presume acts in good faith,” the Fourth Circuit panel ruled. Later in the ruling, the panel lauded the 2018 voter ID as being one of the best in the nation.
Irv. Joyner, the lead attorney representing the NCNAACP on the matter, said the statewide civil rights organization “…is reviewing this decision and we are considering all appellate options. We steadfastly believe that the Honorable Judge Biggs’s findings and determinations were correct at the preliminary injunction phase. Nonetheless, under the reasoning of the decision today, the NCNAACP Plaintiffs’ evidence will also prevail at trial the full merits and we look forward to the fight for justice ahead.”
Rev. Dr. T. Anthony Spearman, president of the NCNAACP, said, “Our fight continues no matter the makeup of any court or any one decision, good or bad, on the journey to free and fair political participation.
Indeed this ruling is only one setback presently, and does not mean that North Carolina’s current voter ID will be in force per the next election. The NCNAACP has other two other voter ID case pending in state court that also have preliminary injunctions. All three cases have yet to receive 2021 trial dates.
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STATE NEWS BRIEFS FOR 12-10-20
ORANGE COUNTY COMMISSIONERS APOLOGIZE FOR SLAVERY, BACK REPARATIONS
[CHAPEL HILL] By. 6-1 vote, the Orange County Board of Commissioners Monday approved a resolution supporting reparations for the county’s role in slavery, segregation, and systematic racism, thus joining the list of other North Carolina local governments that have also admitted to their roles in the historic denial of equal rights. The Orange County resolution calls for partnering with the African - American community in investing “as first steps in providing long over due reparations for centuries of suffering , loss, anguish injustice and trauma.”
WAKE COUNTY SCHOOL SYSTEM WILL STOP USING “RACIST” TERM
[CARY] The Wake County Public School System has indicated that as of next year, it will stop using the term “grandfathering,” because the term has racist origins dating back to when Black people were prevented from voting after the Civil War. WCPSS was made aware of the term’s origin after a parent complained about it’s true meaning.
ALAMANCE JUDGE BANS REPORTERS FROM COVERING BLM HEARING
[GRAHAM] A local newspaper publisher was handcuffed in court Tuesday after he objected to an Alamance County judge’s decision not to allow reporters in the courtroom to attend a hearing involving Black Lives Matter demonstrators. According to published reports, reporters from The News and Observer and other media, requested a hearing on the matter from Judge Fred Wilkins, but were refused. When Tom Boney Jr., publisher of the Alamance News tried to convince Judge Wilkins that he was wrong to bar the press, he was threatened with contempt of court, handcuffed and removed.
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