REPUBLICAN NEGATIVE VIEW
OF BLACKS ON DISPLAY
By Cash Michaels
An analysis
Last week, the North Carolina political press was all abuzz over a revealing incident where during a state House floor debate over public funding for private school vouchers, Republican Rep. Jeff McNeely of Iredell County - the House deputy majority whip - interrupted Democrat Rep. Abraham Penn Jones of Wake County to ask if he were not “a minority” and an athlete, would he have been able to attend prestigious Harvard University, and then Harvard Law School.
Rep. Jones, who is Black, in his 60’s, and an alum of Raleigh’s Enloe High School, is an accomplished attorney, veteran of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the NC Attorney General’s Office, a Wake County Commissioner, a former NC Administrative Law judge and a Wake superior court judge for 17 years before being elected to the state House, suddenly and unexpectedly had to defend his stellar record of attending Harvard.
Rep. McNeeley, who is white, later apologized, after embarrassing himself, and the rest of his Republican colleagues.
“I worked hard to get where I am today,” Rep. Jones, who finished in the top 40% of his class at Harvard, said in a press release. “It is disappointing that another member of our chamber would imply that I have been successful simply because of the color of my skin, or because I am an athlete. I appreciate the member apologizing for these remarks.”
Rep. Jones wasn’t the only Black Democrat to feel the sting of white Republican scrutiny and bias last week.
During floor debate regarding the Republican 12-week abortion ban veto override, Cabarrus Democrat Rep. Diamond Stanton-Williams , a Black female, registered nurse and medical manager, was on the House floor, solemnly revealing how years ago, she had an abortion despite having been reared in the Christian church.
But according to WRAL television, Rep. Keith Kidwell, a white Republican from Beaufort County, was not moved by Stanton-Williams’ heartfelt story. He was heard joking with nearby staffers in the rear of the House chamber that she must have attended “the church of Satan.”
Stanton-Williams later replied, “talking about deeply personal decisions regarding policies that will affect millions of women in our state should not open the door for untrue and hurtful remarks. I take my religion beliefs seriously, and it is unfortunate for someone to question my faith - especially another member of this chamber - when it doesn’t align with his.”
Readers may recall that Rep. Kidwell is the Republican lawmaker we reported tried to sneak a conservative anti-black social studies curriculum that criticize the civil rights movement into a local bill for Beaufort County Public Schools before being forced to withdraw it.
The editorials across the state about these two revealing Republican attitudes were merciless.
“[What Rep. McNeeley] ‘ said was perfectly emblematic of a GOP mindset that is dragging the Tar Heel state back to the 1950s,” blasted opinion writer Issac Bailey for McClatchy Newspapers.
“It was a moment of unintended candor that provided clear insight into what too many of those who occupy seats in the North Carolina General Assembly believe but rarely state so directly,” stated the Capital Broadcasting Company editorial.
“As they amass even more power and influence, Republicans are feeling emboldened enough to say the quiet parts out loud, wrote The News and Observer editorial. “…[T]oo many Republicans are emboldened to just say what they think, because that’s been modeled for them by other officials and cheered by voters. After all, in North Carolina, this is the party whose lieutenant governor says reprehensible things about women, the LGBTQ+ community and others…
That official, Black Republican Mark Robinson, the leading GOP candidate for governor, has no doubt gained more white conservative followers after it was recently revealed by CNN that he criticized the 1960s civil rights movement on a March 2018 podcast.
“Prior to his political career, Robinson frequently referred to the civil rights’ era as the “so-called civil rights movement” and criticized the Greensboro lunch counter protests as a “ridiculous premise” designed to pull “the rug out from underneath capitalism and free choice and the free market,” reported CNN.
Also last week, came word that one of two Black Democrats on the NC Supreme Court, Associate Justice Michael Morgan, had had enough, and had decided not to run for reelection in 2024.
Justice Morgan has grown frustrated with the direction of the state’s High Court by the Republican majority, which has taken the extraordinary and rare measure of reversing prior rulings against voter ID and redistricting.
“Apparently, in their view, the law is whatever they say it is,” Morgan opined in a blistering dissenting opinion.
“Instead of doing the legally correct thing, the majority opinion picks its preferred destination and reshapes the law to get there.”
None of these incidents are accidents, but rather the most recent examples of the disdain and hostility Republicans in North Carolina, and across the country, demonstrably have for African Americans who are not followers of their cult of political personality. Indeed, the GOP has declared war on being “woke,”or being aware of historic injustices to Blacks and other people of color.
Just a brief check of the headlines from across the country shows that for whatever the reason, Republicans just can’t seem to stay away from anti-Black sentiments.
The NAACP issued a travel advisory for African Americans to stay away from Florida due to gov. Ron DeSantis' apparent hostility towards them.
In Congress, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) made jaws drop when asked during a radio interview if white nationalists should be allowed to join the military.
“I call them Americans,” he replied.
Fiery Republican Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene blew up headlines when she told reporters that being called a white supremacist was the same as “a Black person being called the n-word.”
Ironically, on May 13th during his commencement address at HBCU Howard University, President Joe Biden made clear what America’s greatest terror threat is - white supremacy.
“I don’t have to tell you that progress towards justice often meets ferocious pushback from the oldest and most sinister of forces,” Biden told the Howard graduating class.. “That’s because hate never goes away.”
Historians are quick to note that up until the 1960s, the Republican Party was the political home of African Americans, having been formed to oppose slavery, while the Democratic Party was the domain of Southern “Dixiecrats” and white supremacists.
But that changed when Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy helped get civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. released from a Georgia jail. King did not endorse Sen. Kennedy for president, but he did spread word of Kennedy’s support.
What is striking about that historic incident is that despite black voters loyalty to the Republican Party then, neither Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower or Vice President Richard Nixon ever lifted a finger to help Dr. King, or the cause of civil rights. Black voters got the message, and made the switch.
By the late 1960’s, Republican Richard Nixon won the presidency being anti-civil rights, milking the white voter backlash to the movement, and in the 1980’s, Ronald Reagan won the presidency courting white supremacists in the Deep South. and George H.W. Bush used a black criminal named "Willie Horton" to scare White people enough to win the White House . By that time, Black voters embraced the clear message that it was Democrats, not their former party, that was on the side of civil rights.
That model has remained the same since the days of Pres. Kennedy. In light of the continued and inexplicable popularity of Donald Trump, the growing popularity of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and the hard right direction of the Republican Party as a whole, the question now is how much further can the GOP go being hostile to the interests of the African American community.
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REPORTS: BLACK LEASE
ON LIFE IN NORTH CAROLINA
GETTING SHORTER
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
The headline of the May 16th Washington Post story was startling.
Black communities endured wave of excess deaths in past 2 decades, studies find - The loss of life came at a staggering cost, medically and economically.
The powerful national story, written by reporter Akilah Johnson, documented how America’s African American communities “…experienced an excess 1.6 million deaths compared with the White population during the past two decades, a staggering loss that comes at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, according to two new studies that build on a generation of research into health disparities and inequity.”
The story goes on to quote researchers at Yale University who calculated the tremendous loss of Black life over the past twenty years in terms of lost achievement and hundreds of billions in economic potential.
“The reasons for the excess deaths and resulting economic toll are many, including mass incarceration, but the root is the same, according to the reports published Tuesday in the influential medical journal JAMA, the unequal nature of how American society is structured,” the May 16th WP report stated.
Here in North Carolina, the evidence is clear that African Americans are suffering from the same maladies that their counterparts in other parts of the country are suffering from, and are meeting the same results.
It’s not just sickness and disease like diabetes, cancer or heart problems that are responsible for a Black shorter life expectancy in North Carolina, but socioeconomic pressures like poor access to health care, poor treatment for mental illness, a lack of employment opportunities, and other factors.
Still, according to the NC Dept. of Health and Human Services, that lack of vital health care access and services only compounds the negative impact of socioeconomic pressures.
According to the 2020 North Carolina Resident Population Health Data by Race and Ethnicity, Black mortality rates per particular diseases are considerably higher than Whites in certain categories.
In 2020, the most recent year that figures are available, North Carolina’s total population was 10,600,823, of which 6, 711,126 (or 63.3%) were White non-Hispanic, and 2,344,295, or 22.1%, were Black non-Hispanic.
For the sake of this story, other North Carolina population groups like Hispanic/Latino, Native American or others are not included in the total comparisons.
During the period of 2016 to 2020, the total mortality rate in North Carolina from all causes was 793.7 per 100,000 people, of which Whites comprised 785.00, while Blacks were 919.8, for a disparity ratio of 1.2.
As you go down the list of various diseases that plague North Carolina and make racial grouping comparisons, it is hard not to see that African Americans are suffering disproportionate to their number.
Heart disease - total mortality rate 156.1 per 100,00-; Whites 153.7; Blacks 181.0 for a disparity ratio of 1.2.
Cancer - total mortality rate 154.8 per 100,000; Whites 153.7; Blacks 176.1 for a 1.1 disparity ratio.
(Prostate Cancer) - total mortality rate 19.5; Whites 16.6; Blacks 38.5, for a disparity ratio of 2.3.
(Breast Cancer) - total mortality rate 20.1; White 18.9; Black 26.3, for disparity ratio of 1.4.
Diabetes - total mortality rate is 24.5; White 20.3; Black 45.0, for a disparity ratio of 2.2
The next two categories of North Carolina mortality rates and disparities for the period of 2016 to 2020 are particularly interesting between Whites and Blacks.
Suicide - total mortality rate is 13.4 per 1,000. But the White mortality rate per 1,000 people is 17.1, while the Black rate is only 5.9, for a ratio of just 0.3. it is one of the few times that the White mortality rate exceeds the Black one.
However, when it comes to homicide, there is a dramatic change.
Homicide - 7.3 total mortality rate; White 3.2; Black 19.8, with a disparity ration of 6.1.
Per Social Determinants of Health, no matter what the category (high school graduation rte, unemployed, poverty rate, poverty rate children, households on food stamps, uninsured, and disability), Blacks are always at a higher rate of mortality than their White counterparts, or the state’s total.
The Washington Post story concluded that during the coronavirus pandemic, the gap between Black and white death rates began to shrink, and actually flip.
“And why was that happening?” asked Reed Tuckson, co-founder of the Black Coalition Against Covid in the WP story. There are two reasons, he said. “One, of course, was the destructive messaging that came from many White political leaders but also the impact of the mobilization of Black faith and community-based organizations and social and fraternal organizations.”’
Tuckson, a former Washington D.C. public health commissioner, continued that nationally, “the herculean efforts” of the Black community “to fight for our lives” despite having meager resources to fight with shows that it is past time for the federal government “to find a way to create sustainable, predicable funding at scale to support the Black community and its institutions.”
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