In August, America marked the 400th anniversary of the first slaves arriving from Africa in 1619. To most, perhaps, those days are long behind us. Others believe that racial discrimination, for the most, part ended with the 1960s civil rights movement.
However, officials at YWCA Greater Cleveland and First Year Cleveland, a nonprofit that aims to reduce Cuyahoga County’s relatively high rate of infant mortality, don’t see it that way. They say racism and the history of slavery continue to affect us today.
Dr. Arthur James, a retired obstetrician-gynecologist and First Year Cleveland consultant, says the long-term impacts of slavery and racism show in first-year mortality rates. Nationally, black babies die at twice the rate as white babies, and in Cuyahoga County, it’s four times the white rate.
“We had 246 years of slavery, then another 100 years of Jim Crow laws that discriminated against African Americans,” says Dr. James, formerly a professor at The Ohio State University and national maternal and infant health expert. “Those two periods represent 86 percent of the 400 years of African-American experience in this country.
“That’s 86 percent of unfairness that occurred in this country in terms of employment, education, poverty rate and home ownership,” Dr. James adds. “The cumulative impact of all that disparity contributes to why we have such substantial differences in birth outcome.”
On Nov. 8 and 9, First Year Cleveland and YWCA Greater Cleveland will host a conference, “400 Years of Inequity: A Call to Action,” at the Cleveland Public Auditorium. The conference is open to the public. The lineup of speakers will include national leaders with expertise on racial justice, equity and history.
At the end of the conference, both organizations plan to ask Cleveland and Cuyahoga County councils to declare that racism is a public health crisis. That’s what Milwaukee County in Wisconsin did in May. Officials there said black babies are not as healthy as white babies due to stress from various sources on black mothers.
“It will take a long time to address this issue,” Dr. James says. “It will be a challenge. The important thing is to acknowledge that racism kills people and compromises health.”
Margaret Mitchell, president and CEO of YWCA Greater Cleveland, says YWCA Greater Cleveland is the perfect partner for the conference. Some may not realize that eliminating racism, as well as empowering women, has been a part of YWCA’s mission for decades.
“You can see how slavery hundreds of years ago is still impacting our psyches and causing unconscious and conscious acts of racism today,” Mitchell says. “We see so many ways in which the community wrestles with this.”
Health care is one example. A 2016 study by the University of Virginia revealed racial bias in pain assessment and management. Medical students believed that black people experience less pain than whites.
“Where does that come from?” Mitchell says. “We have to look back hundreds of years when slaves were considered less than a person. And as a result, you feel less pain. It’s a deep, deep bias. Who could logically believe this?”
For more information on the summit,
visit ywcaofcleveland.org or
firstyearcleveland.org.