Dear White People: This is Your Job.

This post inspired by Spectra’s article in Huffington Post, “Dear White Allies: Stop Unfriending Other White People Over Ferguson.”

Dear White People:

This is my son.

He is eleven years old and in the fifth grade. He is the youngest of my three children. He is brilliant, funny, and caring. He loves Legos and Star Wars and will play video games all day long. Sometimes he goes outside to play with the neighborhood kids – riding bikes, playing basketball, and sometimes pretending to shoot each other with toy guns.

I bet Tamir Rice was a lot like that.

I wonder if he would have come over to play Xbox with my son. Would they have argued over which Avenger character to be, like his other friends do? I can envision Tamir and my son playing together in the yard, leaving their bikes in the driveway, chasing each other down the street while shooting Nerf bullets at each other. I can picture them practicing shooting at the hay target we had set up against the garage all last summer at my mom’s house.

My teenage daughter used that hay target against the garage to practice shooting (real) arrows.

None of the neighbors ever called the cops, because everyone already knows that white girls are not dangerous, right?

Once, my son and a 13 year old neighbor boy got into a fight. Regrettably, my son threw a rock at the other kid’s head. (My son has an impulse control problem for which he receives counseling.) The police were called, all parties were questioned, and the officers left, brushing it off as “boys will be boys.” This is how white boys are treated by the cops.

Tamir Rice was playing in the park with his pellet gun, when the police showed up and shot him. This is how black boys are treated by the cops.

It scares me that one of my son’s friends could be shot by police. I can’t imagine the fear experienced by the mothers of these same children. I don’t know what it would be like to have to teach my son how not to get killed by a policeman when he leaves the house. How do you raise a child to protect themselves from the protectors? I teach my son to ask a police officer for help if he gets lost in public. Other women have to teach their sons how to respond to a police stop and search.

I think it is too easy for us in the white community to ignore the problems of police brutality and racism. We have an option to look away which other people don’t have. It is easier to blame the victim, or talk about the incidence of crime in the African-American population, as I have heard many people do, than to stand up for change. We have been hearing about black people dying on the news for years…what’s one more? It is too easy to see it as not our problem, or to dehumanize the victims. We are ignoring the fact that people are dying. White Americans have to stop thinking of the deceased victims as dangerous criminals who got what they deserved – they are other women’s kids. Young men that used to be the classmates of our sons and daughters are dying. Little boys with dark skin who smiled bright smiles when you brought cupcakes to school on your kid’s birthday are dying. Little boys who stood next to yours at fifth grade graduation, in sharp suits or rumpled uniforms, are dying. The little boys for whom you clapped at each recital, band concert, or talent show, are dying.

Not only do we have a responsibility to do something, but we are in a unique position of having the power to do something. In the Nursing Leadership class for my BSN program, we studied change theory. In the Complex Adaptive Systems change theory, Olsen and Eoyang identify the most powerful components of change in a complex system to be the interactions and relationships of people at the bottom of the ladder, rather than at the top. We have to stop relying on the government to fix the problem, because they can’t. Nurses are trained to influence behavior change in health promotion and education activities, but those same theories can be used to influence change in belief systems. Lewin’s Theory states that in order for change to occur, driving forces for change must be greater than restraining forces (barriers) for change.

It is your job to have the uncomfortable conversations with your in-laws and co-workers. The people who are being oppressed are not there at Christmas dinner to argue on their own behalf when your crazy uncle starts talking about how “black people shoot each other all the time, but one white cop does it and everyone riots.” It is up to each individual person to change the attitudes of the people with whom they interact each day. White people who think that you share the same racist attitudes will reveal themselves to you in the comments that they make. We all know these people. It is your job not to let it slide anymore because you don’t want to be controversial. It is your job to call them out and let them know that is not okay. It is your job to be the driving force.

TANSTAAFL

“TANSTAAFL: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”

-Robert A. Heinlein

Today I watched this video clip from Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” in which Al Madrigal interviews Butler County, Ohio, Sheriff Richard Jones. In the video, Sheriff Jones makes very strong statements against undocumented immigrants, stating that they receive “free stuff”, such as a “computer, car payments, house payments, free medical care.”

Unfortunately, Sheriff Jones is not the only one perpetuating this idea. A Google search of “illegal immigrants free stuff” resulted in a host of articles, blog posts, and websites, with headlines like these:

• Come To America and Take Advantage of Our Free Stuff
• Undocumented Immigrants to Include More Free Stuff
• Illegal Immigrants Demand Free Obamacare

As an American who previously received welfare benefits many years ago, it is difficult for me to see how anyone without the proper papers could even apply for any sort of assistance. In my home state of Kentucky, applicants for SNAP (food stamps), Medicaid, Section 8 housing, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) must jump through flaming hula hoops of bureaucracy to be eligible for assistance. Verification documents include Social Security numbers and birthdates for all household members, copies of utility bills, lease agreements, paychecks stubs, signed affidavits from family and/or friends, etc. Of course, the process is repeated regularly to ensure continuing eligibility. To gain a greater understanding and satisfy my curiosity (and also to avoid writing a paper about Florence Nightingale’s Notes on Nursing), I set out on an internet adventure to find out what I could about public benefits for undocumented immigrants.

What I found on my virtual travels was The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA). Remember back in the nineties when Republicans swore a blood oath to the American people that they would stop lazy poor people from stealing tax money to buy unnecessary luxuries like food and shelter? The result was PRWORA. (Full Disclosure: The entire file is 251 pages. I didn’t read the whole thing. But if you’re interested, you can find it online here.) Title IV of PRWORA deals solely with regulations on benefits for “aliens” and specifically outlines what kind of benefits “aliens” are eligible and not eligible to receive. People who are not considered to be “qualified aliens,” that is, immigrants who came to the US through one of many pre-approved legal channels , are eligible to receive “public benefits” only in the following situations:

• Treatment of an emergency medical condition (such as someone who is in active labor or is having a heart attack – there is a whole separate law about hospitals being required to provide emergency care)
• Disaster relief (for instance, if there just happens to be a flood or tornado in the area where they are living)
• Immunizations (This is really beneficial for everyone.)
• Soup kitchens, crisis counseling, and short-term shelter that is necessary for the protection of life and safety, which deliver resources at the community level, and at the discretion of the Attorney General (so basically we are talking homeless shelters)

PRWORA also says that immigrants who are not “qualified aliens” are not eligible for “any retirement, welfare, health, disability, public or assisted housing, post-secondary education, food assistance, unemployment benefit, or any other similar benefit for which payments or assistance are provided to an individual, household, or family eligibility unit by an agency of the United States.”

If you scroll down a few more pages, the whole section repeats itself again in regards to state and local benefits. There are also some exceptions listed, such as a grandfather clause for people already receiving benefits, and exceptions for refugees. Another interesting item is that even immigrants who arrived here through the “proper” legal channels are not eligible for any of those benefits for AT LEAST five years.

As best as I can tell, the issue of “illegals” getting free government handouts was already settled almost twenty years ago. There has literally already been a law on the books about this very issue since 1996. However, for some reason, there is a section of the voting public that keeps repeating this same urban legend over and over. The main reason for the confusion seems to lie in the fact that children born in the US from undocumented immigrant parents are eligible for public assistance and public education. Non-citizen parents can apply for SNAP or housing in their children’s names, although most do not, for fear of being discovered by immigration officials. However, providing assistance and education to US children born from immigrant parents is not new, and has been going on for generations. I would imagine that many of the grandparents of the anti-immigration set were taught to speak English for the first time in American classrooms, and not from their Russian- or German-speaking immigrant parents.

I can also imagine that the same people complaining today about “Mexicans taking our jobs,” if transported back in time, would complain about the “filthy Irish” or the “Catholic Hordes.” There have always been people who will find a reason to complain if the status quo changes, and feel threatened by people who are different. The anti-immigration argument is not REALLY about jobs, or free stuff, or having to press 1 for English. These are excuses to cover up the fact that they are simply afraid of losing power to a fast-growing ethnic group in which they are not included.

If you would like to read more about immigration, I found several other great posts along the way, namely this one at Cro-Modern with lots of good sources, and another from the Southern Poverty Law Center that explains why if my European ancestors came to the US today the same way they came in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, they would now be considered “illegals,” too.

Action Alert! Maternal Health Accountability Act of 2014

Today I read this article from Detroit News stating that the maternal mortality rate for Detroit is much greater than the rest of the nation.  Maternal mortality in the US compared to other countries is already terrible, beating out countries such as Uruguay, Turkey, and Serbia, at 28 deaths per 100,000 live births.  According to the article, 26 mothers in Detroit died from childbirth between 2008-2011.  That equals a maternal mortality rate of 58.7 per 100,000.  To put this in better perspective, fewer women die in childbirth (proportionately) in EGYPT, KAZAKHSTAN, MALAYSIA, MEXICO, and ROMANIA, than in DETROIT.  In both SPAIN and and SWEDEN last year, the maternal mortality rate was only 4 deaths per 100,000 live births.  Detroit’s maternal mortality rate was FOURTEEN times WORSE than Spain or Sweden. (Statistics from WHO Global Health Observatory Data Repository).

It should not surprise any health professionals that the majority of the people dying in childbirth are female, poor, and black, which is the triple crown of poor outcomes and health disparities in America.  People who are poor, people who are female, and people who are African-American consistently get the short end of the stick when it comes to equality in health care.  Fortunately, Rep. John Conyers, Jr (D-MI) has decided to do something about it.  He has introduced the Maternal Health Accountability Act of 2014, which proposes the following:

“Amends title V (Maternal and Child Health Services) of the Social Security Act to direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to award grants to states for: (1) mandatory reporting to the state department of health by health care providers and other entities of pregnancy-related deaths; (2) establishment of a state maternal mortality review committee on pregnancy-related deaths occurring within such state; (3) implementation and use of the comprehensive case abstraction form by such committee to preserve the uniformity of the information collected; (4) annual public disclosure of committee findings; and (5) collect, analyze, and report to the Secretary cases of maternal morbidity.

Directs the Secretary, acting through the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to: (1) organize a national workshop to identify definitions for severe maternal morbidity and make recommendations for a research plan to identify and monitor such morbidity in the United States; and (2) develop uniform definitions of severe maternal morbidity, a research plan, and possible data collection protocols to assist states in identifying and monitoring such cases.

Amends the Public Health Service Act to direct the Secretary to carry out specified research and demonstration activities to eliminate disparities in maternal health outcomes.”

That’s the good news.  The bad news is that the next step in the legislative process depends on this guy:

His name is Joseph Pitts, and he is a Republican Congressman from Pennsylvania.  He is also the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Health, and it’s his job to decide whether or not to pass the Bill on to the House or Senate for a vote or a hearing.  Basically, without his approval, nothing else will happen.  A similar bill was introduced in 2011, and it died in subcommittee.  GovTrack.us estimates that as it stands, this bill has about a 0% chance of being enacted, so it is extremely important to contact our Congressional representatives in order to move it forward. 

Please take a few moments to sign the newly-created petition here to send a message to Congress and President Obama in support of this bill.  You can also contact Rep. Pitts directly via the contact form on his website, located here.

 

Poverty and Motherhood: Part 2, The Positive Feedback Loop of Shame

Click here to read Part 1 first.

This week I was watching the popular National Geographic television show “Cosmos: a Spacetime Odyssey,” hosted by America’s scientist sweetheart, Neil DeGrasse-Tyson. (If you have never seen the show, click here to check out his awesome explanation of weather variation vs climate change.) In this episode, he describes the concept of a positive feedback loop as it relates to climate change.  His explanation goes something like this: increased greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere, which causes the permafrost to thaw, which results in more greenhouse gases, which warms the atmosphere, which causes more permafrost to thaw, which results in more greenhouse gases, and on and on, ad infinitum. The positive feedback loop is a concept that is very common in many branches of science.  One of the most common examples we learn about as nurses has to do with the positive feedback loop of uterine contractions: oxytocin causes the uterus to contract, which causes the release of more oxytocin, which causes the uterus to contract, etc.

What occurred to me is that anti-choice, pregnancy-shaming, poverty punishers are also creating their own positive feedback loop: The Loop of Shame.  It goes something like this:

Last year, I read a Census report that cited the biggest contributing factors for whether or not a woman will become a “welfare mother” as 1) how many children she has, and 2) her age when she has her first child.  It is also a well-researched fact that women who are living in poverty are less likely to have access to family planning services, and more likely to become pregnant.  Knowing these two things, it then becomes clear that the best way to keep women and children out of poverty is to provide education and early access to reproductive choices, including abortion and contraception.  However, the people complaining about people on welfare and who want to get rid of social programs, are usually the same people who would cut funding for Planned Parenthood, refuse to allow condoms and sex education in schools, and block women from accessing the abortion clinic.

Dear Anti-Choice Pregnancy-Shaming Poverty Punishers: YOU CAN’T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS.

You can’t complain about the woman on welfare when it is YOUR policies that put her there.  You don’t get to complain about having to use taxpayer money to feed her children that YOU forced her to have when you shut down the only clinic in her area that provided birth control.  If you want to stop paying for other people’s children, STOP FORCING women to bear them.

I can hear you saying now, “Well, I didn’t FORCE her to open her legs.”

I’m glad you mentioned that, because it brings me to my next subject: Sex is a normal, biological function, in which all human beings, having reached the age of consent, should be encouraged to engage, in the manner in which they choose, with another enthusiastically consenting adult.  There is nothing wrong with having sex.  It is a normal part of the human experience.  Any sex that happens between two adults who are able to consent is acceptable, reasonable, and healthy.  It is unreasonable and unhealthy to expect an adult person with a functioning reproductive system to completely abstain from sex involuntarily, just as it is unreasonable to expect a person with a functioning digestive system to abstain from food involuntarily.  Sure, the doctor can put in a gastric tube, and I can give you tube feedings for the rest of your life, but why would we want to do something for no good reason, that would have such a huge impact on your quality of life? All people deserve to enjoy the benefits of a healthy sex life – EVEN POOR PEOPLE.  As a matter of fact, ESPECIALLY poor people, because it is probably one of the few things they can afford to enjoy.

As a nurse, I come in close contact with people’s body parts way more often than they would like.  I have had my (gloved) hands in other people’s vaginas and anuses regularly, and have inserted tubes into every open orifice. And one thing I have learned with all this unsolicited familiarity with people’s bodies is that genitals are just another body part.  People’s genitals are surprisingly similar, and there is nothing particularly mysterious, sinful, shameful, or amazing about your particular set.  It is just another part of you, like your ear, or your stomach, or your liver, or your little toe.  As such, your reproductive system is entitled to health care that allows it to function at its optimum level, just as we provide care to your digestive system to help it achieve its highest level of function.  There is no one protesting outside the bariatric surgeon’s office that obese people should have to suffer the consequences of their behavior.  It is unfair and unhealthy to pretend that someone’s sexual organs are somehow less important or less entitled to health care than other body parts.

If we are going to start refusing health care to people whose conditions were avoidable or caused by lifestyle choices, then we should start with people who have lung cancer from smoking tobacco, liver cancer from alcohol abuse, cataracts from not protecting their eyes from UV light, cellulitis from not properly controlling their blood sugar, and the list goes on.  Those who would like to be first on the list to not receive healthcare because their condition was caused by preventable lifestyle factors such as poor diet or lack of exercise may sign up in the comments section below.

The Logic of Stupid Poor People

A friend complained yesterday about a poor person buying expensive clothing, and I was reminded of this article.

tressiemc

We hates us some poor people. First, they insist on being poor when it is so easy to not be poor. They do things like buy expensive designer belts and $2500 luxury handbags.

To be fair, this isn’t about Eroll Louis. His is a belief held by many people, including lots of black people, poor people, formerly poor people, etc. It is, I suspect, an honest expression of incredulity. If you are poor, why do you spend money on useless status symbols like handbags and belts and clothes and shoes and televisions and cars?

One thing I’ve learned is that one person’s illogical belief is another person’s survival skill. And nothing is more logical than trying to survive.

My family is a classic black American migration family. We have rural Southern roots, moved north and almost all have returned. I grew up watching my great-grandmother, and later my…

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Ten Reasons Mother’s Day is Not Happy for Everyone

Mother’s Day is not a happy holiday for everyone.  On this day, here are some important things to remember about the status of motherhood in the US.

1. Some children are bullied for having two mothers, or having no mother.

2. Some children have lost their mothers, and some mothers have lost their children, due to domestic violence.

3. Some women have lost their children due to human trafficking.

4. Some women are denied the choice of whether or not to become mothers.

5. Some mothers have lost their children, and some children have lost their mothers, due to substance use disorder.

6. Some children have mothers that work two jobs to provide 100% of their support by themselves, and still can’t make ends meet.

7. Some children have mothers that are not biologically related, but are loved just the same.

8. Some mothers are separated from their children by US immigration policies.

9. Some children are separated from their mothers by a US justice system that is biased against women from specific socioeconomic classes or ethnic groups.

10. Women and children are most affected by the consequences of poverty.

 

Neil deGrasse Tyson: I have been black my whole life.

You should definitely take five minutes out of your day to watch this video clip about Neil deGrasse Tyson being racially profiled, and his answer to a ridiculous question about why there are fewer females in science occupations.  (Spoiler: Neil confesses to never having been female, but reassures the audience that he has been black his whole life.)

My favorite line: Before we start talking about genetic differences, you’ve got to come up with a system where there’s equal opportunity, then we can have that conversation.

Promoting Social Change from your Couch in Four Easy Steps

If you’re reading this, it means you have found our new blog!

This blog is another tool in the toolkit of promoting social justice in the 21st century media marketplace.  Social media is in fact, ESSENTIAL to social change.  The link posted by NSJ on Facebook last week regarding religious privilege has, to date, been shared 64 times and has reached over 10,000 people. Let’s not forget that Facebook and Twitter are credited largely with the success of the Arab Spring revolutions.

Sometimes it can be uncomfortable or difficult to speak out on social justice issues due to fear of backlash from family, friends, and co-workers.  However, on that subject, I would like to quote one of my favorite literary characters:

Image Source

Dorie Clark, in her article How to Use Social Media for Social Change, recommends the following four steps nearly everyone can take to promote social change via Facebook:

1.  “Like” the pages of organizations you care about.

2.  “Like” the Facebook pages of your legislators.

2.  “Share” items of interest on your wall.

3.  “Tag” both your interested friends, and your legislators.

I challenge each of you to begin taking these steps today.  You can find the names of your state legislators here.