BirminghamWatch

Textbook ‘Know Alabama’ Justified Slavery, Praised Confederacy to Schoolchildren

The year was 1961. As the Freedom Riders crossed the South in their fight for civil rights, schoolchildren in Alabama were reading about the bright side of slavery and the contributions of the Ku Klux Klan. They were taught these lessons from “Know Alabama,” the standard fourth-grade history textbook in the state’s public schools. The book informed baby boomers and Generation Xers from the mid-1950s through the 1970s. Some of those students became the teachers who taught subsequent generations. Both white and Black children were instructed from “Know Alabama” that plantation life was a joyous time and slaves were generally contented. They read that Confederates were brave heroes, and Reconstruction was a terrible time when carpetbaggers, scalawags and illiterate Blacks corrupted the state. Today, with factions across Alabama caught up in a clash over the meaning of Confederate monuments and symbols, many are debating the true history of the South. Is it the version that Black Lives Matter protesters shout in the public square or the story taught in Southern schools during and after the fight over segregation? Read more.

by Scott Morris

Infrastructure Decisions, Property Valuation, Investment and Hiring Practices Build a Gap Between Black and White Household Wealth

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — The Declaration of Independence The founding fathers artfully crafted the phrasing that among the unalienable rights due all men is the pursuit of happiness. Part of that pursuit comes in one’s ability to get a job, develop a career, build wealth through an honest wage and establish a home. Many Black Americans have found that pursuit stymied by forces often beyond their control. According to an article published by The Hamilton Project of Brookings Institute, the net worth of a typical white family was $171,000 in 2016, nearly 10 times the $17,150 net worth of a Black family. The report said that gaps in wealth between Black and white households reveal the effects of accumulated inequality and discrimination, as well as differences in power and opportunity that can be traced back to this nation’s inception. Read more.

by Solomon Crenshaw Jr.

An Unequal Inheritance: On the Whole, Black Families Start With Less and Stay Behind, Leaving Less For Succeeding Generations

Children’s inheritance from their parents includes so much more than just a monetary bequest in a will. It can also encompass the gift of a college education, support starting a business or buying a home, financial know-how or a family business. That inheritance starts at birth. Black families, which on average accumulate less wealth in the U.S. than white families, often have less to pass down to the next generation. The Institute for Policy Studies reported in 2019 that the median Black family in America owns $3,600, about 2% of the $147,000 owned by the median white family. After adjusting for inflation, “the median Black family saw their wealth drop by more than half” from 1983 to 2016, while the median white family’s wealth accumulation increased by a third, according to the study. “When you think about how wealth is built over time, typically the way wealth has been built is through property ownership,” REV Birmingham Director of Recruitment and Business Growth Taylor Clark Jacobson said. “That is a ladder to privilege and access.” Read more.

by Sydney Cromwell

Health Care Disparities Plague Blacks

As part of The Legacy of Race series, BirminghamWatch looked into how race affects health and health care. What we found turned into a series of stories on its own. Historically Black neighborhoods have some of the lowest life expectancies and highest rates of disabilities and infant mortality in Jefferson County, in line with national trends. Poorer health is a result of several factors. Rural and poorer areas across the state lack easy access to healthy foods and to adequate health care facilities. People who live there may lack the money, insurance or transportation to seek health care when illnesses are manageable. When they do get to the doctor, most of those doctors are white and from completely different cultural backgrounds, making it hard to build trust. When added to other factors such as poorer areas also having more environmental pollution, fewer sidewalks and fewer parks to encourage exercise, the result is more health problems and lower life expectancy rates. Revisit the BirminghamWatch stories that explored these areas: ZIP Code, Race Predict Lifelong Health Inequities Access to Treatment, Insurance Isn’t Colorblind Black Doctors Have Been Rare, but a Local Physician’s Experience May Point the Way Toward Building Numbers Being the Target of Racism Can Make You Physically Sick, Research Shows

by BirminghamWatch

Praise Pours in for John Lewis and His ‘Good Trouble’

Segregated lunch counters. Segregated buses and bus terminals. Obstacles to voting. Many people risked and gave their lives to topple these barriers, and one name that will always be prominent in those ranks will be an Alabama sharecropper’s son named John Lewis. Lewis, a longtime member of Congress representing a district in metro Atlanta since 1987, died Friday of pancreatic cancer, and words of praise from at home and abroad have been flowing ever since. “John often encouraged getting into a little ‘good trouble for a righteous cause’ and he pursued the cause of racial justice with love, and as a uniter, not a divider,” U.S. Sen. Doug Jones said in a statement released by his office. “He taught me that heroes walk among us, and that true heroes are those that bring us together. We lost a true American hero today.” Lewis’ 80 years of life began up in rural Pike County, in a house with no plumbing or electricity, where he was the third of 10 children in the family of Eddie and Willie Mae Lewis. As a boy, he preached to chickens. As a teenager, he heard remarks from Martin Luther King Jr., followed the Montgomery bus boycott and later met both King and Rosa Parks. Read more.

by Tom Gordon

Health Care Disparities: Being the Target of Racism Can Make You Physically Sick, Research Shows

The color of a child’s skin can affect their health, education and sense of worth from the time they are born, or even before that. The American Academy of Pediatrics has found that racial discrimination, direct and indirect, drives health differences of Black children and adolescents. Dr. Tamera Coyne-Beasley, a professor of pediatrics and internal medicine and the division director of UAB Adolescent Medicine, said “adverse childhood experiences” such as racial discrimination or violence in their community stay with people and affect their well-being across their lifespan “When we have looked at these experiences, we understand that they are stressors and risks for adult health problems such as mental health issues like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorders, but also physical health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disorders, cancer, emphysema, diabetes and fractures,” said Coyne-Beasley. She said that experiencing racism or racial injustices not only affects a person’s confidence, it also affects how they form relationships and influences how young people develop identities for behaving with others in their worlds. Read more.

by Michelle Love

Health Care Disparities: Black Doctors Have Been Rare, but a Local Physician’s Experience May Point the Way Toward Building Numbers

Trust — or a lack of it — can become a barrier when it comes to health care. Black patients sometimes get less effective treatment than similar white patients, and sometimes that’s because they don’t trust doctors of a different race as much as they do doctors who look like them. And yet, there are relatively few Black doctors in the U.S. The Association of American Medical Colleges reported that, in 2018, there were about 807,400 active physicians in the country and only 45,534 of them were black. Experts see it as a problem. “Black Americans make up more than 13% of the U.S. population, yet only 5% of physicians are black,” wrote National Public Radio’s Yuki Noguchi in a story that appeared July 1. “That lack of representation isn't just a problem within medicine … but it perpetuates a sense that medical and mental health care is not of — or for — the Black community.” Read more.

by Nick Patterson

Some Fans May Have to Throw Out Their Favorite Sports Team T-Shirt

Two popular fan choices to replace “Redskins” as the nickname of Washington’s NFL franchise are “Pigskins” and “Red Tails” (in honor of the World War II fighter pilots from Tuskegee, Alabama). I suggest owner Daniel Snyder make everyone happy with a compromise choice of “Pig Tails.” (Please push your automated laugh track button now.) Sports team nicknames can be funny, but the Washington franchise’s adherence to its 87-year-old name in the face of multiple protests in recent decades is not funny. Native American activists brand the name as racist. The franchise cites tradition and says the name pays tribute to the heritage of American Indians. But on Monday, Snyder, who once vowed he would never change the name, agreed to do so. It’s part of a national awakening about memorials and symbols that demean traditionally oppressed groups, but mostly it’s because some big-time corporations threatened to withdraw sponsorship of the Redskins. Read more.

by Tom Arenberg

Health Care Disparities: Access to Treatment, Insurance Isn’t Colorblind

Birmingham’s skyline includes prominent medical facilities, such as UAB, Children’s of Alabama and St. Vincent’s Hospital. Within sight of those buildings, however, are neighborhoods with the worst life expectancy and disability rates in Jefferson County. Socioeconomic factors affect health, notably poverty, lower education and poor access to amenities such as grocery stores and sidewalks. But Black Americans also face barriers within the medical field itself, which lead to worse care and worse health outcomes. “Even when you are physically close to a health care facility (that) doesn’t mean that you actually have access to that facility,” said Dr. Monica Baskin, a professor of preventative medicine at UAB and the Department of Medicine’s vice chair for culture and diversity. That access may be barred by lack of medical resources, no or limited insurance coverage or lack of what Baskin calls “culturally competent” care. Read more. The Legacy of Race is an ongoing series about how the history of racism and segregation in Alabama affect the society we live in today. Read part 1 of the health care installment: ZIP Code, Race Predict Lifelong Health Inequities Read all of The Legacy of Race stories.

by Sydney Cromwell and Michelle Love

Advocates Call for Environmental and Racial Justice at North Birmingham Superfund Site

WBHM The "Right to Breathe Caravan" toured several north Birmingham neighborhoods Saturday, calling for environmental and racial justice in communities that have faced decades of industrial pollution. Read more.

by Mary Scott Hodgin, WBHM