Racism in Health Care Protests? Oh My!
by Monroe Gilmour
Much has been made of former President Jimmy Carter’s analysis of a racist basis for the tone and level of anger recently expressed by those red-faced people disrupting health care reform town hall meetings around the country. The tea-baggers, birthers, right-wing talk show hosts, and Glenn Beck devotees have been shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you, that anyone could think that their legitimate policy protests were somehow connected to their feelings about seeing a black man in the White House.
Maybe a bit of self-reflection would help them begin to get at their own core predispositions and values. A Personal Racial Empathy Assessment Questionnaire may be just what the doctor ordered (assuming they have insurance). With it, they could take stock of their — heaven forbid! — racist leanings (subconscious or not-so-subconscious) and determine whether or not they have empathy for the racial struggle that continues in this nation. Here goes:
Personal Racial Empathy Assessment Questionnaire
Designed for those opposed to President Obama’s health care reform efforts
1. Did you vote for Barack Obama for President?
2. Did you vote for any Democratic presidential candidate since 1980?
3. Have you ever attended a Dr. Martin Luther King Prayer Breakfast or other King national holiday event?
4. Do you belong to the NAACP or other organization that works specifically for racial equality and justice?
5. Do you support the NAACP’s efforts to remove the Confederate flag
from the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol?
6. Do you think Rep. Joe Wilson was wrong to yell out, “You lie!”
during President Obama’s health care speech to the joint session of
Congress?
7. Do you support re-certification of the Voting Rights Act of 1964?
8. Was Sen. Trent Lott wrong to say that it would have benefited the
nation if Dixiecrat Sen. Strom Thurmond had been elected President in
1948?
9. Do you consider Sen. Jesse Helms’s 30-year tenure in the U.S. Senate to have been harmful to the nation?
10. Do you think that society was harmed by Jim Crow segregation?
Evaluating the Questionnaire:
If you oppose President Obama’s universal health care coverage and
insurance reform ideas, and you marked more than one “no” answer, your
empathy for racial struggle is weak to non-existent. There is a good
likelihood that this lack of empathy affects your approach to health
care reform and to any of President Obama’s initiatives (though you
probably took advantage of the “Cash for Clunkers” program).
In fact, you should examine what that one “yes” answer is and analyze
how it can even logically fit in with the rest of what you answered in
the questionnaire. In that case, maybe there’s something to build on!
Jimmy Carter was probably realizing what grassroots folks have
understood for months: Those opposing the administration’s initiatives
often are carrying substantial racial baggage, which makes it seemingly
impossible for them to act in their own self-interest — on health care
reform and other issues. Which brings us to one more question, which
focuses not on latent or blatant racial attitudes, but on how honest
negative opinions about “the public option” really are:
11. Are you currently on Medicare? (Or, if too young, do you plan to sign up for coverage when you become eligible?
If you answered “yes,” you clearly support — Holy Hypocrisy, Batman! —
a “public option” for health insurance. So it might be more consistent
with your anti-health-care-reform beliefs to drop your participation in
Medicare immediately, or at least commit to never signing up in the
future.
Monroe Gilmour is Coordinator of Western North Carolina Citizens for an End to Institutional Bigotry (WNCCEIB), PO Box 18640, Asheville, NC 28814. For more information visit
www.main.nce.us/wncceib, or email [email protected], or
phone (828) 669-6677.
