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Fighting the Sickle Cell Anemia Stigma
By J.R. Perry III
Cure every cell—a
sickle cell support group
There’s quite a lot
of stigma toward the whole subject of sickle cell
anemia. People can feel guilty because they carry a gene
and they choose not to talk about it. So they need to
talk about it to start breaking down the barriers and
the stigma. People are a bit sensitive about screening
but you now can be enrolled on a program and start to
care for your baby with sickle cell anemia. Sickle cell
anemia can no longer be overlooked upon as a largely
black disorder. There has been the crossing of racial
boundaries with sickle cell.
Sickle cell anemia
has not been highlighted because it is a black disorder
so it has not received any spotlight with interracial
mixing. We are starting to see white babies born with
sickle cell anemia. Although times have changed people
still have a stigma about sickle cell anemia they think
it is a “curse of the devil.” Many physicians and
scientists both black and white have complained that
restrictions against blacks with the sickle cell trait
was a senseless stigma and unscientific suggestion that
their genes were somehow inferior in addition of its use
in barring blacks.
From the air force
academy the trait has also been cited by the Navy in
keeping blacks out of the submarine service and by the
Army although they will not allow the sickle cell trait
carriers to become aircrew members. This policy persists
in the Air Force itself despite today’s change in
admissions policy but it is under review. Blacks have
also been charged more money for insurance policies when
it was learned that they had the trait. Sickle cell
trait screening has not been limited to the military or
to the insurance companies in the chemical industry
theories have been expounded for years that sickle cell
trait carriers were at special risk in the chemical work
place.
The Dupont Company
said in February 1980 that it routinely gave
pre-employment blood test to all blacks to determine who
might be a sickle cell trait carrier. Today the law
would be condemned as racial profiling. The stigma was
made worse by a misunderstanding of the inheritance of
the condition contrary to report of premature deaths
carriers of the sickle cell gene were in almost all
cases, healthy genetic screening and public immunization
programs have also raised suspicions among blacks and
sickle cell anemia.
Screening programs
of the 1970’s created misinformation confusion and
feared inadequate planning and preparation on the part
of the medical profession and public health officials
and a disease and having it resulted in unnecessary
stigma and discrimination as a result. Of this confusion
and misinformation a great suspicion arose in the
African American community that the sickle cell policy
was another instrument of genocide. * * * *
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J.R. Perry III
was born in Chicago, Illinois. As a child, his parents
moved to Los Angeles, California. At the age of 3 years
old J.R. became interested in music. J.R. was the
innovator of many musical groups throughout the 1970s
and 1980s. He also excelled as an instrumentalist. He
plays the keyboards, trombone, bass guitar—as well as
performs the task of drum programmer. J.R. has
developed many types of musical productions exhibiting
his talent to sing the diverse musical genre spectrum
from R&B, Hip-Hop, Pop, Gospel, Funk, and Jazz.
In addition to
singing, and television, J.R. started a record
production company adding entrepreneur to his resume. With a love for
music, J.R. started his own record label, Pro-Per
Records. He has released a hit single entitled
"Valentine Lover" which was played on various radio
stations in the United States, and widely accepted in
Europe.
Always looking for
new challenges—1990 seemed to be the year for
television. J.R. was offered the opportunity to produce
a cable access show. J.R.’s current
projects include songwriting, musical arrangement, and
television development. Also J.R. is performing
voice-overs for radio and television, he has written and
produced plays and sitcoms ready for the stage or
television.
jrperry3@aol.com
jrperry3@yahoo.com
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Anarcha's
Story
By
Alexandria C. Lynch, MS III
Quickly, he forces her to spread her legs
so that he can exam her damaged
vagina.
She is unable to say anything as he pokes and prods in
her most
private
areas. She lies there in that backyard hospital and
waits while
he completes his initial examination.
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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The White Masters
of the World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest / Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
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____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The
Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding
of Haiti
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Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
posted 29 October 2006
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