The Worst and the Most Expensive Health Care

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
Barnes & Noble.com Amazon.com
________________________________________________________________________


The number of Americans under age 65 without health insurance coverage rose to 45.7 million in 2008. Although 2009 data is not yet available, there is every reason to assume that the number of Americans without health insurance continued to grow in 2009. And that it will continue to grow in 2010, and in 2011, and so on. It spite of this dreadful trend, it seems that some are determined to do nothing. What's more, they are determined to stop anyone who tries to address the problem.

Among rich nations, the United States, without question, has the worst health care system. We are the only rich nation that this problem of the uninsured. In Australia, everyone has health care. In Japan, everyone has health care. In Switzerland, everyone has health care. In the United States, almost 50 million do without.

Not only do we have a large population that lacks good access to health care, we pay more for it. Other rich countries pay less per capita in health care costs than we do. The Australians and the Swiss pay about half what we pay per capita. The Japanese pay even less. Again, these countries cover their entire population. We don't.

If we do not find a way to reduce the cost of health care and slow its growth, health care will bankrupt the country. By the end of the century, rising Medicare and Medicaid costs are projected to cripple the federal government. A step in the right direction would be to make our health care system more like Australia’s or Switzerland’s or Japan’s which could cut current costs in half.

The final cherry-on-top of our health care dysfunction is that we have some of the worst health outcomes among rich countries. We have the highest infant mortality rate, the highest obesity rate, and, in life expectancy, we are near the bottom. Americans should be screaming for health care reform, not against it.

If reason played a role in American politics, we would have spent part of last year being educated about how other countries manage to provide health care for all, pay less than we do, and deliver high quality health care. (See PBS' Frontline: Sick around the World for what this education effort would look like.) The fact of the matter is that different countries do different things to provide universal health care. We could have reviewed a menu of options and voted for what we liked. That would have been the reasonable thing to do.

Reason, however, does not seem to work in American politics. Now, it seems that the only way the American health care system will ever be reformed is when the millions of uninsured mobilize and organize and demand it from our politicians. Until then, petty politics will ensure that we continue to have the worst and the most expensive health care.


Share this article with a friend. Use the email icon below.

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2010 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

On Crime and Gentrification

A New Lecture: “Anti-Black Discrimination in the Age of Obama” by Dr. Algernon Austin

The simplistic idea that impoverished African Americans have only themselves to blame for their poverty, due to their poor cultural values—a notion advanced by many, including black public figures such as Bill Cosby—is believable only if a blind eye is turned to those inconvenient things social scientists like to call “facts.” Algernon Austin soundly refutes the “culture of poverty” argument by paying careful attention to marco-economic data about long-term poverty trends and sociological case studies about persistent discrimination. In other words, unlike the glib punditry, Austin actually looks at the “facts.”
--Dr. Andrew Hartman, professor and audience member, Illinois State University

Contact Dr. Austin to arrange a speaking engagement.
________________________________________________________________________


It is easy to get the impression that America—and black communities in particular—are more violent than ever. We are regularly treated to gruesome crime stories on television news programs, and they often feature black perpetrators. When we are not watching the news, Law and Order, CSI, NCIS and other crime dramas fill our minds with murder and mayhem. When we go to the movies or play video games, the smorgasbord of crime and violence continues.

But contrary to popular perception, American crimes rates—including crime rates in black communities—are at historically low levels. What we see on television and movie screens is a very, very distorted picture of reality. Lori Dorfman of the Berkeley Media Studies Group finds [PDF] that the “news media report crime, especially violent crime, out of proportion to its actual occurrence.” Further, she adds, “the proportion of crime committed by people of color (usually African Americans) is over-reported.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has recently reported that its preliminary estimate for violent crime in 2009 was down 4.4 percent from 2008. The FBI data shows that violent crime rate has declined fairly steadily since 1991. Crime stories sell, so more and more companies—including news networks—are selling crime stories. But the increase in crime stories is not matched by a real increase in crime.

The FBI data is based on reports from participating law enforcement agencies. Not every crime is reported to the police however. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is a better source for overall crime trends. This survey too shows a strong downward trend.


Examining NCVS violent crime data from 1973 to 2007, one sees that the peak year for violent crime among blacks was 1981—nearly three decades ago. The black violent crime victimization rate fluctuated from then until 1993. Since 1993, the violent crime rate in black communities has declined by 70 percent! White communities experienced a similar decline—68 percent.

Although on average white communities continue to be safer than black communities, many black communities today are safer than white communities were in the 1970s and 1980s. The violent crime victimization rate for blacks in 2007 was 10.3 per 1,000 persons. In the 1970s, the victimization rate for whites averaged 19.5 per 1,000 persons—nearly twice the 2007 black rate.

I believe that one consequence of the fact many black communities are much safer today than in the past is gentrification. The New York Times recently reported that blacks are no longer the majority in Harlem. Gentrification of black neighborhoods has occurred across the country. I’ve seen it in Brooklyn, in Chicago, in D.C. and have heard of it occurring in many other cities.

Rents and homes in these black neighborhoods have always been less expensive than in similar white neighborhoods. What has changed was that over the 1990s and into the 2000s these neighborhoods have become much safer, as safe as or safer than many white neighborhoods were in the 1970s and 1980s. Relatively safe neighborhoods and lower rents = gentrification.

Of course, the national crime trends can differ significantly from local trends. Further, no violence is trivial, and black communities can and should still be much safer than they are today. With these caveats in mind, we should be able to take a moment and appreciate the positive development of a record low violent crime rate in black America.

Harry Reid Has No Reason to Apologize

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
Barnes & Noble.com Amazon.com
________________________________________________________________________


Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-NV) simply told the truth, in my view. I don’t see what he has to apologize for.

According to the Washington Post, the book Game Change states that when assessing the strengths of then candidate Barack Obama in 2008, Reid said that he “believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama -- a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one’. ” There is nothing offensive or even controversial here.

It seems that some people are upset because they have deluded themselves into thinking that America is a post-racial society. Reid’s remarks show an awareness that blackness poses challenges for success with the broad American electorate.

Recent research reported on in Newsweek’s The Gaggle blog, supports Harry Reid. Eugene Caruso of the University of Chicago told Newsweek:

“There’s a long history in Western society of associating lightness with good and darkness with bad. Throughout history, throughout literature, et cetera. And we know now that these associations sometimes apply to the color of a person’s skin, and in addition to associating goodness with white, there’s some recent research in implicit attitudes suggesting that at an unconscious level people have a strong tendency to associate America with white.”

Caruso did research which found that research “participants who’d seen a darkened photo [of a candidate] just a few minutes earlier reported that they were less likely to vote for the candidate than those who’d seen the lightened photo.” Thus, based on Caruso’s research, Reid is correct to think that voters would be more favorably disposed to a light-skinned black candidate than a dark-skinned one.

The term “Negro” is old-fashioned, but since Reid is, well, not young, I don’t find anything offensive about his use of it. I’m not sure that the use of idioms and accents associated with blacks should be called a “dialect,” but Reid’s use of word is appropriate according to Dictionary.com. So, I cannot find any fault here either.

I am not aware of any research on people’s attitudes or voting behavior and “Negro dialects.” (This does not mean that there is none, just that I’m not currently aware of any.) But given the existence of anti-black attitudes in American society, it is not much of a stretch to assume that speech characteristics common to blacks would also be subject to negative stigma. This is not a radical idea if one knows that we do not live in a colorblind society. I would bet that Reid is correct on his “Negro dialect” opinion also.

All of this amounts to acknowledgment that black candidates for elected office can have challenges that white candidates do not. The whiter they are in appearance the better. But, of course, most blacks do not look white. George W. Bush and other white candidates might be able to deviate wildly from the Standard American dialect, but black candidates who wish to be elected should stick to Standard American as much as possible, especially when they are appearing before nonblack audiences.

Representative James E. Clyburn (D-SC) said it well when he told the New York Times: “I am one of those who wish to one day live in a color-blind nation. But the fact is that none of us do today.”


Share this article with a friend. Use the email icon below.

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2010 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved.