January 2020


www.hamptonroadsmessenger.com Your Opinion Matters


We were guinea pigs for the US: It isn’t just Tuskegee


Between 1929 and 1976, at least 7000 people were sterilized in North Carolina by judicial order. Thousands more were sterilized by order of local judges. The state set aside $10 million in 2014 to pay some of the oppressive state policy victims, but many don't qualify because they lack documentation. Those sterilized were treated as guinea pigs.


BY DR. JULIANNE MALVEAUX People


who don't know


Black history have probably heard more about the Tuskegee syphilis "experiment" in the last month than they have in their whole lives. The chattering class has used the debacle of allowing hundreds of Black men live with untreated syphilis to monitor its effects to explain the


the possibility of


J. Marion Sims, known as the "father of gynecology," perpetuated some of the more chilling experiments on Black women's bodies. He performed sterilizations, unnecessary C-sections, and more on Black women and worked on them until he could perfect the technique to use on white women. Sims performed many of the painful operations without anesthesia. In other cases, Black women were given so much mind-numbing morphine that they became addicted. Sims is credited with inventing the specula, a tool routinely used in most gynecological


exams. Actually, he resistance


that many Black Americans have to accepting the COVID vaccination, thus imperiling


"herd" immunity. It wasn’t just the men, enticed into the study with the promise of lifetime health care, who suffered. Dozens of wives were also infected because they didn't know their partners had syphilis. At least nineteen children


were born with syphilis


because they were untreated. There was no known treatment for syphilis when the study, which was supposed to last just six months, began in 1934. Penicillin was the widely accepted remedy in the late 1940s, but none of the men in the study were offered it. The study is referred to as the "Tuskegee" experiment, but it really needs to be called the United States Public Health Service experiment. Our government initiated and funded this abomination and used Tuskegee as its base for this putrid study.


This was not the first time, though, and it is not likely to be the last when Black bodies were experimented on for white comfort. During enslavement, "doctor" often purchased


enslaved


people to experiment on them. After Reconstruction, when Black folks died from being overworked, often their relatives were not told of their demise, but nearby medical schools used their bodies to teach medical students about anatomy.


to sterilize Black women (and others considered "marginal"


their


It was legal in thirty-two states without


permission. In Alabama, in 1973, the Reif sisters, aged 12 and 14, were involuntarily sterilized in a federally funded clinic. An Essence magazine writer broke the story with the help of


a


used a spoon, then improved on it, for the examinations. Sims had quite the career, serving for a time as President of the American Medical Association. There was a statue of him in New York's Central Park and tributes to him all over the country. Blessedly the Central Park statue was taken down in 2018, after several protests. Why was it there in the first place?


The


In her book, Medical Apartheid: Dark History of Medical


Experimentation on Black American from Colonial


Times To The


Present (Doubleday, 2006), Harriet Washington details the many ways Black bodies were guinea pigs for white experiments. That’s not all. The Institute of Medicine has documented that black folk with broken bones are less likely to get pain medication than whites. And the very recent COVID death of African American physician Dr. Susan Moore, who was denied pain medication and was described as "intimidating" by the medical staff, illustrates how the medical establishment treats too many Black people.


Having said all that, I’ll still be


standing in lines soon as my number is called for the COVID vaccination. I prefer the Pfizer vaccination from the research I've done, but I'll take the Moderna if available. Why? I'm over 60, diabetic, and thus at high risk for getting COVID. I want to travel again, get on a plane, and see my mama and my friends. I don't know about eating out – my culinary skills have improved. But I know that my limited exposure to the world has gotten on my last nerve.


We were their guinea pigs, and


whistleblower. The offending physician seemed to think the girls were mentally deficient and incapable of caring for the children they had not yet conceived. That was their decision to make, not his.


the medical establishment has been negligent toward Black people. By now, though, enough white people have had the vaccination that by some wicked irony, they are my guinea pigs. Get the vaccination if you can, medical racism notwithstanding. Black folks are twice as likely to die from COVID as white people. Protect yourself!


Dr. Julianne Malveaux is an economist and suthor.


The Hampton Roads Messenger 5


Trump's DOJ once again protects powerful at the expense of the powerless


BY MARC MORIAL, NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE PRESIDENT AND CEO


“Anyone with decent vision can see from the parking-lot video of the shooting that the claim that Loehmann was able to repeatedly warn Tamir warrants incredulity. In less than two seconds, Garmback screeches to a halt in the cold mud, Loehmann pops out of the passenger door, and he fires the shot that eventually killed Tamir. He’d have had to be speaking like one of those speed readers dictating legal disclaimers on radio advertisements. However, despite that common-sense view of things, Fishman and Reddick reportedly encountered tension within the DOJ. You see, they had to write a memo requesting a grand jury to subpoena documents and testimony from witnesses, and that memo needed approval from a deputy assistant attorney general who works alongside Trump


political appointees within


the DOJ. And no one responded. … Quite simply, the DOJ let the clock run out on accountability for two cops involved in killing an unarmed black child.” – Jamil Smith, Rolling Stone


The decision not to charge the


officers who shot and killed a Black child on sight encapsulates everything that is wrong with the Department of Justice under the current administration. Once again, it has protected the powerful at the expense of the powerless. Once again, it has failed to seek justice for a Black life.


Tamir Rice was a child playing


with a toy. It would have taken Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback only a few seconds to ascertain that he posed no threat to anyone. But they didn’t bother to spend even those few seconds because all they needed to see was the color of Tamir’s skin to decide he was a threat.


They didn’t even bother to stop their car completely. As Judge Ronald B. Adrine wrote in his ruling that probable cause existed to charge the officers, “This court is thunderstruck by how quickly this event turned deadly … the Zone Car containing Patrol Officers Loehmann and Garmback is still in the process of stopping when Rice is shot.”


The toy gun wasn’t even in


Tamir’s hands when the officers shot him. The video "does not appear to show him making any furtive movement prior to or at the moment he is shot," Judge Adrine wrote. Tamir's arms "do not appear to be raised or outstretched."


A grand jury declined to indict


the officers in 2015, calling the killing a “perfect storm of human error,


mistakes, and communications by all involved.”


However, because grand


jury proceedings are shrouded in secrecy it’s unknown what evidence the grand jurors heard or what recommendations


the to speak prosecutors


made. After a judge granted grand jurors in the Breonna Taylor case permission


publicly, the


public learned that prosecutors had not given them the opportunity to bring homicide charges against the officers. Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron falsely claimed the grand jury “agreed” that the shooting was justified.


The city of Cleveland last year


settled a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Tamir’s family for $6 million.


This brutal year of COVID-19


has seen armed protesters storm state capitols, threatening lawmakers and even menacing police, and not one was harmed. The armed protesters were white.


In Kenosha in August, police


nonchalantly allowed accused killer Kyle Rittenhouse, armed with a AR-15 style rifle, to walk by them even as witnesses shouted that he had just shot someone. Rittenhouse is white.


The same week as the Kenosha killings, police in Utah arrested an unharmed Richard Grant Lees after he fired shots at the officers with assault rifle. Lees is white.


Time and again, Black people are


considered a threat just for existing, while violent white men are cossetted.


A Justice Department that does


not consider Tamir’s death a crime is a Justice Department that has decided that white officers must never be held accountable under


for any circumstances.


taking Black lives, Among


those recently pardoned by President Trump were a white police officer who unlawfully ordered her police dog to attack people of color; a Border Patrol agent who brutalized a Latino man trying to cross the border; an immigration


agent


who illegally


harassed Latino store owners, and a sheriff who defied a court order to stop racial profiling and who once said it was “an honor” to be compared to the Ku Klux Klan.


It may be too late for the incoming


Biden Administration to re-examine this case. But we expect the new Attorney General to be committed to police accountability, and to pursue such cases with a sincere motivation to seek justice for the victims rather than to protect their killers.


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