Anthony Fleg
The Urban Institute estimates that 137,000 Americans died as a result of not having health insurance between 2000 and 2006. Meanwhile, amidst explosions in technology in healthcare, there is an equally deafening silence when it comes to progress in reducing the steep inequities between rich and poor and across ethnic and geographic lines that exist for almost all health conditions. In our state, we have become accustomed to infant mortality rates three times higher and HIV/AIDS rates ten times higher for blacks when compared to whites. And in the realms that create health and/or disease, we fare no better. Right here in our midst, we have a large, racially based performance gap in our school system, a landfill that sits with our collective waste in the largely non-white Rogers Road community (decades after the station was to be closed) and yet another tobacco company denigrating American Indians and their ceremonial use of tobacco in order to sell toxic tobacco, this time in the form of the “Lumbee Cigarette.â€
It would be easy to dismiss the reality of these numbers and situations as the work of a nefarious few in power, and with the money to make the world turn at their whim.
But a more honest and constructive analysis would lead us to discern our place in a society that has made purposeful decisions to get us here. The words of W. Edwards Deming, a guru of systems theory, come to mind: “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.â€
When we emerge from the intellectual vertigo that allows us to rationalize that it was “the big bad guys†or maybe even a sheer coincidence that created the systematic injustices around us, and instead arrive at a place where these are our problems and our people suffering, we can begin to work for positive change. Using the example of our Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system, can we accept that it is our actions and inaction that have led to our minority children being, as one local minister put it, “academically lynched†in one of the wealthiest school systems in the country? Are we willing to see these children as our responsibility, as our own? How is it that we will play our part in re-programming the educational system to get results that reflect equity and equality? Will those of us over-saturated with privilege, in the form of our skin color, wealth, education, job, social/political power, etc. use it responsibly to ensure that those without such a voice are spoken for and heard?
My simple charge to myself first, and to us all, is two-faceted. First, take some time to think and pray about what you truly believe in. This will be hard for some of us, forcing us to question the belief systems of our community and our society. Start simple. Do you believe in love or hate, justice or injustice? Does money reign supreme for you? Is “monoculture of the mind†something healthy for society? Should all children receive a quality education? Should citizenship or economic status determine one’s right to health care?
Though we might say it differently, we probably agree on most things at this level. And we probably agree that most of these ideals are hard to find in a lived-out form in our local and global communities.
Second, we must take small steps toward making these things that we believe in a reality, starting in our own lives. Find ways to live your principles with your family, friends and co-workers. Attend a meeting, a place of worship, or join a cause of folks you might have previously treated as “the other.†In the case of our schools, use your voice to advocate for justice, and then use your heart to sit down with a student and mentor them. Do so as your responsibility toward our community, not with an air of heroism. And learn to resist the forces around you that try to convince you to “be realistic†(e.g., accept racial differences in health and education as inescapable parts of America); instead, take charge in living out what you believe in, and take joy in helping others “be idealistic.â€
Approaching Dr. King’s holiday, I think about his profession of faith, “I believe unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the last word,†and wonder whether we believe in ourselves sufficiently and care about one another enough to do our part in making our lives and actions consistent with the ideals that we hold dear. Change ourselves, and the world will be changed.
Anthony Fleg is one of the keynote speakers for the Human Relations Commission’s Human Relations Month Kickoff at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, January 27, at the Carrboro Century Center. For more information, contact the County Human Rights & Relations Department at 960-3875.
Dear Anthony,
Great work! Awesome article article, bro!
Love for the people,
-T
Anthony portrays a more noble image of what it is to be human, a welcome antidote to the ongoing negativity in the media. Let us become our highest aspiration, one change at a time.
–Laura Bernstein