The City Council of Richmond, Virginia, has declared that racism is a “public health crisis” in the majority black metropolis.
The council passed a resolution on July 26 that declared the city must embark on an “anti-racism” program to resolve the “systemic” problem.
The city followed the commonwealth’s General Assembly, which voted in February to declare racism a state-wide “public health crisis.”
“Impact Can Be Seen”
The leftist Times-Dispatch claimed that the China Virus has exposed the terrible racism afflicting the majority-black city:
The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the health impacts of Richmond’s history of discriminatory housing policies, concentrated in Black neighborhoods where — to this day — poverty rates are high, life expectancy is lower than average, and access to food and medical care is scarce.
In April, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared racism a “serious public health threat,” citing the disproportionate impact the pandemic has had on racial and ethnic minority groups because of structural inequities. The federal agency pledged to invest more in communities of color and to expand internal diversity training.
Fifteen states have passed such resolutions, the newspaper reported, along with 200 cities.
Infant mortality among blacks is 12 per 1,000, “more than double the rate for white families,” the newspaper reported, citing health equity director Jackie Lawrence. As well, “black infants are five times more likely to be born early, which can lead to severe health complications, disability or death.”
Lawrence also told the newspaper that blacks don’t eat healthy food because their neighborhoods don’t have grocery stores. Why black neighborhoods don’t have those stores, the newspaper did not explain.
Resolution
Thus did the council unanimously pass its resolution “to declare racism as a public health crisis in the city of Richmond.”
Amusingly, the resolution opens with a self-contradictory statement: “‘Race’ is a social construct with no basis in human biology and was created to uphold a system of oppression for Black and Brown People.”
If racism is a social construct, then whites cannot be innately racist (the claim of Critical Race Theory). Anyway, “the Black experience of racism is rooted in the foundation of America, beginning with chattel slavery in 1619 through the Jim Crow era of the twentieth century resulting in the denial of opportunity and related hardships and disadvantages for people of color in every area of life,” the whereases continued.
“Racism is linked to more negative health outcomes for Black people” because of health and the environment. Another big problem is “discriminatory lending practices.”
The council also declared, “to the extent permitted by law,” that “racism is a public health crisis affecting the entire country.”
Council Res PDFCity Demographics
Why Richmond is such a benighted municipality is something of a mystery.
Four of nine city councilmen are black. Mayor Levar Stoney is also black, as were eight of his predecessors stretching back 50 years. City voters have elected Republican mayors twice in the last 153 years — 120 years apart.
The city’s majority-black population is declining, but blacks are still the majority: 46.9 percent. In 2000, they composed 57.1 percent of the population; in 2010, 50.6 percent. The growth in the city’s Hispanic population from less than 3 percent to more than six might explain part of the black majority’s decreasing share of the population.
If racism if such an debilitating affliction, who is to blame?
Beyond that, murder in their own communities might be a greater “public health crisis” for blacks not only in Richmond but also across America.
FBI data show that blacks perpetrated 88 percent of the killings in which blacks were the victims: 2,574 of 2,906.
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