At the request of member Kerry Myers, Northampton County Council on July 2 unanimously resolved that racism is a public health crisis and called on state and national leaders to do the same. Myers, as Council's sole black member, has several times shared details of the not-so-subtle racism he and his father before him has experienced. He mentioned an incident from his youth, when he was visiting in the South, used a public bathroom, and was told that if he did it again, he'd get a bullet in his head. When he joined the military, he said no one much cared what color you were if you covered the back of your brother-in-arms. But when he returned from service, he was once again a black man.
Of systemic racism, Myers said, "The only way to address it is to hit it over the head with a hammer." He called systemic racism "a disease of the mind."
Myers noted, however, that he is at a loss to understand "the amount of hate directed at our men in blue." He said they do not deserve to be "painted with a broad brush," and ironically observed "they now feel some of what we feel as African Americans."
"We need to respect each other, and that's the only way we're going to heal the hearts of this county."
21 comments:
Also a public health crisis: an 80% fatherless rate. It's the quickest way to poverty and the mind that sees this as normal is diseased. Given some of the police stories reported on this blog in the last few years, cops have done plenty to earn their disrespect. Houck's refusal to pursue those who covered up at SBRPD, may have been the blue-brotherly thing to do. But it greatly eroded public confidence in him and area cops. Is it OK to pissed at both the race hustlers and overzealous, crooked policing?
unanimously resolved that racism is a public health crisis
this was another waste of councils time, but hey, it makes them feel important.
The language is troubling. We have spent months dealing with local and state governments grabbing unbelievable amounts of power, shutting down the economy and issuing stay at home orders for MONTHS, in the name of a "public health crisis" called COVID-19. If public health crises are cause for draconian government power grabs, we should be EXTREMELY hesitant when this language is used to address a problem. Have discussions, pass resolutions, legislate and use government to find creative solutions to address racism. But no more public health crises, please. Let's save that term for apocalypse-level plagues and pestilences.
I had a case of Racism once. Took some penicillin and it cleared it right up!
"Black" is a noun only when identifying pigment or color, not peoples.
When referring to people "black" is and adjective, unless you're a racist, then it's a noun.
black lives matter - adjective noun verb = absolutely, yes
Black Lives Matter - Noun Noun Verb = Red, Yellow, Brown, Black or White are races only to racist who believe in separate races
Human is the noun, human, with many superficial adjectives that should matter little to the verbs of humanity.
12:59 My heads gonna explode.
ALL Lives Matter. There!
The new thing to do as a politician is to label everything "public health risks". It's the new "THING OF THE CHILDREN!" style argument for the new era.
Anonymous said...
I had a case of Racism once. Took some penicillin and it cleared it right up!
July 6, 2020 at 10:53 AM
Oh yes, we can tell.
Woke culture circle jerk.
If Racism died, who or what would Lee Snover counter protest against?!?!?!
There's a much bigger health crisis in Northampton County, the fact that defendants mental health issues are routinely ignored by prosecutors and judges in the court system.
"Also a public health crisis: an 80% fatherless rate. "
I've received a second comment making this point. This thinking is an example of systemic racism. You make the observation, and it creates the implication that black people must somehow be deficient. The reality here is that blacks were enslaved and families were ripped apart for hundreds of years. You wonder why the family structure is defective when slavery is what caused it.
"this was another waste of councils time, "
I suppose so if you are an entitled white person.
"If public health crises are cause for draconian government power grabs, "
The only thing draconian I see are some of the ugly comments. The resolution makes no power grabs and Myers only asked that we learn to respect each other.Is that so hard?
Families of slaves were most certainly assaulted and in many cases intentional broken by the slave trade.
But fatherless homes is a more recent phenomenon when it became financially incentivized by the welfare system developed 100 years after slavery as a corrective to alleviate poverty generally, much like the recent shutdown it was not well thought out and likely wholly political, and has now lead to what might be the worse problem for these families presently.
Fatherlessness is not a deficiency of former slaves and their descendants, or that of poor families, but a failure of modern public policy that incentivizes a fathers absence.
9:01, I almost agree with you, but I think the failure is not by incentivizing fathers absence, but by not approaching sex education realistically. Delayed childbearing for education can’t be discussed. The single parenting is the norm. Children dumped on grandmom is too common. Generations of absent fathers has guaranteed poverty as an acceptable situation. The lack of a family unit guarantees a more difficult path for all children, especially males.
Your 8:10 comment was pure hogwash, Bernie. It has been 165 years since slavery ended. In 1960, only 22% of black families were single parent. Now it is 77% or more. Whatever happened in the past 60 years (think welfare state) had more to do with the demise of black two parent households than slavery ever did.
9:01, The ghost of Lee Atwater would like his talking points back.
I think BLM, the organization, is more about promoting a Marxist movement than about bettering black peoples lives. Having said that, there is racism, that's a fact, and there have been problems policing the inner city, although I believe it's being overblown. You have these old white ladies who see a kid with dreadlocks, and they automatically assume he's a drug dealing murderer LOL. We see what's going on in the inner city areas the past couple of weeks, and you can imagine what those police officers are up against. It's literally a war zone!
What happened to George Floyd was despicable. Policing is hard, and there are always a few bad ones that slip through the cracks. Every one of these incidents that we have had started with someone resisting arrest, including George Floyd, who refused to get in the police car. Don't resist arrest, if you feel you are being treated unfairly deal with it afterwards!
Kerry Myers seems like a good man, and he's the kind of guy we need out there as a role model.
10:15PM
Sex education? Interesting.
It might have been more helpful to families than welfare programs of dependency, if civil rights leaders of the sixties, and groups like the Panthers were better integrated into politics, rather than the FBI's CoIntelPro disrupting, denying, degrading, destroying them all, leaving a vacuum of organic leadership and representation making the corporate Democratic Party representatives by default.
Both The Welfare Program and the Counter Intelligence Program were synergistic in the degrading of the family. We see that now whatever the intention and however unclear it was then.
9:01 How did Lee Atwater line-up on CoIntelPro?
"9:01 How did Lee Atwater line-up on CoIntelPro?"
Wrong time stamp....that was for 12:20AM
Dirty secret is that many blacks are racist. They hate whites, Jews, Asians and Indian Americans. Anyone with a perceived status of "privilege." In other words other races or ethnic groups that value education and hard work over resentment for past discrimination.
I respect Myers' words and appreciate his sentiments toward the police. We need to hear more of that from Bethlehem City Council members, especially after last night's organized take-over of people calling in (some who don't even live in Bethlehem) to call for the defunding of the police department.
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