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FREEDOMWAYS     FIRST QUARTER 1972

old consciousness reawakened and applied to the internal dynamics of a people in search of liberation

The ecology bandwagon and black health concerns

One of the earliest documented studies of the health status of a New World African community appeared in The Philadelphia Nergo, a monumental study written by Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois in 1899. In chapter ten of this work, appears the following statement:

"The most difficult social problem in the matter of Negro health is the peculiar attitude of the of nation toward the well being of the race. There have, for instance, been a few other cases in the history of civilized peoples where human suffering has been viewed with such peculiar indifference. Nearly the whole nation seemed delighted with the discredited census of 1870 because it was thought to show the Negroes were dying off rapidly and the country would soon be well rid of them. So, recently, when attention has been called to the high death rate of this race, there is a disposition among many to conclude that the race is abnormal and unprecedented and that, since the race is doomed to early extinction, there is little left to do bur to moralize and inferior species"

Although not stated explicitly, it is difficult to believe that Dr. Du Bois would have been prompted to arrive at this conclusion if he did not recognize a deep-seated desire for genocidal wish fulfillment in many quarters of the racist society extant at the turn of the century. If there was any doubt about his perception of the nation's genocidal proclivities, this was dispelled one half century later when, in an action of considerable historic and political significance, the American Civil Rights Congress petitioned the United Nations formally charging the United States with genocide against black people. A signatory and member of the delegation presenting the petition to the United Nations was Dr. Du Bois. The document, citing official U.S health statistics, demonstrated "how discriminatory treatment results in genocidal disease and death" Although nearly three quarters of a century has passed since publication of The Philadelphia Negro and more than twenty years have elapsed since the American Civil Rights Congress petitioned the United Nations, an examination of contemporary health statistics for the nation discloses a persistence in the unfavorable differential in mortality and morbidity for blacks and other minorities as compared to whites,

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