''Dying While Black'' by Vernellia Randall, M.S.N., J.D. is a book about the disparities between the health care administered to

African Americans African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

and that administered to

European Americans European Americans (also referred to as Euro-Americans) are Americans of European ancestry. This term includes people who are descended from the first European settlers in the United States as well as people who are descended from more recent Eu ...

. She states that these disparities, the black health deficit, are caused by the continuation of the slave health deficit. She encourages reparation in the form of long term monetary and legal commitments and a comprehensive civil rights health care law.

Summary

The book begins with statistics of short

life expectancy Life expectancy is a statistical measure of the average time an organism is expected to live, based on the year of its birth, current age, and other demographic factors like sex. The most commonly used measure is life expectancy at birth ...

, high

death rates Mortality rate, or death rate, is a measure of the number of deaths (in general, or due to a specific cause) in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time. Mortality rate is typically expressed in units of de ...

, high

infant mortality Infant mortality is the death of young children under the age of 1. This death toll is measured by the infant mortality rate (IMR), which is the probability of deaths of children under one year of age per 1000 live births. The under-five morta ...

, low

birth weight Birth weight is the body weight of a baby at its birth. The average birth weight in babies of European descent is , with the normative range between . On average, babies of South Asian and Chinese descent weigh about . As far as low birth weight ...

rates, and high disease rates as compared to European Americans. Randall states that they are a direct result of

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

and the lack of

health care Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...

that was provided from the time of slavery to the

Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...

, the Affirmative Action time, and to the Racial Entrenchment time of the present. She points out the racial barriers to the access of health care, nursing homes,

hospitals A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emerge ...

physicians A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

, and other professionals. In addition, she acknowledges a lack of minority health professionals and thus a shortage of minority input into the health care system. She insists that the health care system rid itself of intentional and inadvertent racism. The

managed care The term managed care or managed healthcare is used in the United States to describe a group of activities intended to reduce the cost of providing health care and providing American health insurance while improving the quality of that care ("man ...

organizations entice providers and facilitators to engage in

discrimination Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, relig ...

. This has also led to a mistrust of the health care system by blacks. Randall insists that this is not simply paranoia but is based on a history of experimentation,

Sickle Cell Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a group of blood disorders typically inherited from a person's parents. The most common type is known as sickle cell anaemia. It results in an abnormality in the oxygen-carrying protein haemoglobin found in red blo ...

Screening Initiative, planning/ involuntary sterilization, and the excuses that the medical system gave to justify its discriminations. These abuses contribute to her accusation of the

human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

violations by

institutional racism Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of racism that is embedded in the laws and regulations of a society or an organization. It manifests as discrimination in areas such as criminal justice, employment, housing, health ...

in the health care system, the large inequality in health status, and the lack of legal protection. She concludes her book with the authenticity of her call for reparations from the

American government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a feder ...

. The slave health deficit will continue to negatively impact African Americans unless a well planned legal program is enacted.

References

Dying While Black
* * 2006 non-fiction books Reparations for slavery Books about health care {{postcolonialism-stub

Summary

See also

References