TOP COMMENTARY OF THE WEEK |
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Black people live every day with hurdles that former health chief tried to diminish |
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News this week that the richest Black mothers and their babies are twice as likely to die in the year after childbirth than their white counterparts is just one indicator of why Colin Greene, the onetime chief of the Virginia Health Department, was rejected by the state Senate. Similar medical facts contribute to why Democratic legislators, African-Americans around Virginia and department employees were so appalled by Greene’s pronouncements last year about racism. The state health commissioner downplayed more than a century of second-class treatment, stereotypes and structural barriers that Black people and other minorities have faced regarding health care in this country. The account Sunday in The New York Times, citing a study by the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research about births in California, also found maternal mortality rates were just as high among the richest Black women as they were among poor white women. |
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