Racism in America: A Public Health Crisis

The events that have unfolded in the past two weeks in our country are unprecedented: another senseless killing of a Black man, George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police; an uprising on the part of people of many colors protesting the treatment of African Americans; clashes with police resulting in more death and the destruction of property in our cities; and, as cities have begun to relax COVID-19 measures, a general disregard for the fact that the world is still only in the beginning of a pandemic.

George Floyd’s death represents a new turning point; we witnessed an execution in plain sight and in broad daylight for almost nine minutes and for no other reason but the fact that he was black. Anyone not sickened by this heinous, reprehensible act is sick. That this act might have gone away without question were it not for the demonstrations suggests this country is in more trouble than we imagined. That savage act and others like it before represent the epitome of racism. The pain I feel is almost unbearable.

According to top public health officials in this country, racism is a major public health crisis. And as the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to devastate communities of color across the United States, officials across the grain of society as well as ordinary people are speaking out in gratifying ways to expose the underlying injustices that make communities of color more vulnerable to health disparities, diseases like COVID-19, indeed, diseases like racism.

In 1962, I left this country for France with the idea in mind that I might become an expatriate. Although I was going there initially to study at a university, I thought at the time I was not welcome in my own country. I had grown up in the South, participated in civil rights efforts and had witnessed nothing but rabid racism. But what I learned after a very short while away from America was that I truly love this country, that I was a part of it no matter what, and that I had to return and face this monster racism. Returning to America and obtaining the education I felt I deserved in the face of racism would prove to be formidable.

In his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” Albert Camus, the great French existentialist wrote of the sentence given to Sisyphus by the gods for his transgressions against them: futile and hopeless labor ceaselessly rolling his rock to the top of a mountain. Metaphorically, he likened the life of man (and woman) today as the same kind of punishment, which he termed “the absurd.” Each life is a rock that must be pushed up a mountain ceaselessly all day everyday. Add to the rock of the African American the weight of racism and the rock becomes unbearable. Indeed, life for the African American in America has become unbearable. To be continued.

Milford W. Greene, Ph.D., M.P.H. is a biomedical and public health scientist. He serves as Director of Health Affairs & Clinical Services and is Director of the Sickle Cell Foundation of Georgia certified hemoglobinopathy laboratory. Dr. Greene did undergraduate work at Morehouse College and graduate studies at Wesleyan University. Early on he was a microbiologist at the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health. He trained in infectious diseases and immunology at the Harvard School of Public Health in the Department of Microbiology and in the Department of Tropical Public Health under the direction of virologist and Nobel Laureate Thomas Huckle Weller. He is a retired medical school administrator and professor; is a former associate dean at Cornell University; and was the first diversity dean at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.