Alabama's Medical Negligence in Dealing with Black Bodies Has a Long and Sordid History
Black folks in Alabama have long been subjected to insufficient healthcare. A 107-year-old piece of legislation and a present-day prison strike are not as distant as they might seem.
History is often cyclical. For all the times we say something to the effect of “I can’t believe (insert injustice) is still happening in (insert year)”, we have to take into account if the injustice that has us up in arms was ever properly addressed, or if there ever was an actual attempt to remove the inequity from our society altogether.
In the United States, any modern act of injustice, inequity and/or dehumanization carried out along racial lines generally has an exhaustive legacy that can be traced to precedents set several generations ago. Usually, the orchestrators of these injustices, be they, lawmakers, heads of corporations or any other persons who sit atop the socioeconomic food chain, are savvy about how they adjust inequitable treatment so that no one time period directly mirrors another.
And in some parts of the country, the ruling class is much more brazen in their efforts to keep those they consider subhuman contained in the most destitute of circumstances — the state of Alabama is one of those places.
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