Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation

In his final days, dying of pancreatic cancer, Congressman John R. Lewis had some parting words for the American people. They offer hope in these turbulent times. On the odd chance that you missed them, here is the first paragraph and a link the NY Times has made available to all interested, and sentient, readers.

One of our readers, YT, pointed me to Morgan Freeman reading John Lewis' Last Words.  It's 5 minutes long and powerfully moving with words and images.

"While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society. Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion laid down the burdens of division. Around the country and the world you set aside race, class, age, language and nationality to demand respect for human dignity."

Link to full essay.

A Conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coats

A Conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coats (TNC)
Massachusetts College for Liberal Arts
November 8, 2018

The moderator, Professor Frances Jones-Sneed, did a great job. She was respectful, almost motherly and knowledgeable.

TNC was a brilliant, honest, articulate story teller. He came across as humble and spent the first few minutes thanking everyone for coming to the event. (There were ~ 2000 people in the Amsler Gymnasium.)

Here are some excerpts from his dialogue.

With politics, there are no rules anymore. 

POTUS, and other politicians can get away with anything today.

He quoted a lot from his article on The Case for Reparations (The Atlantic 2014).

When you talk about people as statistics, you lose sight of their humanity. 

With his book Between the World and Me he told us that his editor sent it back to him four or five times and he had to sit down and rewrite it each time. He said when you are writing you don’t appreicate what danger you are in. Every first draft is terrible. If you want to be a writer you have to accept that and just go back and do the rewrites. 

Writing is about endurance. When you start you are really terrible and you have to accept that. If you can’t acknowledge this you won’t ever be a writer.

He was asked who his favorite black poet was and he said “Sonia Sanchez.” 

 He was asked by a student what he reads for hope and he said literature is not the place to go for hope - it is the place one goes for understanding. Just to understand is enough of an ambition. 

Things to follow up on

1. The name of Frederick Douglas came up a lot. (There is a new biography of Frederick Douglass)
2. Get to see the movie The Black Panther and maybe read the comic Captain America

There is a web page called 25 Quotes from TNC. Here is # 11

Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered. I think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you killed by the streets that America made. That is a philosophy of the disembodied, of a people who control nothing, who can protect nothing…

Personally-Mediated Racism in Medical Training

An important essay appeared in JAMA Internal Medicine recently.  It begins:

I was in medical school when I learned that I did not matter in medicine.

One particular day on service started uneventfully. However, after the team’s discussion of a patient, all attention turned toward me when a senior physician asked me a question about the rap music that had been playingin the background.

“Help me understand something:” I recall the physician saying. The physician asked about word choice in rap lyrics, and then, pretending to quote a rap song, repeated the word “nigger” several times in rapid-fire succession.

Most of us will benefit from reading it:  Download Mensah JAMA  For more on the three levels of racism see: CP Jones: Levels of racism: the gardener's tale.

Black Girl Magic

Mahogany L. Browne is a poet and author who is organizing the Women of the World Poetry Slam at New York’s Pratt Institute. She gives her Brief But Spectacular take on “Black Girl Magic” and the struggles facing African-American women in modern society.  If you want the full screen, Click HERE. 

Institutional Racism

Why Is the N.Y.P.D. After Me?
By NICHOLAS K. PEART
NY Times December 17, 2011

One evening in August of 2006, I was celebrating my 18th birthday with my cousin and a friend... We were talking, watching the night go by, enjoying the evening when suddenly, and out of nowhere, squad cars surrounded us. A policeman yelled from the window, “Get on the ground!" What Nicholas and his friends was experienceing was institutional racism.  See  Full Article

C.P. Jones in "Levels of racism: a theoretic framework and a gardener's tale" brilliantly addresses this topic."