Tag Archives: structural racism

War and Peace: Intentioning more or less harm on the Palestinian people in Gaza?

[War and peace are the two ends of a continuum when disagreement is present. When methods to resolve conflict by peaceful means appear ineffective or there is not sufficient agreement on all sides to use peaceful means, the movement toward using arms continues. Once a decision is made to use arms to resolve a conflict, those initiating war expect that killing will occur. There are moral principles that anchors war, for example: minimal killing of civilians, targeting less populated areas, maintaining humanitarian structures (water supply, sanitation, hospitals, educational centers), maintaining human rights for prisoners of war. Maintaining these types of moral principles are in line with International Humanitarian Law which provides legal mandates for human rights during war time.]

Peace Walk by Plum Village groups in Washington DC, June 23 2024

Increasing data on the current war on Gaza by the Israel military, following the attack on Israel by Hamas resulting in killing and kidnapping of civilians, question whether the intention of the Israel government is to inflict greater ‘revenge’ harm on the Palestinian people. This is evidenced by reports of little adherence of Israel’s military to the International Humanitarian Law to protect civilians and humanitarian structures. Several research articles published in the last 4 months provide data showing the devastating public health impact due to these human rights violations.

Major public health impact:

Humanitarian structures in Gaza targeted and destroyed

“The first phase of the Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip from 7 October through 22 November 2023 resulted in widespread damage to critical civilian infrastructure protected under IHL, including health, education, and water facilities. Spatial statistical analysis suggests widespread damage to critical civilian infrastructure that should have been provided protection under IHL. These findings raise serious allegations of Israeli military violations of IHL, especially in light of Israeli officials’ statements explicitly inciting violence and displacement and multiple widely reported acts of collective punishment against the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip.” Asi, Y., Mills, D., Greenough, P.G. et al. ‘Nowhere and no one is safe’: spatial analysis of damage to critical civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip during the first phase of the Israeli military campaign, 7 October to 22 November 2023. Confl Health 18, 24 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13031-024-00580-https://conflictandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13031-024-00580-x#Tab3

Indiscriminate killing of women and children in war on Gaza (since October 2023)

“While large numbers of children and women have been killed in attacks on Gaza over the last 15 years, the proportions during the initial phase of the latest offensive are conspicuously higher (figure 2). Women and children were 30–41% of those killed in attacks on Gaza in 2008–2009, 2012, 2014 and 2021, but they make up 67% killed from 7 October to 24 November. This striking increase in mortality, which suggests an indiscriminate approach to civilian targets, is concordant with the investigative report (11) and Poole and colleagues’ study demonstrating a lack of special protection for hospitals.” Wispelwey B, Mills D, Asi YM, et al. Civilian mortality and damage to medical facilities in Gaza. British Medical Journal Glob Health 2024;9:e014756. doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2023-01475

Aid to Gaza obstructed resulting in widespread starvation of adults and children

“Nearly the entire population of the Gaza strip, or 96% of the population, are facing acute food shortages, with more than 495,000 people including children facing starvation due to an extreme lack of food, according to figures released today by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).” Devastating new figures reveal Gaza’s child hunger catastrophe. June 25 2024. Save the Children. https://www.savethechildren.net/news/devastating-new-figures-reveal-gaza-s-child-hunger-catastrophe

Structural racism as major determinant of Palestinian health inequities

“The structural violence⁹ against Palestinians is rooted in settler and indigenous dynamics that are further complicated by anti-Muslim racism,⁸ serving as mutually reinforcing forms of structural racism. Structural racism is defined as “the totality of ways in which societies foster [racial] discrimination, via mutually reinforcing [inequitable] systems…(e.g., in housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, health care, criminal justice, etc.) that in turn reinforce discriminatory beliefs, values, and distribution of resources”.¹⁰ As with other forms of racism, a system meant to both “structure opportunity” and “assign value” based on the social construct of race,¹¹ this dynamic results in a devaluation of Palestinian life that illuminates widespread Western support for ongoing indiscriminate killing and the withholding of the bare necessities for survival.

Decades of structural violence, racialized discrimination, and human rights violations have stunted Palestinian health care systems across the territories and perpetuated health disparities across populations. The geographical fragmentation of Palestinians has created a hierarchy of Palestinian health outcomes—best among Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCI), worse for Palestinians in the West Bank, and significantly worse for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. For Palestinians in the occupied territories, life expectancy is nearly a decade shorter than Israelis’, and child, infant, and maternal mortality are several times higher. Regular exposure to violence, dehumanization, humiliation, and hopelessness creates a significant Palestinian mental health burden.¹² Yet evidence also illustrates discriminatory health access and resulting health disparities for the underserved PCI.¹³ These Palestinians report shorter life expectancies than their Jewish counterparts, higher infant and maternal mortality rates, and greater risk of chronic disease, despite ostensibly having access to the same Israeli health system.^14,15 Although Palestinian refugees are not included in this discussion of Palestinians living in Israel and the occupied territories, their racialization has prevented many from returning to their homes in Palestine and has cemented their fragmentation…resources are not allocated equally, nor by need, but by race, even within the same geographies. Israel is the only sovereign entity in the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. While the international community continues to recognize Israel as the occupying power of the Palestinian territories, rendering the nation with certain obligations toward Palestinian health and well-being, these obligations remain unfulfilled. Palestinians report significant disparities in terms of health care access, with lower per capita health expenditure ($3,145 in Israel vs. $306 in Palestine in 2017, a 165% difference) and disproportionately fewer physicians, nurses, hospital beds, and facilities for health specialties.” Asi YM, Sharif MZ, Wispelwey B, et al. Racism as a Threat to Palestinian Health Equity. Health Equity. 2024.8,1. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/heq.2024.0027

These studies/reports call into question the intention of the Israel government and military and whether its actions is for greater harm, mass genocide, against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Further investigation is required to assess and act on: the lack of protection of civilians through the International Humanitarian Law and its enforcers, the short and long term plan to rebuild Gaza for return of its Palestinian citizens, the short and long term plan for addressing the trauma of war, displacement, and structural determinants of health inequities on the Palestinians of Gaza and the region, and the short and long term plan for addressing the trauma of war on the Israeli people.

The continuum is still available between war and peace, more or less harm. How do we assure action toward peace, least harm, between the Jewish people of Israel and the region and the Palestinian people of Gaza and the region. Here are some: Donating to “Go Fund Me’ campaigns to help Palestinians in Gaza; here is one example, soup kitchen in North Gaza. Donating to different international organizations providing humanitarian support for the people affected by war in Gaza/writing letters of support to your political leaders for support to be sent to them; one example is the United Nations support arm for Palestinians. Write your political leaders about stopping aid to fund the war. If the US stopped sending funds and war machinery and ammunition to Israel the conflict would change to less harm. Calming yourself through prayers and meditation to see more clearly what is yours to do; and sending healing energies/prayers to those suffering in this conflict. Organize a listening circle to listen with friends and family to support each other in their action toward peace. If you are able to walk, take 20 – 100 steps throughout the day and invite in someone in the conflict zone to walk with your steps in peace and compassion.

Promise and Disappointment: Baltimore one year after the Uprising

See the original blog at Versobooks here

“All to say, last year’s uprising has created this space for my family to have this conversation. albeit painful, it’s also provided us with the choice to grow from these experiences that go way back beyond the uprising.” Daughter of a storeowner in West Baltimore, April 2016

From a meeting of Baltimore activists during the week of the curfew.

It’s been one year since the uprising in Baltimore that followed the arrest, murder, and funeral of Freddie Gray. Mr. Gray died in police custody after a rough arrest and “rough ride”. It’s not the first time a rough ride — in which police leave a handcuffed or footcuffed person deliberately unsecured in the van, resulting in uncontrolled movement and potential injury — has accounted for the injury and death of a black man in Baltimore police custody. Following his arrest on April 12, 2015 and his death on April 19, peaceful protests occurred. After his funeral on April 27, residents of Sandtown-Winchester — Mr. Gray’s community — and others in West Baltimore affected by police brutality rose up in protest. Some protestors became violent, throwing bricks at windows, looting, and setting fire to property. The National Guard was called in, the city was placed under curfew, and tanks rolled around as if it was a war zone.

The tanks in Middle East Baltimore added to existing perceptions about the abandoned and boarded houses and businesses, the trash on the street and in the lots, the desolate look and feel at nighttime: “it’s like Beirut here.” After real estate segregation (both legal and illegal), redlining, deindustrialization, urban renewal, mass incarceration, and gentrification, Middle East Baltimore and other black sections of the city have been subject to disinvestment and left to survive on their own. While nearby universities and private institutions have exploited these same communities with the support of public dollars and public policy.

In the weeks following the night of violence, thousands rallied across the city to protest the legacy of this history. This uprising, and the eyes it focused on the death of yet another black body at the hands of the criminal justice system, brought attention to this long record of segregation and abandonment.

Many have compared it to the 1968 riots that followed Dr. King’s assassination, in which hundreds of businesses across the entire city were vandalized or looted to the tune of approximately $9 million. The people in power were afraid. The National Guard and state sheriffs patrolled the places in which wealth was concentrated or accumulated: Harbor East, Inner Harbor, Johns Hopkins Medical Campus, and the like. Those who sent them there feared that their holdings would be the next target if people felt compelled to correct years of unequal distribution of government favors. The anger of a few had overflowed after years of suppression and repeated injury, disrespect and neglect, and false promises. Indeed, rioting is the voice of those who have not been not listened to.

Like mosquitoes on horse dung, the media — local, national, and international — devoured the sensation of the unrest. Baltimore made news in Jamaica, Canada, Poland, China, Russia, Brazil, the UK, Australia, etc. We were world-famous, we were trending. One year later, what has changed? Did the government address the deeper causes underlying the unrest? That is: mass unemployment, underfunded schools, shuttered recreation centers, poor and inaccessible health care, “affordable housing” filled with rats, mold, and lead managed by slum landlords and speculators — unmonitored and un-reprimanded by government — food deserts, deteriorated infrastructure. Have any substantial changes been made to a criminal justice system that brings injury and death, repeatedly and disproportionately, to black bodies, like Mr. Gray? How have different communities in Baltimore contributed to the process of enacting necessary change at the local level since the killing of Mr. Gray?

Over the past 2 weeks, I spoke with thirty-six different people from various spaces and sectors in Baltimore, and asked: what sticks out to you since the uprising last year? Responses came from organizers on the ground, activists with and without non-profit organizations, academics, students, and residents in working-class black communities like Mr. Gray’s Sandtown-Winchester on the west side, and Middle East Baltimore and McElderry Park on the east side. 78 percent of responders were people of color, 58 percent male.

National Guard posted at Mondawmin Mall

Neighborhoods

The overwhelming response from people in neglected neighborhoods (and from those who live elsewhere when asked about these neighborhoods), was that there has been little or no change. Some felt things were worse in these neighborhoods in regard to policing and drug trafficking and -use, unemployment, available stores, and safety:

Nothing changed, worse than before. The violence, the separation, people have become more selfish.

Worse, shooting still going on, problem in house, in the neighborhood, if you know what I mean…things happening right next door and nobody talking.

A shop owner in Sandtown-Winchester responded: “no change, drugs still here…some more foot patrol, since the CVS reopened.” We wondered together why the foot patrol started only after the CVS was reopened: “Who is being protected, corporations or residents”?

Policing: Social, political, economic violence

Policing as a means to serve and protect the public without discrimination and guarantee “equal protection under the law” came into effect in the US when the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was enacted in 1868.1 Previous to that policing was motivated by racial superiority, white supremacy, and racism during times of enslavement, to control the enslaved.2,3 Since then policing has been promoted as the means to serve and protect the public mediated by peace officers or police officers. In the 1980’s and 1990’s crime and police misconduct and corruption increased prompting research into the reasons people will follow the law.4 Studies suggested that only when they feel police officers are acting with legitimate authority conferred in procedurally just ways will people follow law enforcement.4 Procedurally just ways are described as: treating people with dignity, giving individuals “voice” during encounters, being neutral and transparent in decision making, conveying trustworthy motives.5

Policing in the US shows none of these characteristics in regard the increased shooting and killing of black and brown people. A recent survey in 2014 reported that non-whites are less likely to feel that the police protect and serve them, not acting in line with procedurally just ways.6 These perceptions came during a period of increasing scrutiny of policing in the United States after several fatal incidents. The incidents occurred over a 9-month period, of police violence resulting in the death of black men in Ferguson Missouri, Staten Island, New York, Cleveland, Ohio, and North Charleston, South Carolina .7 Since then, Baltimore Maryland , Chicago, Illinois and others ware added to this list. This is the short list, the one we are most familiar with and does not include all the other incidents of police violence not made public. A current example of this is the police shooting of 17 year old Laquan McDonald in Chicago. The video of his killing by a white police officer shooting him 16 times was intentionally kept from the public. This type of corruption does not support “acting in line with procedurally just ways”. The personal violence is clear in this video and confirms the fear that most black and brown people in America have in interactions with police officers.

Police officers and the departments which support them can be perceived as a means of collective violence targeted against dark-skinned individuals and communities. The World Health Organization defines violence as “The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation”. The type of violence is characterized by the person or group committing the violent act and include self-directed, interpersonal (violence committed by an individual or small group of individuals) and collective violence.8,9 The act of neglect is also included as a violent act when assessed from the role of power and intention of the perpetuator.9 WHO defines violence as it relates to the health and wellbeing of individual -and subsequently communities as individuals congregate to form communities. As a part of law enforcement agencies police officers are empowered by government and political bodies to act for the safety and security of all individuals and institutions. When such collectives perpetuate violence, targeted against one group of individuals, this is categorized as social violence by WHO’s classification system (Collective violence is further categorized as social, political and economic according to the motivation behind the collectives’ intention). Collective violence, in this case the police system, can be motivated and affected by one or all three of these factors simultaneously.

Racial profiling is an example of an institutionalized mediated social agenda which when incorporated into policing results in disproportionate harassment, arrest, imprisonment and death of non-white populations.10 Current trends in police arrests and incarceration confirm the continued racial profiling and targeting embedded in policing in the US.11,12 In 2010, black and Hispanic men were six and three times as likely, respectively, as white men to be incarcerated in federal, state and local jails, a gap larger than past decades and correlating with an increased gap in median household income and wealth between blacks and whites.13 Between 1980 and 2010 black males without high school diplomas were more likely to be in jail than those with high school diplomas, both groups more likely to be institutionalized than white males, with or without a high school diploma.22 Black men were more likely to be institutionalized than employed, significantly greater between the ages of 20-29 years.14 A recent report concluded that the excess deaths in black versus white men ages 15-34 years between 1960 and 2010 due to legal intervention is both longstanding and modifiable, regardless of income.15 This data supports previous studies showing deaths by legal intervention greater in black (63%) versus white (34%) men between 1979 and 1997.16

Political violence evidenced in neoliberal strategies of policing is well documented as the “War on Drugs”, affecting urban areas locally and globally.17,18,19,20 In the US, these policies were initially enacted in the 1970s and revived in the 1980s.21 The policies to enact the War on Drugs resulted in increased funding for personnel and subsequent increased arrests for drug charges: drug arrests increased from 7.4% of all arrests in 1987 to 13% in 2007, the greatest increase seen in marijuana arrests.22 A specific policy of the War on Drugs, Zero Tolerance, aimed at protecting the public space, was introduced in US cities like New York and Baltimore that had high crime rates and drug activity. This resulted in mass incarceration of young men, primarily African American and Latino.23,24 Zero Tolerance policies allowed police to stop and arrest individuals for quality of life offenses, such as drinking alcoholic beverages in the street, urinating in public, panhandling, loud radios, graffiti and disorderly conduct.25 Zero Tolerance policies enacted in urban schools resulted in school age children being punished more harshly for disorderly behaviors with expulsion, suspension, and juvenile court referrals, behaviors previously characterized as normal teenage mischief.26,27 Some resulted in arrests, contributing to the school-to-prison pipeline and the mass incarceration of black and brown people.20 The War on Drugs has singularly resulted in mass incarceration and depletion of young men from their communities, increasing community fragmentation, and decreasing this population’s opportunity to develop and determine politically and economically healthy and sustainable communities. 28

Economic violence includes attacks or perpetuation of violence by large groups for economic gain, i.e.. purpose of disrupting economic activity, denying access to essential services, or creating economic division and fragmentation.17 Incarceration of young men and women in urban communities lead to arrest records which initiate a cycle of potential chronic displacement and temporary housing, unemployment and underemployment, disconnect from services and family networks. Housing management offices can now legally discriminate against them for a record of incarceration under “one-strike you’re out” policies, another War on Drugs policy. Their communities lose the benefit of a generation of young men, unable to qualify for employment, housing, public assistance, educational assistance, and family reunification, continuing the cycle of economic violence and neighborhood and individual poverty. This cycle of community destruction through further fragmentation and uprootedness of young men via mass incarceration — facilitated by the school-to-prison pipeline — increases the likelihood of crime and alternative means of income and other behaviors results in unstable, fragmented, and unhealthy communities.29,30,31,32,33,34 For some this alternative economy provides for the basic essentials of food, shelter, clothing, and health care, even while it increases crime and risk of police violence and incarceration.35

Many of these urban communities targeted by the “war on drugs” and increased policing are communities which have been historically disinvested and abandoned since the early 1900s-violated socially, politically, and economically. Such communities were the targets of segregated real estate housing covenants and redlining tactics by the Federal Housing Administration who steered investment in housing and community development into white communities.36 In these disinvested communities, social fragmentation continued in the 1950s with urban renewal. Urban renewal resulted in mass displacement of many of these existing poor and of-color neighborhoods to make way for moderate and market rate development. Planned shrinkage continued with serial forced displacement of these communities followed by gentrification and mass incarceration. The psychological, social and economic effects of being uprooted from one’s home multiple times contribute to community fragmentation,37,38,39 and risk for low life expectancies and high disease burden.40,41,42,43,44,45

Both disinvestment and displacement undermine access to resources needed for health and wellness, including: functional schools, health and social services, parks and recreational opportunities, employment and workforce training opportunities, stable and sanitary housing, housing code enforcement, access to healthy foods, and infrastructure for mobility and physical activity. The resultant places of high unemployment, decreased educational achievement, low-income and high income inequality, predispose the people to generational poverty, high crime, high drug activity, and inequitable health outcomes.45,46,47 Corrupt policing and law enforcement systems continue this trend of social, political and economic violence currently experienced by hyper-segregated cities like Baltimore.48

The path forward toward equity and non-violence must address all ways policing and law enforcement agencies perpetuate these forms of violence.Training officers and all members of these agencies in transforming racism and oppression begins the personal transformation. But the institution and its policies must also be changed. Policies which block accountability and transparency and protect and propagate the violence perpetuated by these unfair systems must be challenged and changed. The larger systems of government and their private partners which rebuild communities and continue hyper-segregation must change. Government must be willing to transfer the wealth accumulated unfairly from the exploitation of black and brown people over the years. Such wealth can begin to change community and economic development in line with equity and sustainability-justice. Government must serve the people, not the rich. Training all public servants in the history of unfair wealth accumulation and the etiology of current wealth and health gaps must occur. Intentional structural, institutional, and individual transformation will begin to dig up the roots of violence-in policing and in all structures of the US.

Notes
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