Author: Brian L.

I read an article titled “Birthing while black: African American women face disproportinate risks during pregnancy.” In this article, the writer mentions how in Virginia, black women are three times more likely to suffer a pregnancy-related death. The writer interviewed Courtney Glenn, who is the co-founder of a group that helps provide culturally-centered support in Virginia. Glenn said that the reason for this could be due to a lack of care and racism by doctors. She said that often doctors do not take African American pregnant women seriously when they complain about pain during their pregnancy. The writer also includes a study from the University of Virginia in 2016 that showed that racial bias played a role in how soon-to-be doctors treated patient pain.

It is disappointing that someone could receive different treatment by their doctor just because of their race. People in the hospital for their pregnancy deserve to be treated well and supported throughout the process. If doctors are knowingly not providing the best care they can, they are endangering the mother and also the baby. The fact that the statistics show such a disparity between the treatment received by a pregnant woman based on their race shows that there is discrimination involved. Groups like Glenn’s and also other groups are working hard to fix this problem, but it needs to be addressed quickly to prevent unnecessary health problems and even deaths.

https://www.virginiamercury.com/2019/03/05/birthing-while-black-african-american-women-face-disproportionate-risks-during-pregnancy/

-Brian Lief

I recently read an article about Lori Lightfoot, who became the first gay and black mayor in the history of Chicago. The article mentioned how Chicago is the largest city to elect an African American woman as the mayor. The article later describes how even though Chicago has had a large African American population for much of its history, only two out of the 55 mayors in the city’s history have been African American. Lightfoot won with almost 75 percent of the vote, and won in all 50 of the cities wards.

This was surprising to me. I know about the lack of diversity in politics, but I did not know that a city as big as Chicago had never elected an African American woman or gay mayor. Growing up in Cleveland, I often read about former mayor Carl Stokes, who was the first African American mayor of a major United States city in 1968. It is disappointing that it took over 50 years after that for a major city like Chicago to elect an African American woman as mayor. This shows that there is still much progress that needs to be made. Hopefully this will help the country realize the importance of diversity in politics, and cities will continue to elect diverse mayors. Congress also has started to become more diverse in recent years, but there is also much work that still has to be done. If work is done to continue this at the local level, then it is possible that it will happen at the national level as well.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/04/02/chicago-mayors-race-history-black-woman-lori-lightfoot-toni-preckwinkle/3339248002/

-Brian Lief

I recently read an article from the New York Times titled “Kamala Harris is Accused of Lying about Listening to Tupac” In the article, it is mentioned that while Harris was discussing marijuana legalization, she mentioned smoking marijuana in college and listening to Tupac. However, many members of the media were quick to point out that this could not have been true because he had not released an album yet when she was still in school. Fox News criticized her for this and other media outlets felt that she was making it up in order to appeal to voters.

I feel that the media should not waste their time focusing on this. Even if she did misremember what kind of music and which artists she listened to in college, the media choosing to focus on this instead of her views on issues is a problem. A presidential candidates music choices or other things like that should not matter when people are evaluating her candidacy for president. People look at many different media outlets to get their information and the media choosing to focus on things that do not even matter will not help voters make a decision on who to vote for, especially when the current president has said many controversial things that do not get much media attention.

The media needs to take their role in shaping public opinion seriously and focus on important issues instead of stories like this.

-Brian Lief

Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/us/politics/kamala-harris-snoop-tupac.html