Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
On Gender
Recession Pushes Health Care System from Bad to Worse
01 year ago
The new census report may be restating the obvious: the recession hit, poverty spikes–what did you expect? But the last part presents one of the corollary impacts of economic devastation: a battered and bruised health care system.
According to the Census Bureau:
The number of people covered by private health insurance decreased to 194.5 million in 2009 from 201.0 million in 2008. The number of people covered by government health insurance increased to 93.2 million in 2009 from 87.4 million in 2008.
Kaiser Health News reports that government-run medical programs have absorbed much of the fallout:
While the numbers of people on Medicare remains stable, the percentage of people covered by Medicaid, the federal-state program for people with low incomes, rose from to 15.7 percent of Americans from 14.1 percent. Nearly 48 million Americans are in Medicaid programs.
With an uninsured rate of about 20 percent, adult women are in an especially precarious position, straddling an eroding private insurance system as well as an overstretched safety net, according to the National Women’s Law Center:
Last year, over 6.5 million fewer people had job-based coverage. The proportion of women ages 18-64 with this type of insurance fell from 64 percent to 61 percent from 2008 to 2009. Public health insurance programs, like Medicaid, provided a safety-net for many women (an additional 1.2 million women had public health insurance in 2009); without these critical programs, women’s uninsured rates would be considerably worse.
But the growth in Medicaid coverage has not offset the drop-off in employer-sponsored coverage, which, for all its outrageous costs, remains a pillar of the system.
The new healthcare reform plan is supposed to help expand Medicaid coverage, but those changes won’t go into effect until 2014. In the meantime, the Economic Policy Institute points out that we should brace ourselves for an escalating crisis as employer-sponsored coverage falls another half-percentage point by 2011. Overall, we can expect another half million non-elderly people to join the ranks of the uninsured.
On top of that, there was major increase in the uninsured rate among people with household incomes of $50,000 or more, which means many uninsured “middle class” households could end up with nothing to fall back on except the new private insurance exchanges, which will leave their coverage at the mercy of corporate profit motives. As we’ve reported before, the exchanges might deepen racial and gender imbalances in healthcare access, freighted with crippling costs as well as harsh restrictions on reproductive health services.
In addition to the poor, near-poor and people of color, another group left behind are millions of immigrants, who are subject to discriminatory federal restrictions or, if they’re undocumented, are completely excluded from the system. The rise in the uninsured rate was steeper for non-citizens than for the native-born:
Among the foreign-born population, the uninsured rate increased for noncitizens in 2009 to 46.0 percent from 44.7 percent in 2008… The proportion of the foreign-born population without health insurance in 2009 was nearly two and one-half times that of the native-born population in 2009.
Obama, making his pre-election rounds in the Beltway, nonetheless keeps pushing health reform as a victory for Latinos (perhaps to take the sting off the utter failure of immigration reform).
So it goes. When it comes to who has the right to be healthy in this country, what’s stunning about the census numbers is not what has changed, but how patterns of inequity have become even more entrenched and so many lawmakers remain numb to the crisis (or even push to “ repeal and replace“). Maybe with another few hundred thousand newly uninsured people next year, Washington will finally figure out that ignoring the pain won’t make it go away.
Raising Taxes on Poor Moms while Giving the Rich a Break
01 year ago
While much of the media has focused on the debate over extending Bush-era tax cuts for the rich, some other tax relief for the less-than-wealthy have hardly gotten a second glance.
The Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, provide critical support for struggling households, like the single mom trying to raise four kids on minimum wage. The Recovery Act expanded the EITC and CTC for many households. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wants to keep redistributing wealth from bottom to top by simultaneously extending high-income tax cuts and abandoning critical tax relief for the poor. According to the National Women’s Law Center:
Under the McConnell bill, millions of struggling families would lose $11.6 billion in tax credits next year.
- 12.9 million taxpayers would lose nearly $8.4 billion from excluding the CTC improvement, and 98 percent of this loss would be to families with low to moderate incomes (in the lowest two-fifths of income nationwide).
- 11.7 million taxpayers would lose nearly $3.2 billion from excluding the EITC improvements, and 91 percent of this loss would be to families with low to moderate incomes (in the lowest two-fifths of income nationwide).
- Over 30 percent of single mothers would get nothing.
In contrast, under the McConnell bill, households with incomes exceeding $1 million would receive an average tax break of nearly $104,000 — not including the added benefits for heirs of multimillion dollar estates from the estate tax cut included in the McConnell bill.
The NWLC sketches out how this might be felt by a typical struggling family:
Sarah, a single mom with three kids, makes $14,450 per year working full time in a child care center. Under the McConnell bill, less than $2,000 of Sarah’s income would be counted towards the [Child Tax Credit] and she would receive only $240 from this credit – $1,478 less than the $1,718 credit she would receive under the Obama plan. If Sarah earns only $12,500 because her hours are reduced, under the McConnell bill she would get nothing from the CTC.
In sum: the proposed program would excise some of the few progressive aspects from the tax structure, and instead help the rich barricade themselves in their wealth and let more women and children slip toward destitution.
In light of the recent sharp rise in women’s poverty–to about one quarter of Black and Latina women, respectively, and 39 percent of single moms, such a proposal seems hard to justify.
Unless you’re Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. He warned the Globe that the tax hike for the super-wealthy would be “a body blow to the small-business community.” It doesn’t sound like he has the same qualms about kicking the poor when they’re down.
How to Keep Immigrant Moms and Babies from Going Hungry
01 year ago
Children of immigrants are a rapidly growing population, and they’re growing up fast, often deprived of the resources they need to thrive. Luckily, there are a few federal nutrition programs for babies and young children that are more accessible to immigrant families than other public benefits. The Urban Institute looked at how immigrants and their children are using two critical programs, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), which promotes healthier eating, local farmer’s markets and breastfeeding, and the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), which gives poor kids free meals.
The research shows that immigrant families are disproportionately affected by economic hardship and thus many of their children qualify for nutrition programs. Children of undocumented parents in particular rely heavily on WIC food supports.
The largest growth in terms of number and share of children participating in WIC between 1997 and 2006 was among native-born children with unauthorized immigrant parents. In 1997, 366,000 native-born children with one or both unauthorized immigrant parents participated in WIC (6.8 percent of all participants), and by 2006, they had increased in number to 683,000 (11.7 percent of all participants).
The numbers underscore the intense need among families of undocumented immigrants, and perhaps extra dependency on child-focused programs because other mainstream adult programs are unavailable.
More importantly, the researchers found that WIC and school lunch programs are structured to be more accessible than other federal programs, like TANF cash assistance:
Taken together, our findings suggest that immigrants’ fears about participating in TANF, SNAP [food stamps] and other programs subject to immigrant status limitations do not extend to benefits like WIC and NSLP that do not include these restrictions. Neither would it seem that unauthorized immigrant parents are afraid to apply for their citizen children (or their unauthorized immigrant children or even themselves for that matter) for WIC and NSLP. The different settings in which parents apply for these benefits–health clinics for WIC and schools for NSLP–appear to have insulated immigrants from the fears, concerns, and access barriers noted for welfare offices and other setting in which food stamp and TANF benefits are handled. The message that immigrant status is not a barrier to WIC or NSLP receipt appears to have gotten through to immigrant communities across the country–in states with smaller and rapidly growing populations as well as in the traditional immigrant destinations. WIC and NSLP appear to be important food assistance programs for a population of immigrant families that has suffered disproportionately from the current economic crisis… and whose other access to the nutritional safety net might be curbed.
In short, this is one of those rare federal assistance programs that works as it should, delivering resources to at-risk families, essentially according to need, no questions asked, thanks to relatively low barriers to access for immigrants.
This might be the worst nightmare of anti-immigrant groups–more “anchor babies” overrunning public benefits programs. But the fact is, as a result of government programs that reach out to immigrant parents rather than alienating them, kids who would otherwise be malnourished are getting fed. Whatever your position on immigration reform, you’ve got to admit that keeping children on our soil from starving is good for America.
Poll Shows Americans Accepting LGBT Families
01 year ago
The American family is getting pretty complicated. Talking about family matters today means brushing over questions of same-sex marriage, single parenthood, grandparent caregivers, adoption, etc.–which all revolve around how society legitimizes the intimate relationships that define who we are. A new poll shows that more Americans are rethinking their definitions of family and perhaps pulling a few steps ahead of the law.
The Russell Sage Foundation has published its latest findings from a series of surveys tracking the public’s changing views of family relationships. As you might have guessed, “family” today is becoming more inclusive, reports ABC News:
Thirty-three percent said a gay male couple was a family. Sixty-four percent said they became a family when they added children. That number was 54 percent in 2003.
The survey also indicates that many today are acclimatized to families led by unmarried couples:
39.6 percent in 2010 said that an unmarried man and woman living together were a family — but give that couple some kids and 83 percent say that’s a family.
Researchers say the common denominator seems to be the presence of children: the responsibility of raising another member of society may accord a certain legitimacy that weaves the entire household more tightly into the social fabric.
Still, not everyone thinks the matter is that complicated:
Sixty percent of Americans in 2010 said that if you considered yourself to be a family, then you were one.
Unfortunately, that leaves about four in ten Americans stuck in the ethical quagmire of believing that family isn’t defined by the people in it, but rather, by what people outside the family say it is. Maybe it’s what a preacher dictates (many respondents got their talking points from the Almighty), or what voters mark down on a ballot on Election Day, or what a politician argues when trying to appeal to those preachers and voters.
LGBT couples and their children, of course, don’t need the letter of the law to validate their love toward each other. Still, as the marriage wars plod through the courts, evolving public opinion on the issue is a reminder that the family isn’t a static institution, but a living, diverse experience that redefines itself more richly with each generation.
Asian Long-Term Unemployment Ticks Up in California
01 year ago
A lot of the discussion about race and unemployment in the media (this blog included) focuses on the high rates of joblessness among Blacks and Latinos. But the cratering job market is having a curious effect on a community often held up as an epitome of nose-to-the-grindstone self-sufficiency. In California, Asian Americans may suffer relatively low rates of unemployment, but a surprising number of them tend to stay stuck in that hole for a long time.
According to an analysis by the Los Angeles Times, “In July, nearly half of all jobless Asian Americans in California had been out of work for 27 weeks or longer, compared with 40% of Latinos and 42% of whites.”
On the national level, a similar pattern has emerged: a relatively large share of unemployed Asian American workers out of the job for 27 weeks or longer, ranking below Blacks but above other groups. The median duration of unemployment was 16.6 weeks for Asians, compared to an overall rate of 14.2 and 13.5 weeks for whites and Latinos, respectively.
The LA Times suggests that barriers to reemployment are linked to industries where Asian Americans tend to be employed. Garment manufacturing, for instance, has shrunk considerably since 2007. As with other immigrant groups, Asian American communities have historically relied on low-wage and sharply gendered sectors, including sweatshop work and housekeeping.
A study of Asian American employment by the Economic Policy Institute undercut the model-minority concept by revealing that once education levels are taken into account, “overall, Asian American workers are disadvantaged relative to white workers” in the workforce.
Asian American communities’ self-containment could lead to instability, too, as ethnic-oriented banks and small businesses have foundered in the downturn. And with anti-immigrant fervor running high, even a skilled Asian American worker might face discrimination on the mainstream job market. For these folks, finding an economic foothold means navigating the challenges of immigration as well as frustrated economic mobility, navigating an middle-class decline while pressed against racialized economic margin. Call it a model-minority recession.
Middle Schools Are Disciplining Kids by Throwing Them Away
01 year ago
Talk all you want about improving our nation’s schools, but the fact is, students can’t close the “achievement gap” when they’re not allowed into the classroom. Yet school suspension rates are climbing and potentially stifling educational opportunity for disadvantaged middle-schoolers, according to a study by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Activists have long warned of the school-to-prison pipeline–sort of the opposite of the honors track, steering poor kids of color into troubled adolescence and eventually the criminal justice system. The SPLC explains, “Disciplinary tactics that respond to typical adolescent behavior by removing students from school do not better prepare students for adulthood. Instead, they increase their risk of educational failure and dropout.”
Predictably, the survey of school districts around the country, focusing on 2002 to 2006, found especially high suspension rates among Black middle-school students. But the statistics broke down along intriguing patterns by race and gender.
Nationwide in 2006, the middle-school suspension rate for Black students generally exceeded that of other groups. Within that figure, there are acute racial disparities among girls. Black girls had a suspension rate of 18 percent, compared with 4 percent of white girls and 2 percent of Asian girls. The rates for Black, white and Asian males, respectively, were 28 percent, 10 percent and 6 percent. Native and Latino students fell in the middle of that range.
Drilling down to 18 large school districts (including Los Angeles, Miami-Dade, Houston, Milwaukee and others), the survey reveals complex demographic divisions in who gets kicked out of school (typically for infractions ranging from skipping class to fighting):
Of the 175 schools suspending more than 33% of the Black males enrolled, 84 were suspending Black males at a rate of at least 50%. The 50% mark was also met or exceeded by 31 schools for Black Females, 13 schools for Hispanic males; 2 schools for Hispanic females; 22 schools for White males and 18 schools for White
Females.
Suspensions of Black girls have jumped (undercutting popular myths about pro-girl bias in schools):
The average increase in out-of-school suspension rate per district was 2.3 percentage points for all students…. the per-district average increase was greatest for Black females (5.3 percentage points), followed by Black males (1.7 percentage points).
In addition to asking what causes this “discipline gap”–discrimination by school staff? Unequal distribution of funding?–communities should be asking if these kids have to be kicked out of school in the first place. There are many alternatives to “zero tolerance” disciplinary policies that encourage arbitrary suspension. The Dignity in Schools Campaign, led by a coalition of community and civil liberties groups, has pushed for the incorporation progressive disciplinary methods, known as Positive Behavior Supports, into school reform efforts. The campaign has developed a model school code that prioritizes children’s human rights instead of punishment.
Race and gender gaps in school suspensions aren’t a complete measure of educational quality. But they illustrate the extreme consequences of educational inequality: schools that not only fail to open doors for underserved youth, but seem determined to push them out.
Park 51 Debate Opens Space for Muslim Women’s Voices
01 year ago
Ground Zero once again seemed like the epicenter of all the world’s troubles this past weekend, as dueling protests over the planned Park 51 Islamic cultural center tainted the somber day with racial hostility.
Hoping to seize the moral high ground, advocates for the Muslim American community have worked to present themselves via the media as peaceful and Americanized–an inversion of negative stereotypes and an appeal to civility in the face of mob rage.
It’s unclear whether the public-relations campaign will succeed in diffusing the most virulent anti-Muslim sentiment. But the effort to humanize Muslim Americans in the public imagination may have a more subtle impact, especially if you look at who’s doing the talking. In a media world obsessed with the supposed chauvinism of Islam, Muslim women are carving out new spaces for representation.
Muslim American filmmaker Hena Ashraf, and activist Dinu Ahmed, who experienced 9/11 as a New York City high school student, write at the Huffington Post, “We feel that the voices of Muslim women are lacking in this debate, especially the voices of Muslim women who go to Park51.”
Here’s an everyday example: To the less enlightened, the sight of a woman wearing a hijab (head covering) may symbolize gender oppression that is antithetical to white-Anglo liberalism. Amazingly, it’s the myopia of that false symbolism that exposes Muslim American women to gender-based, if not outright sexist, attacks on their free expression. Ashraf writes:
At different places and across various boroughs in New York, Dinu and I have experienced much Islamophobia. Never have I received as much consistent harassment in one place during one length of time as I have this summer in New York, from a shopkeeper asking in May if I was a suicide bomber, to a man shouting furiously at Dinu and me, “Where’s Osama?!” (incidentally on July 4). Those are just a couple of the hateful incidents that have occurred to us as women who wear hijab — our list also includes times when we were physically and verbally threatened….
We are Muslim women who live in New York and who believe in the linkage of all struggles. What we are experiencing at the present time is not new. Many communities in this country have struggled, and continue to struggle, against hate, biases, and stereotypes. We are in solidarity with them and understand that Muslim Americans, and those perceived to be Muslim, Arab, or South Asian, are just the latest groups in recent decades to experience such vilification.
Some of the women engaged in the Park 51 debate don’t stress gender politics per se, but make a subtextual point by representing as community members and citizens. As the 9/11 anniversary approached, Daisy Khan, co-founder of Park 51 with her husband Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, spoke candidly on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show about the tensions surrounding the project and why it should go forward:
This is the fate of the Muslim community, you know. Our entire future is at risk here. So many mosques have been under attack since this project was announced. And the Muslim community is taking this very seriously and taking a real pause.
While she hasn’t played up her activist career in the Park 51 controversy, Khan has long encouraged soul-searching within the Muslim diaspora on issues of women’s empowerment. With the American Society for Muslim Advancement, Khan launched WISE: Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality, a program that describes itself as a “social network and grassroots social justice movement led by Muslim women,” with a global focus on promoting economic and political equity.
Closer to Ground Zero, in an interview with CNN, interfaith activist Debbie Almontaser compared the plight of Park 51′s developers to her own struggle against a right-wing smear campaign that ultimately forced her out of her position as the principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn.
The exact propaganda materials that were used against the school and me have basically been refurbished against Imam Feisal and Daisy Khan… The fact that these two individuals have become the targets on this issue is just mind boggling, considering the reputation that they and their organization have nationally and globally.
As Colorlines reported in 2008, Almontaser saw her dream of opening a progressive, Arabic-themed public school shattered anti-Muslim zealots who portrayed her as a fundamentalist extremist. Not surprisingly, her opponents demonized her for wearing the hijab, countering her eloquent efforts to illuminate her decision to show her faith in her role as a community educator. Ironically, opponents simultaneously tried to discredit her by linking her to Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media (AWAAM), a grassroots media-justice group that radically defies stereotypes of gender oppression in Islam.
It seems like whether Muslim women practice political activism or religious tradition, or both, bigots will find a way to paint them as either heartless predators or faceless pawns, never as individuals capable of the full spectrum of social experience.
You might suspect that such displays of bias reveal a political strategy to undermine the Muslim community by denying women’s agency. But that might be reading too much out of the situation. This could just be a reflexive reaction of unfortunate people, who themselves can’t, or won’t, appreciate the diversity and hybridity that constitutes the American experience.
So on that front, the most effective weapon against ignorance might not be militant protests or even slick public service announcements. Nor does it require every Muslim woman activist to speak explicitly always “as a Muslim woman.” A more meaningful shift in public perception would come through a nuanced, inclusive dialogue on coexistence, which would recognize someone like Khan or Almontaser as a member of multiple communities, a bearer of tradition, and above all, her own person.
Liberty Trumped Institution in Both DADT and Prop 8 Rulings
01 year ago
All’s fair in love and war… unless you’re gay. This summer’s culture wars have touched on two ends of our social fabric: marriage equality, and equality in military service. On the former, a federal court ruling on Proposition 8 marked a watershed in the grassroots movement and the legal battle for the right to marry. And this week, the civil rights struggle rippled into Pentagon with another landmark ruling from California on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
The federal court struck a decisive blow at the 17 year-old “Clinton Compromise” that silenced and stigmatized gay Americans in uniform. The law was declared unconstitutional based on an expansive reading of the First Amendment, and legally unjustifiable as military policy. The Los Angeles Times reports that the judge found that DADT didn’t help the military’s mission and in fact harmed service members:
U.S. District Court Judge Virginia A. Phillips said the policy banning gays did not preserve military readiness, contrary to what many supporters have argued, saying evidence shows that the policy in fact had a “direct and deleterious effect” on the military.
This perspective complements the reasoning behind the Prop 8 ruling, which debunked the right’s argument that same-sex marriage was somehow harmful to children and families. In fact, social science research reveals the opposite, that children thrive in stable homes with parents of any sexual orientation. Both rulings turn on issues of access to social institutions and individual freedom. Regardless of your attitude toward the military, or toward formal marriage, the constitutional principles of liberty and equality, not the institutions themselves, got the final word in court.
But the DADT ruling is on shaky legal ground. UCLA law professor Adam Winkler warily gauges Justice Kennedy’s gay-friendliness:
Kennedy’s tolerance may stop at the barracks door.
Before he joined the Supreme Court, Kennedy was a judge on the Ninth Circuit when he directly addressed the conflict between gay rights and military deference. Ruling on the more draconian, pre-Clinton policy, Kennedy voted to uphold the complete ban on gays in the military because “constitutional rights must be viewed in light of the special circumstances and needs of the armed forces.” The “tensions and hostilities” created by gay personnel “might undermine” military duty and discipline, he wrote. “In view of the importance of the military’s role, the special need for discipline and order in the service,” Kennedy explained, the gay ban was justifiable.
Military deference has a checkered history in American jurisprudence. The most shameful example was the Korematsu decision, which upheld the internment of people of Japanese descent in World War II. In recent years, the courts have struggled with how much to defer to the top military officer–the President as Commander-in-Chief–in terrorism cases; here the Court has asserted a judicial role, albeit only a limited one.
As with marriage equality, the last leg of the struggle may play out not in a courtroom but a legislative chamber. The Obama administration, which has previously voiced opposition to DADT,could push for a repeal of the policy–but that would involve a far bigger test of where lawmakers and the public stand on the issue. LGBT folks in the military may not evoke the same vitriol from the Christian right as same-sex marriage, but it does raise thorny questions about military interests versus personal liberties. Polls show that these are issues that that divide public opinion, but increasingly often in progressives’ favor.
Unwilling to leave it up to the courts, LGBT activists want Democrats, namely Obama and Sen. Harry Reid, to step up to the plate in Congress. The Senate is mulling a Defense Authorization Bill containing an amendment to repeal DADT, paralleling a bill passed in the House earlier this year. Activist and Iraq war veteran Lt. Dan Choi writes at HuffPo:
I demand President Obama and Senator Reid do the same, as our moral obligations compel us to strike down injustice and discrimination wherever it exists.
Judge Phillips has forthrightly exercised her unquestionable moral authority and lived up to her mandate to defend our constitution against a most vicious domestic enemy: discrimination against honest Americans….
I implore President Obama and his Justice Department to refuse lifting a finger, refrain from wasting any energy, statements, or money defending “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” in the court system. His constitutional and moral obligations are most compelling at this historic time.
The Human Rights Campaign has also seized on the ruling to press for legislation to officially kill DADT: “With this legal victory in hand, Congress is in a perfect position to strengthen our national security by ending a law that has discharged thousands of capable service members.”
But despite general opposition to DADT among Democrats, the litigation has hit an internal speed bump in the executive branch, since the Justice Department has been legally defending DADT. The DOJ has taken a similar stance on the Defense of Marriage Act, presumably on the grounds that the administration is obligated to defend existing laws in court in the absence of congressional action. Critics say the White House is simply dodging in order to avoid a political clash.
According to Kate Sheppard at MoJo, “failing to keep up the legal defense of DADT go leaves the administration vulnerable to attacks from the right that ‘activist’ courts are calling the shots on crucial policy decisions rather than elected official.”
So for now, DADT remains stranded in a legal no-man’s land, and without overwhelming grassroots pressure to break the political silence, there will probably be no badge of courage in the offing for the Senate or Obama on an issue dogged by moral cowardice
Clock Ticks on Stopping Abortion Ban in Insurance Pools
01 year ago
About 48,000 people have petitioned against the Obama administration’s plan to make sick women pay for health care by sacrificing their reproductive rights.
Though tens of millions of uninsured Americans won’t see much change until the major reforms kick in around 2014, the Obama administration will in the meantime set up short-term “high-risk insurance pools,” to cover people who would otherwise be blocked from the private insurance market due to “preexisting conditions.” But the planned guidelines for this limited program contain a catch: no abortion coverage. So after the public comment period ends later this month, the administration will be poised to force an unprecedented abortion restriction on women who are conveniently desperate for any kind of health care.
As I’ve mentioned before, this quiet concession to the anti-abortion lobby isn’t just unethical and unhealthy from a reproductive justice standpoint; it’s also legally unnecessary. Despite similar existing restrictions in other federal programs, and Office of Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle’s insistence that “no new ground has been broken,” the near-total ban would be a fresh blow to abortion access. Jessica Arons at the Center for American Progress pointed out that the new restrictions would undermine abortion access across the board by impacting even those abortions financed by private (not taxpayer) funds.
The irony of this “reform” is that high-risk insurance pools are supposed to serve as a “bridge” for people historically excluded by the industry. This includes many women suffering from conditions like diabetes or cancer, which disproportionately impact the poor and people of color. So for marginal relief from medical apartheid, those women will just have to avoid unwanted pregnancy for the next few years, or they’ll wind up sick, pregnant and in deep trouble.
While the insurance-pool rules aren’t yet finalized, the ban could play into a much larger conservative strategy to capitalize on health care reform. It’s no surprise that the abortion rights of the sickest and most vulnerable women are the first to be attacked, but this may just be a practice run for an all-out war on reproductive choice.
Older Workers of Color Slip Into Economic Insecurity
01 year ago
The approaching political standoff over social security reform should be alarming to young and old alike. But older workers today are facing a more immediate crisis. Data from the Urban Institute shows that unemployment among seniors has soared during the recession, which might be devastating for an entire generation of older workers of color.
While overall joblessness in the 55+ age group rose from November 2007 to June 2010, Black and Latino unemployment was especially high, reflecting patterns in the general workforce.
Yet when the monthly data is sorted by gender, we see that at several points in 2009 and 2010, unemployment was higher for Latinas than for Black and white women. This may be a strange twist, given the fact that male unemployment has been considerably higher for Blacks compared to Latinos, and especially to whites. The exact cause isn’t clear. Educational levels could be a factor; there might be an influx in job competition as older women enter the labor market following the loss of a spouse’s income.
Interestingly, 2009 unemployment statistics showed older Latinas by some measures faring better than their male counterparts: According to an earlier Urban Institute analysis, “the unemployment rate for Hispanic women age 55 to 64 reached about 9 percent in 2009, 2 percentage points less than the corresponding rate for men.”
In any case, years of rising unemployment for elder workers across the board underscores the need for a social safety net in their autumn years. The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare reports that even modest social security benefits make a huge difference for older people of color. “Over three-fourths of Hispanic beneficiaries rely on Social Security for at least half their income, compared to two-thirds of all beneficiaries.” the Committee reports.
According to the Social Security Works campaign:
• In 2003, Social Security reduced the poverty rate among Latinos aged 65 and over from 50 percent to 19.5 percent, a reduction of 31 percentage points.
• In 2003, Social Security reduced the poverty rate among African Americans aged 65 and over from 56 percent to 23.7 percent, a reduction of 32 percentage points
Remember, that was the impact of Social Security before the recession hit older workers with unemployment, eroded their savings, and exacerbated inequality. In a far less secure economy, that little bit of security after retirement could be all that many seniors have to look forward to.