Never heard this ~ what's your source?
If a cigarette (one "r") company advertises in a given area, how is that racism? How do you know that there (not "their") are more? Again, what are your sources? Also, what is the point of the lung cancer comment and what are your sources?
Yeah, I did say that; it is. I also remember "Whites Only" signs over water fountains and over the front seats in the busses in Dallas. Stuff you never saw, never will see. I reduced your font size because I felt like you were yelling at me. You weren't, were you?
Peace and love.
Tobacco Industry Documents and the African American Community
Joint Project of
The National African American Tobacco Prevention Network and
The University of Dayton School of Law
Kiss of death
Kiss of death:
African Americans and the Tobacco Industry,
Claudia Morain
11/15/93 American Medical News 13,
American Medical Association,
Monday, November 15, 1993;
Vol. 36, No. 43.
Around noon on a July day in the tiny town of Mineola, Tex., dozens of prominent townsfolk gathered outside an old hotel. They had come to pay a hero's tribute -- complete with medallion, proclamation, and the first key ever made to Mineola -- to their most famous native son, Willie Brown. Brown rose from poverty and segregation in the 1940s to become one of the most powerful state legislators in the country. For more than a decade, the black Democrat has been speaker of the California Assembly. Harold Plunk, Mineola's chamber of commerce president, praised Brown's fortitude. Mayor Ralph Bruner heralded him as a role model for young people. No one, however, mentioned the tobacco money...
According to a study by the University of California, San Francisco, Brown pocketed $221.367 from tobacco interests during 1991 and 1992 -- four times more than Sen. Wendell Ford (D, Ky.), the largest congressional recipient during the period. The industry gave Brown the money as it girded for battle against a bill to ban smoking in virtually all enclosed public spaces in California, where one in eight Americans lives. Its supporters blame Brown for the measure's failure. Brown declined to comment on his industry contributions or his role in the smoking ban's defeat.
His relationship with the tobacco industry exemplifies a decades-old interdependence between tobacco and black America, ties few have challenged in the past. That's changing now, as awareness grows of the heavy toll tobacco takes on minorities -- and of the industry's heavy-handed efforts to lure more of them to smoke. Increasingly, black physicians and other minority leaders are denouncing tobacco, an industry that has done more both to benefit and bury African-Americans than perhaps any other enterprise.
In July, the National Medical Assn. and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched one of the biggest public anti-smoking projects ever aimed specifically at blacks. The $200,000 public-advertising campaign encourages blacks to kick cigarettes. It also calls on African-American organizations to re-examine their ties to tobacco, and to take a more active part in the anti-smokiong movement.
"Young people in the African-American community are being targeted by the tobacco industry; their neighborhoods are filled with billboards showing smoking as pleasant and glamorous," says Leonard E. Lawrence, MD, president of the NMA, which represents 17,000 minority physicians. "We've asked some of our brother and sister organizations to take a look at the financial support they may receive from tobacco corporations, and to consider that this may give a double message to young people about what is and isn't acceptable."
Special relationships
http://academic.udayton.edu/health/NAATPN/kiss.htm
What is Institutional Racism?
Institutional racism is a form of racism which is structured into political and social institutions. It occurs when institutions, including corporations, governments and universities, discriminate either deliberately or indirectly, against certain groups of people to limit their rights. Race-based discrimination in housing, education, employment and health for example are forms of institutional racism. It reflects the cultural assumptions of the dominant group, so that the practices of that group are seen as the norm to which other cultural practices should conform (Anderson and Taylor, 2006). Institutional racism is more subtle, less visible, and less identifiable than individual acts of racism, but no less destructive to human life and human dignity. The people who manage our institutions may not be racists as individuals, but they may well discriminate as part of simply carrying out their job, often without being aware that their role in an institution is contributing to a discriminatory outcome. This not only threatens the efforts to improve health care for all Americans, but it also creates problems for a society that continues to struggle with a legacy of racial discrimination and oppression (Copeland, 2005). Although institutional racism may not necessarily be caused by intentional racism, it does however have very serious consequences for people of color in the United States especially in the health care system.
http://institutionalracism.net/default.aspx
Health Conditions: In 2003, the death rate for African Americans was higher than Whites for heart diseases, stroke, cancer, asthma, influenza and pneumonia, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, and homicide.
http://www.omhrc.gov/templates/browse.aspx?lvl=2&lvlID=51
