Fifteen Things That Caught My Eye Today: the Scourge of Ableism, Vulnerable Children & the Pandemic & More (September 4, 2020)

1. Anita Cameron: Assisted suicide is not the answer as long as racial disparities in care, disability bias go on

I want to be able to live. I want my conditions effectively treated, and I want effective pain relief. But while Martignetti may assume he will get good care, Black people like me tend to receive inferior care because of racial disparities in cardiac care, diabetes, and cancer.

Black people like me with chronic pain avoid the emergency room because we are treated like drug addicts. Black people, particularly women, get sent home to die because we are not believed.…

Assisted suicide endangers seniors, sick people, disabled people, poor people, and Black and brown people. As long as racial disparities and disability discrimination exist in health care, assisted suicide cannot be the answer.

2. Kristen Hanson: Ableism in Medical Care Has Life or Death Consequences

We were lucky. If J.J.’s grand mal seizure had caused permanent brain damage or paralysis, I might have found myself in an even more difficult situation like the one Melissa Hickson encountered. Her husband’s doctor informed her that they were going to stop treating him because of his “low quality” of life. It is painful to see the look in the doctor’s eyes when they have given up hope, but even more painful when they deem care unnecessary because of an arbitrary quality of life judgment.  

In his final days as he battled terminal cancer, J.J. chose to fight against this ableism in our medical system which has perhaps its most deadly expression in assisted suicide policy. Assisted suicide sets up a two-tiered system where some people get suicide prevention and the standard of care, and others, namely those with life-threatening disabilities, get suicide assistance and healthcare rationing. This insidious form of ableism results in death to the devalued group, and nothing could be more discriminatory. 

3. Bishop says Nigeria a ‘Molotov cocktail’ as it prepares to mark 60th anniversary

4. The Daily Signal: Parents Sue School System for Discrimination Against High-Achieving Asian Kids

“If you have a neutral and fair admissions process, we shouldn’t care what the racial outcome is. And we shouldn’t be manipulating it to get to the point where we want a racial outcome,” Chris Kieser, one of the foundation’s lawyers on the case, told The Daily Signal on Wednesday morning.

. . .

In 2017, Montgomery’s school system implemented major changes in the admissions process on the recommendation of an education consultancy called Metis Associates. 

. . .

In the one-year span between 2017 and 2018, the percentage of Asian Americans participating in several gifted and talented programs in MCPS middle schools dropped. 

In 2017, 40% of the students admitted to the selective Takoma Park Middle School were Asian; in 2018, that percentage dipped to 31.4%. 

5. Naomi Schaefer Riley: Invisible Children

Throughout the spring, child welfare agencies across the country were warning about a precipitous decline in reports made to child abuse hotlines. Massachusetts saw a drop of 55%. In New York City, it was 51%. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, the Division of Children and Family Services received 1,486 complaints of abuse or neglect in April and May, down from 2,934 during those months in 2019.

No one thinks the reports are the result of children being subjected to less maltreatment. Rather, it’s that children are not being seen. More than a fifth of maltreatment reports in 2018 came from teachers.

6. Neglecting At-Risk Children in the Name of Cultural Sensitivity

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8. Archbishop José H. Gomez : The future of Catholic schools

Los Angeles is the nation’s largest Catholic school system, and we feel strongly here that our schools are essential to the Church’s mission of serving society and promoting human dignity.

About 80% of our students come from minority families and 60% of our schools are located in urban or inner-city neighborhoods. Nearly 20% of the children we serve are not Catholics.

I remain committed to doing everything I can to keep our schools open and thriving, and to providing a Catholic education for every child who seeks it.

9. Adam Harris: The New Southern Strategy

When Reed, who is 46, broke two centuries of racial precedent to become Montgomery’s first Black mayor, in 2019, thousands of the city’s residents exhaled. For most of Montgomery’s 200-year history, Reed told me, the plight of the city’s Black people — who make up roughly 60 percent of the population there — has been overlooked. The same was true in any number of cities across the South and beyond. Left unaddressed, dissatisfaction only brews. As Reed stands before the council, he’s talking about masks — but, more fundamentally, what he’s saying is that the Black people in his city are being heard.

. . .

Simply putting Black faces in leadership positions doesn’t change the underlying systems. When Lee took office, the experience of cities with recently elected Black mayors in the Midwest had already begun to illustrate this. In 1967, Carl B. Stokes was elected the first Black mayor of Cleveland, where racism and segregation had kept Black communities poor and overpoliced. Businesses were closing. Black people were losing jobs. Resentment festered among Black residents, and despite Stokes’s election, it boiled over into a rebellion in Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood. At first, Stokes took bold steps that previous mayors would not have, pulling all white police officers from Glenville, in hopes that Black officers from the Cleveland police department could negotiate a peace with the rioters. But when that failed, Stokes sent white officers back to Glenville, and resorted to the same tactics previous mayors had used to quash the uprising. 

10. Ryan Tucker and Travis Wussow: What’s next for religious freedom in Nevada?

Under Gov. Steve Sisolak’s phased COVID-19 reopening orders, many businesses have been permitted to reopen at half capacity, including casinos, indoor theme parks, gyms, and restaurants. But religious services are capped at 50 people, regardless of the size of the facility or what other measures are taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Practically, this means that if a casino’s maximum capacity is 2,000 people, 1,000 people may gamble at its tables and slot machines, while a church of the same size may welcome just 50 to a worship service

11. A majority of young adults in the U.S. live with their parents since the Great Depression

12. What Biden Understands That the Left Does Not

13. John C. Danforth and Fr. Matt Malone: A First Step Toward Loving Our Enemies

This may sound fantastical or naively optimistic, but a common element in the traditions of both our churches may provide a practical model for reducing polarization. It is called the exchange of peace, a simple act of reconciliation before beginning the most sacred part of the liturgy. We turn to one another and say: “The peace of the Lord be always with you.” This practice should go beyond our sanctuaries. Imagine if Americans began to exchange the peace with their political opponents. In a secular setting they could simply say, “I am your friend.”

This would transform the tone of politics. Treating opponents as friends would be more than a nicety. By showing that we are disposed to listen as well as speak, it would make possible real dialogue.

14. Fr. Raymond J. de Souza: Discovering the roots that nurtured faith

I tell young couples that wedding anniversaries are feast days for families, a day to give thanks for the foundation of that family through the sacrament of marriage. As we should remember and celebrate our baptismal anniversaries, families should celebrate wedding anniversaries as the sacramental foundation of their life together.

One hundred years ago my grandparents’ wedding began an intercontinental and multigenerational adventure in family and faith. There is much for which to give thanks to God.

15. Doctor reunites with delivered baby 6 months later