Deep South

Mississippi And Alabama Continue Their Bad Reputation From The 1960s

Ronald Leave a comment

Mississippi and Alabama vote tomorrow in the Republican Presidential primaries, and as we focus on the two states with the worst reputation possible fifty years ago, one has to wonder has anything changed?

The answer is NO, although now the majority of citizens of those two states vote Republican, rather than for the Democratic Party.

But all that happened is that the whites of those states switched, based on the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 under President Lyndon B. Johnson, from the Democrats to the Republicans, as the Republicans gave up their Reconstruction image of being pro African American rights, and therefore, inherited the segregationists of the 1960s.

Sure, African American involvement in the politics of those two Deep South states has multiplied, but still those states are dominated by the old racism and segregationist mentality of the 1960s! They remain among the poorest states of the union, both black and white citizens.

Now, those states are working to make it harder for minorities to vote, leading to court cases. Also, discrimination against immigrants of Hispanic ancestry is in full swing, particularly so in Alabama.

And a majority in a poll believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim, while at the same time, NOT believing in evolution, but instead the Bible creationist theory. So they do not believe in science, but believe in a Lord who discriminates based on race and nationality!

What can one say except throw their hands up in frustration and exasperation at the ignorance and narrow mindedness of these two states, whose reputation remains in the bottom ten of our 50 states, and very close to the bottom, if not the bottom!

American “Exceptionalism”: Life Expectancy In America Decreasing In Many Sections, And What It Says About America

Ronald Leave a comment

A new study by the Institute For Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington demonstrates that life expectancy in America varies widely by region, and is decreasing in some locations in the country.

Eighty percent of American counties fell behind in standing as against the average of the ten nations with the best life expectancies in the world.

The US is only 36th in life expectancy overall, with an average of 78.3 years, with overall increase in expectancy by about two years for men to 75.6 in 2007, and one year increase in expectancy for women to 80.8 in the same year.

But areas of life expectancy that are declining or lower than the average are most common in West Virginia, through the Southern Appalachian Mountains, and west through the Deep South into North Texas.

The oddity is that certain states have areas of growth in life expectancy in sections near others that are in decline, as in Virginia, Colorado, Minnesota, Utah, California, Washington State, and Florida.

Factors involved in differences in life expectancy seem to be obesity and smoking, along with poorly controlled blood pressure and a lack of primary care physicians.

The state, overall, with the worst life expectancy is Mississippi, not all that surprising, whether white or African American population. Mississippi falls behind such countries as Honduras, El Salvador, Peru, Brazil, Latvia, and the Philippines.

This study makes it clear that we have a long way to go as a nation to improve the health care of our citizens, particularly those who are poor, whether white or minority background. But instead, the emphasis is on cutting back on health care, because of the claim that America is “exceptional”, and that we have the best health care system in the world, a totally inaccurate statement, as that is only true for those who are rich and fortunate, not for wide swaths of American society!