Re: [Marxism] Infant death rate on rise in US South, especially among Blacks

[Andy <esquincle@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Apr 22, 2007, at 2:40 PM, Fred Feldman wrote:

> New York Times...

> Most striking, here and throughout the country, is the large racial
> disparity. In Mississippi, infant deaths among blacks rose to 17 per
> thousand births in 2005 from 14.2 per thousand in 2004, while those 
> among
> whites rose to 6.6 per thousand from 6.1. (The national average in 
> 2003 was
> 5.7 for whites and 14.0 for blacks.)

For context -- 17 infant deaths per one thousand live births is 
slightly better than the West Bank and Thailand and slightly worse than 
Malaysia and Jordan.  If one takes Mississippi "non-white" infant 
mortality and ranks it as if it were a nation (for example on the CIA 
World Fact Book chart for 2007), it would rank 94th best out of 221 
total.

On the same scale the TOTAL infant mortality in Mississippi would be 
slightly worse than Russia but still better than Barbados (72nd) !  
White infant mortality in Mississippi is, unsurprisingly, still worse 
than the United States as a whole.  The USA is 41st best, behind Cuba 
and of course the entire developed world.

A list of infant mortality by country makes people ask, loudly, how 
does the United States of America manage to lose so many babies to 
death in their first year?  It is not only that America compares so 
poorly to Singapore and Sweden and Japan, where infant mortality is 
approaching only 2 deaths before age 1 for every one thousand babies 
born alive.  How is it that Spain, Ireland, Portugal and the Czech 
Republic can muster the resources to protect the lives of babies when 
the United States cannot?

One can point out that the United States alone has a health care system 
dominated by for-profit employer-based private health insurance, rather 
than a basic guarantee of care and some kind of government-supervised 
system of providing for it.  But there is also the staggering social 
injustice, the official cruelty and racism of the American way of life 
-- for instance far and away the greatest number of prisoners per 
capita, etc.

The "racial disparity" = deepening systemic racism -- is truly 
alarming, and demands protest.  17 dead African-American infants for 
every one thousand live births in Mississippi!  This in the context of 
the ratio of black to white infant mortality in America growing 
steadily over recent decades, from something like 2:1 to nearly 3:1, 
from 1980 to 2000.

Well many things could be said but the point is that this lead NY Times 
article is another alarming bellwether of the crisis of our American 
present.  Thanks Fred.

andy



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