what does that mean for the field as a whole? i think that s a critical issue in the context of a pandemic that disproportionately hit communities of color. and i am so glad you raised that. i remember in the early weeks of the pandemic in new york last spring there was a report from the city that showed that black new york city residents were dying at twice the rate of white new york city residents. so were hispanic city residents. there was also an overrepresentation of hospitalizations and case rates in those communities. and i think that sharpens the call to boost representation and diversity in the field of medicine. right now just around 5% of american doctors are black, 5.8% of hispanic, and we have access to more an more research that shows that patients have better health outcomes when they are seen by doctors who look like them. in some cases they are more like to to agree to preventative health measures like diabetes screens. when we talk about diversity in the field, it s
to have issue. the stakes are people s health and people s lives. and i think the pandemic that just disproportionately harmed communities of color should sharpen the calls to diversify the field and continue to open the pipeline to more and more doctors of color. because you can study this question of inequity as an academic question, i have to imagine being out there on the front lines at the height of this pandemic it came into sharp focus in very real and practical way? truly did. and i m a proud hispanic lebanese woman. for me it really hit home very hard seeing family, people who looked like my family members getting very sick and having to take care of them from that. and not having the opportunity to have all of the staff around you speak your primary language. and so that s where my spanish skills came into play there. and one of the reasons why i got
for people to be conflicted about juneteenth because we should celebrate and we should hold up our ancestors that gave their lives for this country, who came here and were considered property and chattel and who overcame and resisted. at the same time, we have to know that freedom has not come, we are free-ish in, and in fact the conflict and the hypocrisy of giving us the trimmings of freedom without the meat is what we are getting right now. and instead what we would say is, yes, let s celebrate. number two, let s change the system so that all americans can participate in our democracy. free-ish. that is incredibly powerful. it seems that one of the challenges here is that it s very easy to frame this up as a partisan issue, right? you have republicans who are attacking the right to vote at the state level who are resisting reform at the federal level. you have democrats pushing back.
but there are a lot of voters for whom that partisan frein is not going to resonate. for them this has to be a question of morality. this has to be a moral issue. how do you talk about this in a way that doesn t let anybody off the hook and at the same time appeals to a voter who might not be motivated by the partisan frame? you know, my leader, dr. barbara, i just the bottom line is we have to be recognize that this is a democracy issue. at the end of the day my right to vote should not be contingent on what political party is in power, that the constitution does say that we the people and what we have to do is we have to engage people and educate folks, those of us i think that we need people, we need republicans and democrats and libertarians and people when are who don t claim a party to say, listen, you do not know no political party in this country has the right to undermine access to the pilot. and we have to really recognize this is an issue around not just civil rights
joe manchin didn t move. some of what he put there was already in the bill. here s the thing. voting rights is not just a black issue. it s a class issue, it s a progress issue. and that s when we went to west virginia, 8 #% of the audience was white, poor white people from the mountains. we call there from the hood to the holler. on monday we are having national poor people s moral assembly, excuse me, mass asem ably, moral march on washington launching 36 # a days to march on washington. that s why wednesday kentuckians and white west virginians will lead us in a march on manchin and mcconnell because they understand and dr. king said this. voting rights, it s always connected to economic justice. why is the u.s. chamber of commerce applauding manchin in his stance against voting rights, his stance on the filibuster? what we have to understand is when you suppress the vote, you also suppress people who would