TESTIMONY TO MUSLIM-AMERICAN TASKFORCE ON CIVIL RIGHTS & HEALTH CARE

Rayburn House Office Building, Oct. 14, 2009

by Dr. Louisa L. Davis
Cofounder & Outreach Coordinator, GWAIR

I write as an interfaith antiracist activist and religious leader — and more specifically as a Christian ethicist and bio-ethicist from my life's commitment as a white antiracist ally for social and health care justice, and ultimately for a powerfully good and healthy multi-ethnic America.

As a Euro-American or "white" antiracist ally I know that, despite all the services, opportunities, and access to power I have enjoyed (or at least access to people who mostly look like me in positions of power), this is not the reality of most people of color.  I also know in my heart that I will never fully have the joy of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” until our government, that is charged with upholding and embodying those words, has the courage to ensure the health and opportunity for well-being to every one of my sisters and brothers.  These words - “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” - will have little truth to them until those of us who have so much more access to resources decide that “others'” needs are as important as our needs, that their needs matter as much as do even the needs of politically-dominant, middle-class, white Christians like me — the needs we all share for safety, for choice, for efficiency and for sustainability — for simply being able to make a living for our loved ones with dignity and integrity.

As a white ally with many degrees and words, and even more ideas, I have learned that my silence can be a positive one, actually leveling the playing field when it opens space for others to be heard, when it allows other to lead on and in what I like to call this “great new bus” of 21st century civil society. 

But my silence can also be, frankly, damning.  I am mindful that many, many words have been spoken about this issue, about how America finances our health care — or not — and occasionally even about who benefits most from the system as it is, a “system” of largely unregulated, private health “insurers” who insure great profit but few peoples’ of color health.

I am mindful that the noise level of this discussion has been quite remarkable and real, and yet, AND YET, I thank President Obama for somehow trusting the American people to work it out, even fight it out, and do the right thing together.

Toward this end, I hope to offer just one more word, a spiritual resource taught me perhaps best by the Jewish theologian, Elie Wiesel, in the face of the Holocaust, but at the core of all our religious traditions.  I beg you, please, good people, to listen to the SILENCE behind all these words, all this fear and anger, and all this hope.  For there, I suspect, you may find your soul, your outrage at injustice, and maybe even your God.

Listen to the silence of those who cannot afford Washington Post ads or to wine and dine those in power.  Listen to the silence of forbearing elderly Afro-American women on my old Washington Hospital Center orthopedic ward who are losing feet and legs everyday from lifetimes of under-treated diabetes and over-worked domestic service — service!  Listen to those who cannot afford to challenge their employers stripping them of health care benefits.  Listen to those whose insurers, if they are lucky to have them, reject care with unreasonable limits.  Listen to the silence of children who have missed schooling and work opportunities because they cannot afford basic vaccinations.

I pray then that this Congress and Senate will have the courage to speak up for those who have been silenced, sickened and shackled by our, dare I say, “sinful” human self/group-interest and indifference.

I believe that we of Euro-American descent will never have full moral, spiritual OR political integrity until our sisters and brothers of color are no longer disproportionately tracked into emergency rooms across this land for health care that comes too little and too late — after they are marked even before birth, by “the long, heavy chain” of racial-ethnic disrespect.  The price they pay for white fear of change, white indifference — and even our arrogance or certainties about what we “deserve” — is environmentally toxic housing, schools, communities, unemployment lines and crowded prisons, as well as increasing poverty, illness and plain hopelessness at levels we dreamed of overcoming years ago.  At levels dangerous to us all.

Our U.S. Military and our U.S. Medicare systems are remarkable symbols of what America can both do and be when we get our words and our actions together, when we are willing to speak up, stand up AND give up for those who are silenced in this country and across the world.  This is truly serving our multiracial country. 

In the next few weeks, we will see either progress in various public options for health care or just more “insurance care” in Congress. May we stand up and speak up NOW for our common dream of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”