Tag: Black Community

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Death Has Many Names

Not a day goes by that speakers of the Yoruba language do not make mention of death as both a phenomenon and a certainty.

Jacob Kehinde Olupona

By George Yancy

This month’s conversation in our series exploring religion and death is with Jacob Kehinde Olupona, a professor of African religious traditions at Harvard Divinity School. He is the author of “City of 201 Gods: Ilé-Ifè in Time, Space, and the Imagination” and “African Religions: A Very Short Introduction.” In this discussion we focused on the religious tradition of the Yoruba people. Previous interviews in this series — with scholars from the Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Jain, Taoist and atheist traditions — can be found here. — George Yancy

George Yancy: Here in the West, where a few monotheistic religions dominate the culture, knowledge and understanding of Indigenous African religious practices is rare. Is Yoruba monotheistic or polytheistic? Or is it something else entirely?

Jacob Kehinde Olupona: Yoruba religion manifests elements of both. It differs from many world religions that define their cosmology primarily in theistic terms. Yoruba religion focuses on the lived religious experience of the people rather than on systematized beliefs and creeds as we see in other world religions such as Islam and Christianity. Yoruba religious traditions are woven around oral traditions and practices. The spiritual realm exists parallel to the human realm and it accommodates the Supreme Being, gods, ancestors and minor spiritual entities who interact with the human realm at different levels.

Central to the Yoruba religious worldview is the notion of (Ase), which Rowland Abiodun has characterized as “the empowered word that must come to pass,” “life force” and “energy” that regulates all movement and activity in the universe. Religious activities are mostly communal and are guided by specialists, custodians and leaders of the traditions: sacred kings, diviners, priests, priestesses and healers, all of whom are integral to maintaining the balance in the cosmos.

The Yoruba conceive the world as two halves of a gourd — the one we live in and the one where the deities and ancestors live. In between these two spheres, there are forces, mainly malevolent in nature (ajogun, or warriors), as Wande Abimbola calls them, who must be constantly placated, sometimes with sacrifices, to prevent them from wreaking havoc on earth. In short, human devotional practices play a central role in regulating the activities of ajogun and in keeping the Yoruba universe in equilibrium.

Yancy: In the West, Indigenous African religions are often dismissed as “primitive” or “superstitious” by those who don’t know them. Can you give readers unfamiliar with African religious traditions some sense of the history and complexity of the Yoruba people and their culture?

Olupona: The Yoruba people, who live primarily in southwest Nigeria, are one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa. Yoruba people are also found in the Republic of Benin, Togo, Sierra Leone and several other countries. As a result of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, between the 16th and 19th centuries, a large number of Yoruba were taken to the Caribbean, North America and South America, where they had significant influence on the culture and religion of the New World.

Yancy: So in some sense, influences of Yoruba culture and sensibility are already here in the West, and have been for centuries. What about the main population in Nigeria?

Olupona: The origin of the Yoruba in Nigeria is slightly more complex. According to the Yoruba origin myth, the world was created in the sacred city of Ilé-Ifè, where the Yoruba civilization blossomed in the ninth century and grew to become one of the largest empires in West Africa. While the Yoruba Empire Oyo is now acknowledged as the source of the standard and contemporary Yoruba language, culture and value system, it is to Ilé-Ifè (the ancient and sacred city of the Yoruba) that scholars now believe all other Yoruba settlements owe their unrivaled urban culture and robust cosmopolitan city states. Other origin myths allude to Yoruba migration from distant places to their current homes, but that has not been substantiated by archaeology or in the Yoruba culture more broadly.

Yancy: How do Yoruba believers think about the reality and meaning of death?

Olupona: Death as a palpable force looms large in the Yoruba religious and social consciousness. From cosmology to various ritual practices and genres of oral traditions such as proverbs, poetry and short stories are all brought to bear on the reality of death. Not a day goes by that speakers of the Yoruba language do not make mention of death as both a phenomenon and a certainty.

Among the Owo Yoruba people, Iku (death) is likened to the hippopotamus (eyinmi/erinmi), whose heavy weight no person can carry and whose presence one cannot run or escape from. This conveys the dilemma of a bereaved child who can neither carry the body of a deceased parent nor is courageous enough to abandon it, highlighting the helplessness of one when confronted by death.

In Yoruba folk tales, death is also portrayed as an old haggard man who carries a heavy club with which he kills his victims. No one is spared. The young, the old, kings, chiefs, commoners and the rich can all be his victims. It is assumed that at creation, and before individuals leave Orun (the otherworld), the preconscious mind is made aware of when death will strike in Aiye (this world), and when they will return to Orun. The appointed date, however, is never known.

Yancy: According to Yoruba, should human beings embrace death? And if so, how or why?

Olupona: It is assumed that death doesn’t end a person’s life, but instead marks a passage from one realm of existence to the next. Hence, the Yoruba believe there is an afterlife (or an “afterdeath”) in which the living dead exist as part of the sacred cosmos.

There is also an ambiguous response to death, depending on the circumstances surrounding the event. Death in very old age, for example, is welcomed as a fulfillment of one of the cardinal life quests. This form of death is celebrated by the community as a necessary transition to the ancestral world. On the other hand, deaths that occur in infancy, childhood or young adulthood are frowned upon and not often celebrated, because the deceased was yet to accomplish his or her mission on earth.

Deaths involving unnatural causes fall into the same category. It is by tradition a taboo for older people to participate in young people’s funerals, to ward off the malicious knell of death. This is also because the death of a younger person is considered “bad death,” not worth celebrating by the elderly. It is a taboo for kings (Oba) to witness funeral celebrations or behold a dead body.

Yancy: Is there an account within Yoruba that explains why we fear death?

Olupona: Absolutely. Yoruba personal names reveal a lot about why they fear death. Consider the following: Ikubamije, “Death has ruined me”; Ikubileje, “Death has wreaked havoc on our family”; Ikugbeye, “Death has taken away our dignity”; Ikumone, “Death is no respecter of persons”; Ikumofin, “Death does not recognize any law”; Ikupakin, “Death has killed the hero”; Ikupelero, “Death has killed a socialite”; Ikusika, “Death has committed acts of wickedness,” and so on.

The dead must also be called upon to avenge his or her own wrongful death. My maternal grandmother once told me a story of a great-uncle who was murdered on my grandfather’s farm while he was working and whose body was brought home for burial rites. My grandfather, being a devout Christian, was opposed to the rituals of “oku riro,” preferring to leave everything to God. Somehow, before the seventh day of the burial, the deceased avenged his own death by pursuing the murderer in his sleep. The murderer was said to have suddenly woken up from his sleep screaming as the deceased spirit “chased” him. Not long after, the murderer was reported to have collapsed and died!

Yancy: Are there specific circumstances under which we should fear death, according to Yoruba?

Olupona: Yes, especially when deaths are unusually frequent or inexplicable. The Yoruba are accustomed to finding causes of death and ensuring their non-recurrence. For example, they fear death of children known as “abiku” who are associated with “spirit children.”

These are children who are reincarnated to be reborn and die no matter what. These children are stuck in a perpetual cycle that prevents them from growing into adulthood. Death of spirit children defies the Yoruba mind so much so that abiku are said to confound even the most knowledgeable medicine men and women.

They also fear death that occurs in mysterious circumstances such as when a couple dies the day after their wedding, a very experienced swimmer drowns and dies, a ruler dies shortly after ascending the throne, a perfectly healthy individual dies suddenly without any apparent signs of sickness, or all of one’s children or siblings dying on the same day, even though they are all located in different places. All of these examples make one reflect on the significance of Yoruba personal names like Ikudefu, “Death has become a wind”; Ikuosunwon, “Death is not nice”; and Ikujaiyesimi, “O Death, let the community have a breathing space” and Ikudabo, “O Death, please stop.”

Yancy: Is there a relationship between how we live our lives here on earth and what happens after we die?

Olupona: In traditional Yoruba cosmology, there seems to be no explicit reference to final judgment as in Islam and Christianity; humans are enjoined to do well in life so that when death eventually comes, one can be remembered for one’s good deeds. One’s character may be measured in terms of virtue and vice, or in deeds that are worthy of reward. For the Yoruba, this is the core essence of religion.

For example, a prosperous and successful individual can be said to be reaping the good deeds of his/her deceased parents during their lifetime. Likewise, an individual who suffers may be said to be reaping the bad deeds of his or her deceased parents. So, it is assumed that the descendants of a wicked individual may live to reap the punishment meant for his/her parents. Yoruba religion shares this idea with Christianity as in the account of a worthy man of note in the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 44.

Yancy: How do the Yoruba let go and grieve those who have died?

Olupona: The Yoruba spend an awful lot of time and energy on burying their dead. It is assumed that a “proper” burial is required, not only to ensure the deceased’s peaceful transition to the world of the ancestors, but to ensure that those of the living are not affected by death’s visit. Burial ceremonies and rituals may take up to an entire week and involve the deceased extended and immediate family, their lineage and clan, residents of their town and ultimately the whole community.

In certain places, it is also assumed that the dead must be encouraged to depart quickly and visit the open market (Oja) where they may make appearances as spirits. Among the Owo Yoruba people, it is believed that the dead, through a journey back home, must first return to the sacred city of Yoruba creation, Ilé-Ifè, on their way to the ancestral realm.

In the Owo Yoruba tradition, where age groups are well established, burial rituals and ceremonies are taken seriously. The members of these age groups are responsible for digging the graves of their peers or their peer’s parents who have passed on to ensure that they are properly buried. Hence, the Yoruba would say, “Eni gbele lo sinku, eni sunkun ariwo lo pa.” Literally — “It is the gravediggers who are the real mourners; relations who shed tears are merely making loud noises.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Society’s End-of-Life Problem

Americans have unequal access to the benefits of advance care planning

By Mara Buchbinder

As COVID-19 death tolls mount rapidly, palliative care experts have urged Americans to have difficult conversations with loved ones about our end-of-life wishes. With death all around us, they have argued, it is now more urgent than ever that we plan for our deaths.

But in addition to having “the conversation” about end-of-life wishes, we should also grapple with deeper societal questions about who gets the privilege to plan.

It may sound perverse to suggest that a cancer diagnosis could be a fortunate event, but cancer compels people to anticipate death in a way that many never will. Most people will never have the opportunity to choose when, where and how they die because death comes unexpectedly, or the circumstances impede planning. If anything, my research on the desire for control at the end of life has taught me that death, all too often, ignores our plans.

But planning has nevertheless been a prominent focus of nationwide public health efforts to improve end-of-life care over the past several decades. Advance care planning is a broad term that encompasses talking with loved ones and health care providers, appointing a surrogate decision maker and recording end-of-life preferences in writing. Advance care planning enables people to legally document their wishes—for example, to avoid life-prolonging treatment if one is unlikely to survive or to attain a certain quality of life—in case they become incapacitated.

Such planning is particularly important for COVID-19 because of the vital use of mechanical ventilation among the sickest patients. Contemplating decisions about life-prolonging treatment in advance takes on heightened importance in a climate in which critical care resources are scarce and in which intubation puts health care workers at increased risk for contracting the virus themselves.

Americans do not engage equitably in planning for the end of life, however. Black Americans consistently utilize less advance care planning than white Americans. The reasons for this include worse access to medical care, especially culturally sensitive medical care; religious beliefs and cultural values that favor leaving decisions to God; and mistrust in medicine rooted in historical legacies of mistreatment, experimentation, and racism. Yet without the benefit of planning, Black Americans are less likely to receive care consistent with their preferences.

These inequities are all the more painful in a year in which police brutality and anti-Black violence brought the Black Lives Matter movement to the forefront of public consciousness. The tragic deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain and many other Black Americans highlight not only a foreclosed opportunity to engage with death as an object of anticipation and planning, but also, more fundamentally, a systemic failure of white Americans to acknowledge and uphold the value of Black lives. When the system has failed and shortened Black lives at every step, can we blame Black Americans for a reluctance to engage with the very same system to plan for death? From this perspective, advance care planning may seem tantamount to acquiescence.

This is not to deny that advance care planning and communication with loved ones are important and useful goals for all Americans, regardless of race or age. I teach a seminar for second year medical students on Death and Dying in America, in which I ask them to interview a partner or family member about their end-of-life wishes. I don’t want my students—many of whom have never experienced the death of a loved one—to confront the discomfort of speaking with patients about death before having done so at home. This year’s exercise was particularly poignant, as several students had family members in ICUs, or working on the pandemic’s frontlines.

But I also ask my students to think critically about who gets the privilege of planning: to examine the cultural values that underlie the expectation for choice at the end of life and confront racial inequities in advance care planning. When we advocate for more conversations about death and dying, let’s make sure that a piece of this conversation is facing the tough questions about who among us will get to plan and choose.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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The Virus Is Showing Black People What They Knew All Along

COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate by race, yet it has still laid bare the brutality of racism in the United States

By Patrice Peck

All skinfolk ain’t kinfolk, but as Black people in America, we still feel a connection with one another. A reciprocated smile as we pass one another on the street; a spontaneous, but still synchronized, “Swag Surfin’” dip at the club; a “Cupid Shuffle” kick at the cookout. Small moments like these reinforce the bond I feel with other Black people. But these days, as I quarantine at home, the Black faces sparking that sense of familiarity are not nodding in solidarity or swaying in unison. They stare back, frozen in photographs accompanying obituaries that announce yet another Black life lost to the coronavirus. I do not know these people. I am not even one of the 31 percent of Black people in America who personally knows someone who has died of COVID-19. But in these faces I see my loved ones. I see myself.

I thought of these obituaries last week, when the United States passed yet another grim pandemic milestone. More than 50,000 Black Americans are now dead from COVID-19, according to data from the COVID Racial Data Tracker, a collaboration between The COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic and the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research. (And even that number is likely an undercount: We don’t know the race or ethnicity for roughly 20,000 of the 319,000 Americans whose lives have been claimed by COVID-19.) Everyone in the U.S. is at the mercy of the coronavirus; it doesn’t discriminate by race or class or gender or age. And yet, from the very beginning of the pandemic, the virus has exposed and targeted all of the disparities that come along with being Black in America. We are dying at 1.7 times the rate of white people from this virus, which means that the toll of these disparities has never been easier to quantify: 19,000 Black people would still be alive if not for systemic racism.

For centuries, Black people have spoken about the struggles we face, pointing to root causes like poverty, housing segregation, unemployment, and environmental degradation. And for centuries, those concerns have largely gone ignored. The same thing has happened with the pandemic. Long before any data confirmed our worst fears, Black people knew that the coronavirus would disproportionately devastate our already vulnerable communities. Driven by that foresight, I launched a newsletter, Coronavirus News for Black Folks, in early April. As the death toll crept up and up, the brutality of American racism became even clearer. Black people with clear symptoms of COVID-19 were turned away from receiving tests, sometimes on multiple occasions, only to die at home. Black families were entirely destroyed as members died within weeks and days of one another. By the end of July, twice as many Black children as white children had died of COVID-19: In Michigan, the first child to die from the virus was a 5-year-old Black girl who spent two weeks on a ventilator.

While a large swath of Americans, myself included, are able to safely stay at home, Black people are disproportionately essential workers, who have no choice but to brave the pandemic and head to work. Many have lost their lives working jobs they felt were unsafe and underpaid. “Our white executive director has not been in the office for the past six weeks, has not asked how any of us are holding up, and has not emailed us to say thank you,” a 20-something security guard told me in April. “I feel betrayed. I used to love my position and the people I work with. Now I’m resentful of the protection some people are afforded while others, like myself, are sent out to the front lines.” (The security guard was granted anonymity for fear of professional reprisal.)

As if the havoc wreaked by the virus weren’t already bad enough, the racial disparities will persist as the U.S. works its way out of the pandemic. Just as one in three Black people knows someone directly who has died from COVID-19, one in three Black people has said they will not get the vaccine, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation study. Clinical trials have shown that the vaccine is safe and effective, but a long-standing mistrust in America’s predominantly white medical institutions is only deepening, and so the number of Black lives lost to this virus will continue to rise, even though we now have a way to end it.

Thankfully, moments of Black kinship still emerge even during all the suffering. The same week that marked more than 50,000 Black deaths saw a horizon of hope. Sandra Lindsay, a Jamaican-born nurse in Queens, New York, became the first person to be vaccinated in the United States, after receiving the shot from Michelle Chester, also a Black woman. Even a pandemic can’t break the resilient bond of Black America.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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I want my hair to be fully gray.

The lives of Black folks should end with dignity

By

As a Black man, these past few months I have thought a lot about dying. More than usual.

When I was young, I imagined a death where I learn that I have an incurable disease and then begin my final, glorious lap around.

The end comes in the company of family and friends and a final touch of a loving hand before my last breath. The end, in some way, resembles the very beginning of life — swaddled, surrounded by love, care and attention to every breath. There is something sacred about that first breath, the last and all in between.

When I was in college, I read about death and dying, which Emerson described as being “kind” and Socrates described as “like a dreamless sleep.” I learned that death is sacred and is a counterpart to birth. Buddhists prepare for death, because it can happen at any time — breathing is the most cherished gift of nature.

I loved my college courses. I have taught my share as well. Every time I would return home from college and enter Grace Temple Baptist Church in California with my mother, I was in the presence of people who knew things. They knew, to quote James Baldwin, rivers “ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.” They knew about death and dignity, especially those who grew to be old.

I have lived long enough to know there is no promise that the end of my life will be the one I hope for — a time that involves a rocking chair and a grandchild on my knee; stories about the 50-pound trout that I caught in Lake Washington; the basketball game where I sang the national anthem and went on to score 75 points, including the winning basket; endless magic tricks.

I want to fall asleep at the dinner table but not before saying embarrassing things. I want to be seen as having wisdom worth sharing. I want my hair to be fully gray. I want to be called distinguished every now and again and crazy most often. I don’t need much praise and will settle for forgiveness for the times I’ve come up short. I want to tell stories about the 70s. I want to pass down my Marvin Gaye and Supremes vinyl. I want to tell the kids, “Lemme show you how the ‘Soul Train’ dancers busted a move in the day.”

When I would return home to visit my mother in California, there were fewer and fewer Black men in her church. One year, the men’s choir had become a trio. I know the life expectancy data for Black men, many who have suffered quietly. I know the price of things, which is why I lie awake at night out of the “reach of warm milk.” I know that I’ll be fine but not okay. My father held his grandson, my son, once, for a moment. He never met his granddaughter. I pass on my father’s fishing and military stories as best I can.

I think about death more now because I want to live well. I do not want my life to be something I beg for. I do not want to plead for my last breath under an officer’s knee. I do not want to run from a bullet. I do not want my final moments to be recorded by a stranger with a cell phone, a video that goes viral. I do not want my nurse to be in a biohazard suit. I want my last breath, my brother’s last breath, my son’s last breath, my daughter’s last breath to be cherished — just as I cherished their first breaths. On my last night, I want to feel like a child again, safe and beloved.

My friend, B.J. Miller, a palliative care physician, has made it his mission to help people live well in the face of death. He knows life, death and suffering. He says, “At the end of our lives, what do we most wish for? Comfort, respect, and love.”

I have no desire to give a “last lecture” when my time comes. I’ve had many opportunities to say what I need to say. I want the last word to go to the elders; I want there to be more elders. I want the last word to go to the young Black man in middle school and the young Black woman in high school now, those who will become elders.

I want to hear the cries and laughter of the baby newly born in the neighborhood that has the most cracks in the sidewalks and a few broken windows — a community that is truly colorful and vibrant, a community that cherishes that baby. I want that child to live to be elderly. I want my current and former students to have their say.

I want us all to rest in peace. I want it never to be said that our birthright pre-determines the length and quality of our lives. The lives of Black folks should end with dignity, their final breath sacred and childlike.

If there is such a thing as a good death, and let us imagine that there is, we take our last breaths, not have them taken.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Refusing to give death the last word

Between the coronavirus and police killings, Black communities are coping with seemingly endless grief. The absence of funerals during the pandemic has been particularly devastating to a culture in which collective mourning plays a vital role.

Flag dancer Tinah Marie Bouldin performed at the memorial service of Kenneth O’Neal Davis Jr., 70, at the Whigham Funeral Home

By Nyle Fort

But the death toll only tells one side of the story. The other side is the anger of being unable to see or touch your deceased loved one for the last time. It’s “a different type of grief,” says Carolyn Whigham, my mother’s longtime partner and co-owner of Whigham Funeral Home in Newark, N.J. “This is where you snot. Cry. Stomp. Shout. Cuss. Spit.”

I asked Carolyn and my mom, Terry Whigham, about their experiences as Black undertakers during the coronavirus outbreak. The stories they shared speak to the scandalous nature of the pandemic. We’re not only grieving our dead. We’re grieving the inability to properly grieve.

This is not our new normal. This is the death of normal.

Terry Whigham (center) and Carolyn Whigham (left) worked with funeral home assistant Vernest Moore at the Whigham Funeral Home.

THERE WAS NEVER a dull moment growing up in a Black funeral home. After school, my brother and I played hide-and-seek between and inside caskets. Our chores included rolling old Star-Ledger newspapers used to prop up bodies for wakes. In the summers, when I wasn’t at basketball camp, I passed out peppermints and tissues to family members of the deceased. I knew I didn’t want to make a living burying the dead. But I was spellbound by the way we mourn.

Service after service I witnessed the electricity and elegance of Black grief. The adorned body laid out in an open casket. Elders dressed in their Sunday best tarrying and telling stories of the good ol’ days. Teenagers with a classmate’s face emblazoned on R.I.P. T-shirts. A spirited eulogy followed by a festive repast where soul food is served and family drama unfolds.

It’s a ritual of death transformed into a “celebration of life.”

For Black communities, who have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus, bans on funerals have been particularly devastating. I understand why. Not only did I grow up in a Black funeral home, but I’m currently finishing my dissertation on African American mourning.

Burial traditions have long animated African American culture, politics, and resistance. During slavery, insurrectionists like Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner plotted rebellions at slave funerals. A year before the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Mamie Till held an open-casket service for her slain son so “the world could see what they did to my baby.” The publication of the images of Emmett Till’s mutilated body, many historians argue, was the match that sparked the civil rights movement.

Ruthener Davis at the memorial service of her son, Kenneth O’Neal Davis Jr., who died from complications related to COVID-19.

Three years ago, white supremacist Dylann Roof walked into Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., and slaughtered nine black parishioners. The day after President Barack Obama eulogized pastor and state senator Clementa Pinckney, activist Bree Newsome scaled a 30-foot pole at the South Carolina State House and removed the Confederate flag. “I was hoping that somehow they would have the dignity to take the flag down before his casket passed by,” she said in an interview after her arrest.

What does this have to do with the coronavirus? Black grief does not begin or end at the funeral procession regardless of how someone has died. Our dead live on in the food we eat, the songs we sing, the children we raise, the ballots we cast, the movements we build, and the dreams we struggle to make real. But how can African Americans work through the psychological wage of unfathomable grief without the sound of a Hammond B-3 organ, or tender touch of an auntie, or the smell of cornbread and candied yams, or the sight of our loved one’s beautified body?

“Could your big mama cook? Did you save any of her recipes?” Carolyn asks a family friend whose grandmother, who was known for her peach cobbler, passed away from COVID-19. “No, because it was all in how big mama did the crust,” the granddaughter explained.

“Well, maybe grandma couldn’t write down how to do the crust but did you stand over her shoulder and watch how she kneaded that flour?” Carolyn asks. She wants to make sure that what remains in the wake of loss doesn’t pass away with grandma.

The great poet and activist Amiri Baraka, whom my family funeralized in jazzy splendor, spoke to this in his book “Eulogies”: “I want to help pass on what needs to live on not just in the archive but on the sidewalk of Afro-America itself.”

How do we keep that tradition alive amid deserted sidewalks and overcrowded morgues? Hell, how do we keep ourselves alive as we witness, once again, Black death go viral?

The memorial service of Kenneth O’Neal Davis Jr., 70, who died from complications related to COVID-19, was live streamed at the Whigham Funeral Home.

I HEARD ABOUT the killing of Ahmaud Arbery the day after my friend’s father died of COVID-19. Then I heard about the killing of Breonna Taylor by police officers who burst into the wrong home to look for a suspect who was already in custody in Louisville, Ky. Then 21-year-old Dreasjon Reed and 19-year-old McHale Rose, two Black men killed by Indianapolis police within an eight-hour stretch. Then, before I could finish writing this story, George Floyd, another Black man, was killed by a white police officer, who pinned him to the ground for eight minutes as he pleaded for his deceased mother and yelled “I can’t breathe,” echoing Eric Garner’s last words.

I refuse to watch the videos of the killings of Ahmaud, Dreasjon, or George. I’ve seen the reel too many times. Different city, different cop, different circumstances. Same horror story. But when I heard that a detective in Indianapolis said “it’s going to be a closed casket, homie,” evidently referring to Dreasjon’s funeral, I lost it.

Unfortunately, I’m used to police playing judge, jury, and executioner. But this officer had the audacity to assume the role of an undertaker, too. It’s nauseating.

Black people are not only dying at alarming rates from the virus. We’re still dying from pre-existing conditions of racial injustice. There is no ban on police brutality during this pandemic. We are losing jobs and loved ones. Police are dragging us off buses for not wearing masks, while prison officials are withholding personal protective equipment to our loved ones behind bars.

Truth is: The pandemic is unprecedented but all too familiar. The endless grief hits close to home. In one year, my family buried my brother, father, and grandmother. My mom visits my brother’s crypt almost every day. Between funerals, she steals away and sits with his remains. For Thanksgiving she brings him pork chops smothered in gravy. His favorite. On the anniversary of his “transition,” as she likes to call it, she gives his shrine a makeover and sings Sam Cooke’s “A Change Gon’ Come.” Chad had an old soul.

A casket in a viewing room dedicated to Sally Alexander, Terry Whigham’s mother.

I last saw my brother on his 32nd birthday, four days before a heart attack took his last breath away. My memory of his funeral comes in shards. I remember the sound of the drums and the look on my mom’s face and me laughing quietly to myself at the idea that he had won our final game of hide-and-seek.

In the midst of our own grief, my family has provided dignified memorial services to Black people in New Jersey, including Sarah Vaughan, Amiri Baraka, Whitney Houston, and the countless beautiful lives whose names and stories don’t make national headlines. Like the daughter of the woman who banged on the funeral home window. A week later, the woman held her shirt still as my mom, standing a short distance away in personal protective equipment, pinned a brooch that contained a photo of her daughter who’d just been cremated.

The woman wept and said, “It’s the little things that mean so much.”

She’s right. A spirit of care and compassion sits at the heart of our heroic efforts to stay alive, too.

Organist and singer Joshua Nelson performed during a memorial service.

In the midst of all of the death and violence, Black people continue to fight back, risking our lives to save others. I witnessed hundreds of protesters wearing face masks chanting “Whose streets? Our streets!” at the intersection of West 62nd Street and Michigan Road in Indianapolis, where Dreasjon was shot and killed. I thought about the residents of Canfield Drive in Ferguson, Mo., who, before Mike Brown’s blood had dried, planted flowers between teddy bears and empty liquor bottles to commemorate his death. I pictured Bree bringing down the Confederate flag, and the heartaches and heartbeats of Black joggers as they “ran with Ahmaud.” Today, I marvel at the bravery of people across the country protesting George’s killing and resisting patterns of police violence amidst the deadliest pandemic in over a century.

Even Carolyn and my mother — who don’t consider themselves activists — provided a hearse for a funeral procession protest honoring the memory of the 45 inmates who have died from the virus in New Jersey prisons.

My family’s funeral home embodies the incredibly essential work before us all today: burying our dead while refusing to let death have the last word.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Not all Americans have a fair path to a good death – racial disparities are real

By and

What does it mean to “die well”?

The world got an idea recently from the 92-year-old Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh, who popularized mindfulness and meditation in the U.S. The monk returned to his home in Vietnam to pass his remaining years. Many admired his desire to live his remaining time in peace and dignity.

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego recently did a literature search to understand what Americans might consider to be a “good death” or “successful dying.” As can be expected, their findings varied. People’s views were determined by their religious, social and cultural norms and influences. The researchers urged health care providers, caregivers and the lay community to have open dialogues about preferences for the dying process.

As scholars who study social health and human services psychology, we found something missing in these conversations – how race impacts life span.

It’s important to recognize that not everyone has an equal chance at “dying well.”

Black population and ill health

Take the disease burden of the African American population.

African Americans experience an earlier onset and greater risk of what may be referred to as lifestyle-related diseases, including cardiovascular disease, stroke and diabetes. More than 40% of African Americans over the age of 20 are diagnosed with high blood pressure, compared to 32% of all Americans.

In addition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the likelihood of experiencing a first stroke is nearly twice as high for African Americans compared with whites. African Americans are more than two times more likely to experience a stroke before the age of 55. At age 45, the mortality rate from stroke is three times higher for blacks compared to whites.

This disease burden consequently leads to their higher mortality rates and overall shorter life expectancy for blacks compared to whites.

And while the life expectancy gap differs by only a few years, 75.3 for blacks and 78.9 for whites as of 2016, research suggests that African Americans suffer more sickness. This is due in part to the increased prevalence of high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes in this population.

Genetics, biological factors and lifestyle behaviors, such as diet and smoking, help explain a portion of these differences. However, researchers are still learning how race-related social experiences and physical environments affect health, illness and mortality.

Access to health care

factor is that African Americans have historically underutilized preventive medicine and health care services. They also delay seeking routine, necessary health care – or may not follow medical advice.

One study found that during an average month, 35% fewer blacks visited a physician’s office, and 27% fewer visited an outpatient clinic compared with whites.

“The only time I go to the doctor is when something is really hurting. But otherwise, I don’t even know my doctor’s name,” said a young African American male during a research study in Chicago, Illinois.

There are reasons for this mistrust. Researchers who study medical mistrust argue that high-profile cases of medical experiments are still playing a role in how African Americans view health care systems and providers. In the past, physicians have intentionally done harm against people of color. A well-known case is the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in African American men, which lasted from 1932 to 1972.

In this clinical study, 399 African American men, who had already contracted syphilis, were told that they were receiving free health care from the government. In fact, doctors, knowing their critical condition, were awaiting their deaths to subsequently conduct autopsies and study the disease’s progression.

Even though penicillin had been proven to treat syphilis by 1947, these men were denied the treatment.

Why discrimination matters for health

Other studies suggest that regardless of their knowledge of past medical abuse, many African Americans have low levels of trust in medical establishments.

“Doctors, like all other people, are subject to prejudice and discrimination,” writes Damon Tweedy, author of “Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine.” “While bias can be a problem in any profession, in medicine, the stakes are much higher.”

Unfortunately, these fears are underscored by empirical evidence that African Americans are less likely to receive pain medication management, higher-quality care or survive surgical procedures.

In addition, a growing body of literature has established that experiences of discrimination are extremely harmful for physical and mental health, particularly among African Americans.

This research adds to the body of evidence that experiences of discrimination harm people’s health and may contribute to the increased rates of premature decline and death among blacks.

What does it take to die well?

As African American scholars, we argue the “art of dying well” may be a distant and romantic notion for the African American community.

African Americans are also exposed to earlier and more frequent deaths of close loved ones, immediate family members and friends.

Their increased “vulnerability to untimely deaths,” writes Duke University scholar Karla Holloway, shows African Americans’ lack of access to equitable and fair paths in life.

Before defining “a good death,” American society must first begin to fundamentally address how to promote quality living and longevity across all racial groups.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Dying while black:

Perpetual gaps exist in health care for African-Americans

Studies show that pain in African American patients is often not addressed.

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Several years ago, MapQuest directed me on a 10-hour drive to visit my father in a Florida hospital. Complications from diabetes, including blindness, kidney failure, congestive heart failure, and a below-the-knee amputation, had taken their toll. This time my father, 69, was hospitalized for an infection of unknown origin that physicians could not name, despite their many attempts to grow cultures.

I did not know it at the time, but my father was dying.

Once I arrived at the hospital from Durham, North Carolina, I could hear his screams from the nurses’ station. “Never mind. I hear him,” I told the nurse whom I had just asked the location of my father’s room. “I’ll follow the sounds.”

That any patient would be left in so much pain that his screams could be heard down the hall was unacceptable to me. That this patient was my father, a man I had always known as a big, strong former football player – the kind of man other men didn’t dare cross (but who was also loving and gentle) – was difficult for me to process. Yet, here I was, being guided to his hospital room by the sound of his cries. Despite being a trained philosopher with an interest in bioethics, I had not yet begun to think about the ways in which racialized health disparities manifest even at the end of life. My father’s excruciatingly painful process of dying was but one example.

The author with her father, John Wesley Wilson, on Easter Sunday, 1977.

Gaps while living, gaps while dying

It is well documented that African-Americans experience excess mortality, or deaths beyond the expected mortality rate. However, even if disparities in the mortality rate for African-Americans were rectified tomorrow, the fact remains that we will all eventually die. And how we die matters.

According to a 2013 Pew Research survey, 72 percent of American adults have given at least some thought to their end of life wishes, with 37 percent of American adults having given their end of life wishes a “great deal of thought.” Some of these wishes include decisions about pain management, maintaining quality of life, and whether to continue aggressive medical treatment for terminal illness.

Additionally, research shows that people tasked with making treatment decisions for loved ones who cannot express their own wishes sometimes experience distress about watching their loved one suffer. Even months or years later, they wonder whether they made the “right” decision.

Pain ignored

Black patients generally receive worse pain management in primary care environments and emergency rooms. Even black children are not treated for their pain to the extent that white children are. Some attribute this to false beliefs about biological differences between black and white patients, including the belief that black people have “thicker skin” and, therefore, do not experience as much pain as whites. These false beliefs lead to inaccurate pain assessments by physicians evaluating black patients and an unwillingness to take the pain complaints of black patients as seriously.

This disparity in black patients’ pain management continues even as black patients are dying. Families often want to ensure that their loved ones are as comfortable as possible once patients reach the point where death is near. Racialized gaps in pain management lead to a denial of humane comfort care that contributes to unnecessary suffering for black patients and their loved ones.

Symptoms ignored

Pain is ignored more in African Americans patients, and so are symptoms.

Inadequate pain management is but one aspect of the lower quality of care that black patients report in general that affects when and how black patients die. In December 2015, 57 year-old Barbara Dawson was arrested and forcibly removed from Calhoun Liberty Hospital near Tallahassee, Florida, after she refused to leave without further treatment. Although she had been evaluated in the hospital, she was discharged despite her continued complaints of difficulty breathing. Hospital personnel apparently assumed she was faking her symptoms and called police to arrest her for being disruptive. Dawson collapsed before she could be placed in the police cruiser and was returned to the hospital where she died an hour later from an undetected blood clot in her lungs.

Dawson may or may not have been at the end of life when she arrived at the hospital. However, hospital staff allowed her condition to deteriorate by not taking her complaints seriously. She died only feet away from people who could have, at minimum, eased her process of dying. The hospital was later fined US$45,000, and Dawson’s estate settled a lawsuit against the hospital for $200,000 in 2017.

Less interaction

Dawson’s experience is a dramatic and appalling case. Nevertheless, one groundbreaking study revealed that physicians generally interact less – both verbally and nonverbally – with black patients who are dying than with white patients who are dying. At the end of their lives, black patients do not receive the same comfort care, including eye contact and touch, from physicians that white patients do.

The U.S. health care system can improve care for all patients at the end of life. However, this system still denies black patients the kinds of interventions that white patients often take for granted. This denial contributes to more painful, horrific deaths of black patients and compounds the grief of their loved ones.

In my father’s case, even as part of me still hoped for a miracle, the thing I wanted most in the world was for him to be as comfortable as possible. That this did not happen despite my best efforts still haunts me when I think about the end of my father’s life.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!