Starting Jan. 1, a new law goes into effect banning hair discrimination in Illinois schools.
Studies have shown one in five Black women working in office or sales settings said they had to alter their natural hair at work to feel accepted, and Black students are far more likely to be suspended for dress-code or hair violations.
Sen. Mike Simmons, D-Chicago, introduced the legislation and noted it will be against the law to tell any kid in any Illinois school they cannot wear their hair in the ways traditionally associated with race and ethnicity.
"This is especially relevant for Black youth, Black children," Simmons explained. "You're not going to be able to send Black kids home and say you can't have dreadlocks, you can't have braids, you can't have twists. All of that is over in Illinois."
The bill is known as the Jett Hawkins Act, after a four-year-old boy whose mother was spurred to action when he was asked to take out his braids when he went to school. Illinois joins 13 other states which have passed similar bills, some also extending protections to the workplace as well.
Simmons hopes more states and the federal government will take up legislation to protect against hair discrimination.
"Something as natural as one's hair has absolutely nothing to do with learning," Simmons asserted. "And so we want to make sure that schools are completely focused on learning, creativity, healing, and not these other things that are rooted in a very discriminatory past."
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits racial discrimination, but federal court precedent only protects people who wear their hair in Afros, and not other natural hairstyles.
StatePoint Media - While many Americans have financial concerns about the future, these anxieties are far more prominent among the LGBTQ+ community.
LGBTQ+ adults 60 and older earn less money and have more trouble paying their rent, mortgage, and other expenses than their non-LGBTQ+ peers, according to research from the Leading Age LTSS Center @UMass Boston and the National Council on Aging. SAGE, the world’s largest and oldest organization dedicated to improving the lives of LGBTQ+ elders, reports that 51% of LGBTQ+ elders are very or extremely concerned about simply having enough money to live on, compared to 36% of their non-LGBTQ+ peers.
Economic experts say that this financial security gap is a direct legacy of past governmental policies that put LGBTQ+ adults at a financial disadvantage, as well as ongoing discrimination that makes it harder for members of this community to secure employment, inclusive healthcare, family support and other fundamentals many take for granted throughout their lives and as they age.
Recent efforts are helping improve outcomes for the most vulnerable members of the community. For example, SAGECents is a digital financial wellness tool created specifically for the estimated 3 million LGBTQ+ Americans currently over 50, to help increase financial stability and reduce economic stress.
Launched in 2020, SAGECents is a collaboration between SAGE and LifeCents, a financial wellness technology and consulting firm, with the tool fully funded by the Wells Fargo Foundation.
This groundbreaking program is putting financial wellness into the palm of people’s hands. By creating a free account, SAGECents assesses each participant’s financial health, giving them much needed insights into their financial lives and a starting point to help them make financial decisions that improve their financial wellbeing. This includes information such as what benefits are available through Medicare, how to create a health proxy and a living will, and tips for increasing credit scores.
The app can also pair users with certified, LGBTQ-proficient financial counselors. Nearly 50% of SAGECents participants report saving an average of $571, more than 38% have reduced their debt an average of $591, and 39% have raised their credit score an average of 26 points. To learn more, visit sageusa.org.
“This is the generation that fought at Stonewall, and beyond, for the rights that so many of us enjoy. But sadly, this also is a generation that faced years of discrimination and underemployment and they are struggling financially in their later years,” says Christina DaCosta, SAGE chief experience officer. “Through the comprehensive resources and tools offered by SAGECents, we aim to empower and support these elders to achieve financial prosperity.”
In addition to widening access to financial tools for individuals, the Wells Fargo Foundation also supports SAGE’s efforts to break down the barriers responsible for this financial security gap, such as advocating against housing discrimination.
“At the root of the financial security gap is systemic discrimination. Tackling those issues is at the heart of our company’s efforts to create a stable financial future for members of the LGBTQ+ community,” says Ben-James Brown, Financial Health Philanthropy, Wells Fargo Foundation.
Research shows that people living with HIV have a significantly high risk for cardiovascular disease – as much as 2 times higher for heart attack and heart failure and 14% higher for sudden cardiac death than people without HIV. So, while many people living with HIV/AIDS are experiencing full, quality lives as AIDS has transitioned from a progressive, fatal disease to what is now a mostly manageable, chronic condition more than three decades after the first World AIDS Day was recognized on Dec. 1, 1988, challenges persist. Not only from increased other health issues, but also navigating a health care system that can still be discriminatory, as outlined in several scientific statements published by the American Heart Association, the world’s leading voluntary organization dedicated to building longer, healthier lives for all.
Characteristics, Prevention, and Management of Cardiovascular Disease in People Living With HIV: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association – In this scientific statement released in June 2019, the Association reported that living with HIV is associated with higher rates of heart attacks, strokes, heart failure, sudden cardiac deaths and other diseases, compared with people without HIV. The statement writing group’s chair, Matthew J. Feinstein, M.D., M.Sc., said this may be because of interactions between traditional risk factors, such as unhealthy diet, lifestyle and tobacco use, and HIV-specific risk factors, such as a compromised immune system and inflammation characteristic of chronic HIV.
"Lifestyle and clinical factors play major roles in the increased risk for heart disease among people with HIV," said Feinstein, an assistant professor of Medicine-Cardiology at Northwestern University in Chicago who specializes in cardiovascular risk in infectious and inflammatory conditions. "In people with HIV, cigarette smoking is quite common. This dovetails with a number of factors – ranging from chronic inflammatory and metabolic effects of HIV and its therapies to psychosocial stressors related to stigma and substance use disorders – to lead to increased risk for cardiovascular diseases among people with HIV."
The American Heart Association recommends people living with HIV talk to their doctor and assess their cardiovascular disease risk using a tool such as the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology Atherosclerotic Disease Risk Calculator, which estimates a person’s ten-year risk of having a heart attack, stroke or other cardiovascular condition. The Association cautions that the risk calculator is a starting point as people living with HIV may have a higher risk than indicated by the calculator. Other factors to consider in risk assessment include family history of heart disease and HIV-specific factors, such as whether or not a patient started antiretroviral therapy soon after diagnosis.
To help improve the health of people living with HIV, the Association emphasizes the importance of a healthy lifestyle that includes not smoking, adequate physical activity, eliminating or reducing the amount of alcohol consumed and a healthy diet in keeping with the guidance in Life’s Simple 7 – the seven risk factors that people can improve through lifestyle changes to help achieve ideal cardiovascular health.
Assessing and Addressing Cardiovascular Health in LGBTQ Adults: A Scientific Statement of the American Heart Association – This scientific statement published in Oct. 2020, highlights the additional challenges LGBTQ people, a population especially vulnerable to living with HIV/AIDS, face in the form of discrimination in the health care setting.
The writing group noted trust toward health care professionals is still lacking among many members of the LGBTQ community – more than half (56%) of LGBTQ adults and 70% of those who are transgender or gender non-conforming report experiencing some form of discrimination, including the use of harsh or abusive language, from a health care professional.
"LGBTQ individuals often skip primary care and preventative visits because there is a great fear of being treated differently,” said the chair of the writing group for this statement, Billy A. Caceres, Ph.D., R.N., FAHA, an assistant professor at the Columbia University School of Nursing in New York City. “Being treated differently often means receiving inadequate or inferior care because of sexual orientation or gender identity."
Although much progress has been made over the past decade in understanding HIV-associated cardiovascular disease, considerable gaps exist, and more research is needed to address the growing physical and sociological challenges.
Our culture is worth celebrating. But amid the immense suffering in Gaza, it’s hard to feel celebratory. by Farrah Hassen
I’ve always known my Arab culture is worth celebrating.
I heard it in Syrian tenor Sabah Fakhri’s powerful voice reverberating in my mom’s car on the way to piano lessons and soccer practice during my youth. I smelled it in the za’atar, Aleppo pepper, allspice, and cumin permeating the air in the family kitchen.
Artwork: Kalhh/Pixabay
I saw it in the intricate embroidery on my grandma’s silk robe. And in the determination etched in the faces of my immigrant parents, who raised seven children in Southern California without relinquishing our rich Syrian traditions.
April is National Arab American Heritage Month. It should be a time to celebrate the contributions of the over 3.5 million Arab Americans who strengthen our proud nation.
... right now, it’s impossible to feel celebratory. My community is reeling from the immense pain and horror of an unfolding genocide ...
We have Ralph Nader to thank for consumer protections like automobile safety. We have the late Senator James Abourezk (D-SD) — the first Arab American elected to the U.S. Senate — to credit for landmark legislation championing Indigenous rights. Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician, first exposed the Flint, Michigan water crisis.
There are countless others. But right now, it’s impossible to feel celebratory. My community is reeling from the immense pain and horror of an unfolding genocide against the 2.3 million Palestinians of Gaza.
Palestinian Americans have lost family members in Gaza from Israel’s unrelenting bombardment and mass starvation of civilians. Adding insult to injury, Israel is using U.S.-supplied weapons to commit these atrocities.
Palestinian Americans — along with other Arabs — have also been on the receiving end of increased hate crimes, harassment, racist rhetoric, and discrimination, belying the message that they, too, are an integral part of this nation. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee received 2,500 reports of anti-Arab hate from October to March.
In his proclamation marking this year’s heritage month, President Biden was forced to reckon with Gaza. Instead of announcing a long overdue, permanent ceasefire and an end to U.S. military support for Israel, he offered empty words.
How can Arab American life and culture be celebrated when fellow Arabs are facing erasure in Gaza? Nearly 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza so far, including nearly 14,000 children. Thousands more remain missing. And at least 576,000 Palestinians are on the brink of famine.
Homes filled with family heirlooms and memories have been systematically destroyed. The ancient olive trees that symbolize Palestinians’ deep-rooted connection to their land haven’t been spared.
Arab Americans have emerged as a new and powerful voting bloc
It’s easy to feel despair. But what brings me hope is the new generation of Arab Americans organizing, marching, and working with other communities to demand a permanent ceasefire. We are reminded that dissent is the highest form of “patriotism.”
Despite attempts to smear and silence them for supporting Palestinian human rights, their efforts are having an impact. A March 27 Gallup poll showed a significant drop in American public support for Israel’s conduct of the war, from 50 percent in November 2023 to 36 percent now.
Meanwhile, Arab Americans have emerged as a new and powerful voting bloc. Spearheaded by Arab Americans in Michigan, hundreds of thousands of Americans voted “uncommitted” in recent primary elections in Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Massachusetts, and elsewhere to protest U.S. policy in Gaza.
This represents a real shift from the days after 9/11, when Arab Americans faced blanket demonization without any pushback. This is progress, although much more must be done.
We know we belong in America even if we’re not always treated that way. We need enduring collaboration between Arab Americans and policymakers, educators, and community members to defend our rights, create a more equal America, and promote more just U.S. policies abroad — starting with a ceasefire in Gaza.
Farrah Hassen, J.D., is a writer, policy analyst, and adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science at Cal Poly Pomona. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
Imagine you sit on the admissions committee of a major medical school where only one slot remains available for the 2023 entering class. You must select between two candidates: one Latino, one white—both qualified.
Liam, the white student, is the son of an affluent lawyer. He scored 507 out of a possible 528 points on the MCAT; his GPA is 3.76. The son of a poor immigrant from Mexico, Jesse has the same MCAT score and GPA. Liam graduated from UCLA in four years with a pre-med major and a minor in business. Jesse graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in five and a half years with a biology major.
Whom do you choose? Do you expand the opportunities for minorities to compensate for previous discrimination?
“Affirmative action is reverse discrimination,” one person opines. “We should select the most qualified person. We should not discriminate against an applicant simply because he’s affluent.”
“I’m disgusted with these social programs that liberals are shoving down our throats,“ remarks another. “The government has no right fiddling in the business of private schools. Liam graduated from one of the nation’s most prestigious universities while Jesse matriculated through an obscure school and took much longer to graduate. ”
“But Jesse has had fewer opportunities than Liam,” another remarks. “Given the same entitlements, he would have scored higher than Liam. I’m sure Jesse took longer to graduate simply because he had to work to help support his family.”
“Since there are fewer minorities in the healthcare field,” someone states, “We must give Jesse this opportunity.”
“It bothered me to hear stereotypes about minorities.”
Someone who had yet to speak finally chimes in, “Let’s use a mile footrace as example: Two runners, one white, one black. The race begins. The white runner dashes out for an early lead. The black runner, as it turns out, has a 20-lb. iron ball attached to a chain around his ankle. He can barely move; yet he perseveres. Someone yells, “That’s not fair!”
“The official unlocks the ball and chain but even so the black runner remains far behind. It’s still not fair even though both runners now are unfettered. Equal treatment is not enough. We must compensate for previous inequality.”
The argument continues, the dialogue full of passion, adamancy and outrage. No consensus emerges.
The “committee members” are actually SMU students role-taking in my “Minority-Dominant Relations” class offered through the Sociology Department and Ethnic Studies program. We examine ethnic groups with unequal power in the US. In order to delve into social inequality, students scrutinize their own assumptions, stereotypes and prejudices.
“It was a tense and painful discussion,” says a Black female. “Some of us carried on our debate after class and into the next day at the student center. Some began to recognize attitudes in themselves that they didn’t know existed. “
“It bothered me to hear stereotypes about minorities,” states a Latino on the football team. “But that’s part of the learning process in this course.”
As students debate, I remain in the background, walking quietly among discussion groups, watching, listening, taking mental notes. I have engaged in such observation all my life, as the son a Mexican American mother whose family is from San Miguel de Alto, Jalisco and a father who had immigrated to the US from Sicily and had never graduated high school.
Democracy is more than majority rule— more than a mama puma, her cub and a white-tailed deer voting on what to have for lunch. It is also the protection of minority rights to prevent dominion of the minority by the majority. Diversity ensures respect for distinctive identities and protects those at greatest risk of being displaced and alienated internally within the US. On September 17, 1787, the Constitution's framers codified minority rights by structuring equality between states in the Senate (and representation of state populations in the House).
Apparently, SCOTUS never seemed to mind that affirmative action for white males has traditionally prevailed in society’s economic, political, military, educational, law enforcement and criminal justice institutions. Legacy admissions continue affirmative action for white males. Large, pervasive and disproportionately high rates of student loan debts perpetuate social stratification.
Diversity is not a zero-sum game. Society suffers when diverse elements are excluded from decision-making processes and leadership positions.
Lack of diversity harms both individual victims of exclusion and society at large. The harm to individuals, especially children, includes damage to psyches (depression, internalized anger, lowered self-esteem). There are also physical harms (high blood pressure, rapid shallow breathing, insomnia). Finally, lowered monetary and social opportunities pressure minorities to recoil from exclusive and discriminatory settings and become guarded and vigilant. If you do not have a seat at the table, you are probably on the menu.
Diversity is not a zero-sum game. Society suffers when diverse elements are excluded from decision-making processes and leadership positions. The most serious harm is at the macro societal level. Societies have used affirmative action for white males to stereotype categories of people as unintelligent, dangerous, or menacing. Such labels have been used to justify slavery, segregation, removal of indigenous people and genocide. Lack of diversity is perhaps most treacherous when its effects are slow-developing, largely unnoticed and toxic like carbon monoxide.
The lack of diversity is dysfunctional; it silences and marginalizes minorities depriving communities of their voices and contributions. The goal of the First Amendment is to energize speech and dialogue. A society without diversity curtails the spirit of the debate of ideas. It reveals to minorities nothing of which they are not already aware. It censors minorities and emboldens the majority with entitlement. Lack of diversity has damaging consequences, conveys exclusive uncertainty for youth, and desensitizes a society with ramifications that can extend from crucial injustice to outright atrocity. If we fail to take affirmative steps, the social unrest and violence proceeding the murder of George Floyd while in police custody will inescapably pale in terms of what lies ahead.
Anthony J. Cortese is Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, SMU, Dallas Texas and sits on the Board of Directors of SMU’s Retired Faculty Association. Cortese has served as Director of Chicano Studies, Colorado State University and Director of Ethnic Studies and Director of Mexican American Studies at SMU.
Other opinions worth noting:
Fining kids by the Illinois criminal justice system needs to end
by Officer Dave Franco (Ret.)
From my perspective, after 31 years in law enforcement and now as an adjunct professor teaching Juvenile Justice Administration at Wright College in Chicago, failure is when people involved in the justice system are left without the means to create a better future for themselves and their families. Across communities, those means can take many shapes.
...
No doubt life is always changing. If you don’t like the weather it will change, eventually. It’s been hot most all over but cooler weather will come. In most of the country, cooler weather will be welcomed sooner rather than later.
...
"In times of war, the enemy gets a vote." Those words are particularly relevant today, as tensions build between the U.S. and Russia.
But this all seems eerily familiar.
As Americans, we need to ask ourselves how we would feel if Russia ...
The GOP’s attacks on trans people are setting a stage for a broader assault on rights we all enjoy.
Illustration: Gerd Altmann/Pixabay
byRobin S.C. Griffin
OtherWords
Most days in my depraved, transsexual lifestyle start the same: I wake up at 5:15 a.m. to pet my cat, have some coffee, and journal a little before I get out the door.
I bike down the street to a gym where I get to see a few friends and sweat a little before putting in my time at the office. After work, I do a few chores and relax for a while. Half the time I cook dinner, half the time my wife takes care of it.
Like you, I like to listen to music, play a game, or watch a show unless I make plans with friends. I try to write in my free time and then get to bed on time to do it all again.
The simple fact is that most trans people’s lives are pretty normal — we’re human after all.
It’s a simple life, but it’s full of joy and meaning for me. I’m not Christian anymore, but it feels like I’ve managed to find the kind of life King Solomon talked about in Ecclesiastes 5:12: “Sleep is sweet to the one who works.”
The simple fact is that most trans people’s lives are pretty normal — we’re human after all. So why is attacking us the number one priority of the incoming Republican-controlled government?
Republicans recently decided to welcome Delaware Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, who will be the first openly trans member of Congress, by introducing a resolution that would ban trans women from using restrooms at the Capitol. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has spoken in support of the measure.
Days later, Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas introduced the “Defining Male and Female Act of 2024,” which seeks to prohibit the federal government from recognizing trans people and lays the groundwork for further discrimination.
There’s a lot going wrong in our world. So why are Republicans chasing down trans people?
These cruelties come on top of a wave of anti-trans laws in statehouses across the country, a wave which continues to build in GOP-controlled states.
All this in a country where most families can’t afford surprise expenses of a few hundred dollars, where people call an Uber to the emergency room so they aren’t bankrupted by the ambulance bill, and where many workers would have to toil for decades to earn what their CEO makes in a day.
Not to mention 2024 is on track to be the hottest year in recorded human history, leaving a wake of climate-driven disasters across the country.
There’s a lot going wrong in our world. So why are Republicans chasing down trans people?
Attacks on trans people are broadly unpopular outside Trump’s base, and we make up a small fraction of the population. Policies that make our lives better and safer — or even just leave us alone — come at essentially no cost to everyone else.
The fact of the matter is that Republicans are warming up for their bigger goals. If they can wipe away two decades of progress for trans people in a few short months, they’ll have a playbook for overturning gay marriage by the end of the year.
If they can convince you to look the other way while they invade the medical history of trans people, maybe you won’t notice when they use the same authority to let insurance companies deny you coverage for a preexisting health condition.
They don’t care how normal my life is — or yours. The point is to crush anyone they don’t like and to reward their wealthy backers. I can’t say where they’ll stop, but I share Solomon’s cynicism from the back half of Ecclesiastes 5:12: “But the satiation of a wealthy man will not permit him to sleep.”
About the author:
Robin S.C. Griffin is a development associate at the Institute for Policy Studies. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
By Dedrick Asante-Muhammad & Chuck Collins
This January marks what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 95th birthday. Nearly a century after the late civil rights leader’s birth, it’s a good time to reflect on the work still to be done.
Just over 60 years ago, in his famous “I Have A Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington, King declared: “We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”
Sixty years on, as our report “Still A Dream” highlighted late last year, there’s been some progress. The African American community is experiencing record low unemployment, record highs in income and educational attainment, and has seen a massive decline in income poverty since the 1960s.
Despite all that, the check for racial economic equality is still bouncing. Without intervention, we found it will take centuries for Black wealth to catch up with white wealth in this country.
The 1960s were years of crucial economic progress for African Americans, even as the Black Freedom struggle faced assassinations and government suppression. In 1959, when King was 30, 55 percent of African Americans lived in income poverty. By what would have been his 40th birthday in 1969 (a year after his assassination), that poverty rate had dropped to 32 percent.
Yet this substantial progress still wasn’t enough to bridge the radical and ongoing racial economic divide between Blacks and whites. And since then, progress has slowed.
Library of Congress/Unsplash
Compared to the political and economic progress of the 1960s, the 21st century has been much less fruitful — even as the country saw its first African American president and a national recognition of police brutality through the Black Lives Matter protests. From 2000 to 2021, there was only a 3 percentage point decline in Black poverty (22.5 percent to 19.5 percent).
One modest area of progress: the unemployment rate for African Americans is no longer twice that of whites. Since 2018, Black unemployment has reached record lows of 5 and 6 percent, except during the 18-month recession caused by COVID-19. But as of 2021, Black unemployment was still about 1.8 times that of white unemployment.
The racial wealth divide was created by federal policies and national practices like segregation, discrimination, redlining, mass incarceration, and more. So it will require federal policy and national practices to close the divide.
And just as massive federal investment was necessary to develop the white American middle class, so too is it essential for a massive federal investment to bridge racial economic inequality.
Investing in affordable housing and programs designed to strengthen homeownership for African Americans will be essential. Other important policies include investments like a national baby bond program targeted at African Americans, national health care, and breaking up the dynastic concentration of wealth that’s made our country more unequal for all Americans.
Going 60 years without substantially narrowing the Black-white wealth and income divide is a policy failure. In this election year, policies that can finally bridge the Black-white divide should be at the forefront of our national debate.
Making a dream into a reality is challenging work, but it’s something our country has the resources to attain. The national celebration of Dr. King’s 95th birthday should be a time to rededicate ourselves to this work.
About the authors . . .
Chuck Collins
Dedrick Asante-Muhammad
Dedrick Asante-Muhammad is the chief of Race, Wealth, and Community at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.
Chuck Collins directs the Program on Inequality and co-edits Inequaity.org at the Institute for Policy Studies. They are co-authors of the report, Still a Dream: Over 500 Years to Black Economic Equality. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
Seriously, who in their right mind would want to live under a dictatorship, even if for a day?
An article on the right-leaning website called The Hill published a story yesterday citing a survey from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and YouGov that said, "74 percent of Republican voters said it would be a good idea if Trump follows through on his remarks in which he said he would be a dictator only on the first day of his second term." According to the survey, only 26 percent of Republicans polled, it would be a bad thing.
At least independent voters, dangling from a fourth-story balcony, still have at least a palm on the ledge of sanity. Sixty-five percent said it would be a bad idea as opposed to the 36% who were okay with it.
Pardon me.
When did democracy and the pursuit of quiet life, liberty, and justice go out of vogue? Why are so many conservative voters today ready to wipe their arses with that single-ply paper from 1789 that all but guaranteed their freedom from oppression, the right express themselves, and established a clear path to air their grievances?
Tell me why they spit the largest, thickest, puss-filled loogie they can muster on the graves of their ancestors, many of whom fought and died for our great nation to preserve its ideas and greatness.
A large chunk of the American population is losing its mind. Logic and critical thinking seemingly are becoming a rare commodity. One can make a convincing argument, although admittedly anecdotal at this point, that multiple COVID infections have damaged the prefrontal cortex of a large segment of society and possibly reduced their mental capacity to that of a hamster.
Seriously, who in their right mind would want to live under a dictatorship, even if for a day?
No doubt those who approve of Donald Trump (or anyone else for that matter) having absolute power believe they would be immune to any of the decrees from his 'one day' dictatorial rule. Yes, many of their fellow Americans will suffer, and they are cool with that. What they fail to realize is that this type of power is an infection that can easily corrupt.
English Catholic historian and politician John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton wrote, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
This one-hitter of absolute power would be opium to Trump and those who successfully manipulate him. One day would turn into a few, and later into a week, then a month, and eventually into years. Quietly, those who thought they would not be in the crosshairs would find themselves the targets of oppression and discrimination.
If having a dictatorial government is so great, why do over a million people a year immigrate, legally or otherwise, to the United States from countries with authoritarian rule?
Seriously, who in their right mind would want to live under a dictatorship, even if for a day?
CHICAGO - Data show troubling disparities on the number of justice-involved individuals within the Illinois Department of Corrections.
Pew Research figures show Black people remain over-represented in jail populations and receive longer sentences.
The John Howard Association is a non-partisan prison watchdog group that monitors the treatment of justice-involved individuals and says change needs to happen at many levels.
Executive Director Jennifer Vollen-Katz said the population of Black people in Illinois is around 14%. For white people, that number is around 68%.
"But when you look at the racial makeup of the population in the Illinois Department of Corrections," said Vollen-Katz, "we find somewhere between 52% and 54% of the individuals inside IDOC are black - and about 32% of the people inside our prisons are white."
Conversations with IDOC workers and administrators are part of JHA's research, and pair with inmates' perspectives and experiences.
Katz said she wants equal treatment in the justice system - regardless of background or race - and a deeper look at law enforcement's relationships with different communities.
She said prosecutors wielding enormous power in making legal decisions is a huge problem in the early stages of the criminal justice system, and said she feels discrimination should be identified at its source.
"The disproportionate representation in our prison system is reflective of the lack of equity throughout our criminal legal and law enforcement systems," said Vollen-Katz, "and so we can't look at any one system to solve the problem. We need to start at the very beginning and do things quite differently if we're going to address this problem."
Katz affirmed that differences in the outcomes of charges, trials, and plea deals in sentencing are additional areas for reform.
She said more information is needed to improve the back end of the justice system - mandatory supervised releases, parole, and early discharge.
A May 2023 study from the anti-mass criminalization group The Prison Policy Initiative shows 28,000 Illinois residents are in state prisons, 17,000 are in local jails, and 6,100 are in federal prisons.
by Jyoti Madhusoodana
In a now-classic series of experiments, researchers teased out the deep-rooted nature of human bias simply by distributing red shirts and blue shirts to groups of 3- to 5-year-olds at a day care center. In one classroom, teachers were asked to divide children into groups based on the color of their shirts. In another, teachers were instructed to overlook the shirt colors. After three weeks, children in both classrooms tended to prefer being with classmates who wore the same color as themselves—no matter what the teachers did.
Photo: Markus Winkler/Pixabay
This preference for people who seem to belong to our own tribe forms early and drives our choices throughout life. There appears to be no avoiding it: We are all biased. Even as we learn to sort shapes and colors and distinguish puppies from kittens, we also learn to categorize people on the basis of traits they seem to share. We might associate women who resemble our nannies, mothers, or grandmothers with nurturing or doing domestic labor. Or following centuries of racism, segregation, and entrenched cultural stereotypes, we might perceive dark-skinned men as more dangerous than others.
The biases we form quickly and early in life are surprisingly immutable. Biases are “sticky,” says Kristin Pauker, a psychology researcher at the University of Hawaii, “because they rely on this very fundamental thing that we all do. We naturally categorize things, and we want to have a positivity associated with the groups we’re in.” These associations are logical shortcuts that help us make quick decisions when navigating the world. But they also form the roots of often illogical attractions and revulsions, like red shirts versus blue shirts.
Our reflexive, implicit biases wreak devastating social harm. When we stereotype individuals based on gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or race, our mental stereotypes begin to drive our behavior and decisions, such as whom to hire, who we perceive as incompetent, delinquent, or worse. Earlier this year, for instance, an appeals court overturned a Black man’s conviction for heroin distribution and the 10-year prison sentence he received in part because the Detroit federal judge who handed down the original verdict admitted, “This guy looks like a criminal to me.”
People who live in racially homogeneous environments may struggle to distinguish faces of a different race from one another.
Correcting for the biases buried in our brains is difficult, but it is also hugely important. Because women are stereotyped as domestic, they are also generally seen as less professional. That attitude has reinforced a decades-long wage gap. Even today, women still earn only 82 cents for every dollar that men earn. Black men are perceived as more violent than white men, and thus are subjected to discriminatory policing and harsher prison sentences, as in the Detroit case. Clinicians’ implicit preferences for cisgender, heterosexual patients cause widespread inequities in health care for LGBTQ+ individuals.
“These biases are operating on huge numbers of people repetitively over time,” says Anthony Greenwald, a social psychologist at the University of Washington. “The effects of implicit biases accumulate to have great impact.”
Greenwald was one of the first researchers to recognize the scope of the problems created by our implicit biases. In the mid-1990s, he created early tests to study and understand implicit association. Along with colleagues Mahzarin Banaji, Brian Nosek, and others, he hoped that shining a light on the issue might quickly identify the tools needed to fix it. Being aware that our distorted thinking was hurting other people should be enough to give pause and force us to do better, they thought.
They were wrong. Although implicit bias training programs help people become aware of their biases, both anecdotal reports and controlled studies
have shown that the programs do little to reduce discriminatory behaviors spurred by those prejudices. “They fail in the most important respect,” Greenwald says. When he, Banaji, and Nosek developed the Implicit Association Test, he took it himself. He was distressed to discover that he automatically associated more positive words with the faces of white people, and more unfavorable words with people who were Black. “I didn't regard myself as a prejudiced person,” Greenwald says. “But I had this association nevertheless.”
His experience is not unusual. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures the speed of subjects’ responses as they match descriptors of people (such as Hispanic or gay) to qualities (such as attractiveness, athleticism, or being professional). It’s based on the idea that people react more quickly when they are matching qualities that are already strongly associated in their minds. Implicit bias exists separately from explicit opinion, so someone who honestly believes they don’t have anything against gay people, for instance, may still reveal a bias against them on the test. “A lot of people are surprised by their results,” Greenwald says. “This is very hard for people to come to grips with intuitively.”
People’s beliefs may not matter as much if they can be persuaded not to act on them.
One reason we are so often unaware of our implicit biases is that we begin to form these mental associations even before we can express a thought. Brain-imaging studies have found that six-month-old babies can identify individual monkey faces as well as individual humans. Just a dozen weeks later, nine-month-old babies retain the ability to identify human faces but begin to group all the monkey faces together generically as just “monkey,” losing the ability to spot individual features. Shortly after, babies begin to group human faces by race and ethnicity. Our adult brains echo these early learning patterns. People who live in racially homogeneous environments may struggle to distinguish faces of a different race from one another.
As it became clear how deeply ingrained these biases are—and how they might be unfathomable even to ourselves—researchers began to design new types of strategies to mitigate bias and its impact in society. By 2017, companies in the United States were spending $8 billion annually on diversity training efforts, including those
aimed at reducing unconscious stereotyping, according to management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. These trainings range from online educational videos to workshops lasting a few hours or days in which participants engage in activities such as word-association tests that help identify their internalized biases.
Recent data suggest that these efforts have been failing too. In 2019 researchers evaluatedthe effectiveness of 18 methods that aimed to reduce implicit bias, particularly pro-white and anti-Black bias. Only half the methods proved even temporarily effective, and they shared a common theme: They worked by giving study participants experiences that contradicted stereotypes. Reading a story with an evil white man and a dashing young Black hero, for example, reduced people’s association of Black men with criminality. Most of these strategies had fleeting effects that lasted only hours. The most effective ones reduced bias for only a few days at best.
Even when training reduced bias, it did little to reduce discriminatory outcomes. Beginning in early 2018, the New York City
Police Department began implicit bias training for its 36,000 personnel to reduce racial inequities in policing. When researchers evaluated the project in 2020, they found that most officers were aware of the problems created by implicit bias and were keen to address these harms, but their behaviors contradicted these intentions. Data on arrests, stops, and stop-and-frisk actions showed that officers who had completed the training were still more likely to take these actions against Black and Hispanic people. In fact, the training program hardly had any effect on the numbers.
This and similar studies have “thrown some cold water on just targeting implicit bias as a focus of intervention,” says Calvin Lai, a social psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis. Even if you are successful in changing implicit bias or making people more aware of it, “you can’t easily assume that people will be less discriminatory.”
But researchers are finding reason for hope.
Although the dozens of interventions tested so far have demonstrated limited long-term effects, some still show that people can be made more aware of implicit bias and can be moved to act more equitably, at least temporarily. In 2016, Lai and his colleagues tested eight ways of reducing unconscious bias in studies with college students. One of the interventions they tested involved participants reading a vividly portrayed scenario in which a white person assaulted them and a Black person came to their rescue. The story reinforced the connection between heroism and Black identity.
Other interventions were designed to heighten similar connections. For instance, one offered examples of famous Black individuals, such as Oprah Winfrey, and contrasted them with examples of infamous white people, including Adolf Hitler. Participants’ biases were gauged using the IAT both before and after these interventions. While the experiments tamped down bias temporarily, none of them made a difference just a few days later. “People go into the lab and do an intervention and there’s that immediate effect,” Pauker says.
From such small but significant successes, an insight began to emerge: Perhaps the reason implicit bias is stable is because we inhabit an environment that’s giving us the same messages again and again. Instead of trying to chip away at implicit bias merely by changing our minds, perhaps success depended on changing our environment.
The implicit associations we form—whether about classmates who wear the same color shirt or about people who look like us—are a product of our mental filing cabinets. But a lot of what’s in those filing cabinets is drawn from our culture and environment. Revise the cultural and social inputs, researchers like Kristin Pauker theorize, and you have a much greater likelihood of influencing implicit bias than you do by sending someone to a one-off class or training program.
Babies who start to blur monkey faces together do so because they learn, early on, that distinguishing human faces is more critical than telling other animals apart. Similarly, adults categorize individuals by race, gender, or disability status because these details serve as markers of something we’ve deemed important as a society. “We use certain categories because our environment says those are the ones that we should be paying attention to,” Pauker says.
Just as we are oblivious to many of the biases in our heads, we typically don’t notice the environmental cues that seed those biases. In a 2009 study, Pauker and her colleagues examined the cultural patterns depicted in 11 highly popular TV shows, including Grey’s Anatomy, Scrubs, and CSI Miami. The researchers tracked nonverbal interactions among characters on these shows and found that even when white and Black characters were equal in status and jobs and spoke for about the same amount of time, their nonverbal interactions differed. For instance, on-screen characters were less likely to smile at Black characters, and the latter were more often portrayed as stern or unfriendly.
Thinking of implicit bias as malleable allows us to constantly reframe our judgments about people we meet.
In a series of tests, Pauker and her colleagues found that regular viewers of such shows were more likely to have stronger anti-Black implicit biases on the IAT. But when the researchers asked viewers multiple-choice questions about bias in the video clips they saw, viewers’ responses about whether they’d witnessed pro-Black or pro-white bias were no better than random. They were being influenced by the bias embedded in the show, “but they were not able to explicitly detect it,” Pauker says.
Perhaps the most definitive proof that the outside world shapes our biases emerged from a recent study of attitudes toward homosexuality and race over decades. In 2019 Harvard University experimental psychologist Tessa Charlesworth and her colleagues analyzed the results of 4.4 million IATs taken by people between 2007 and 2016. The researchers found that anti-gay implicit bias had dropped about 33 percent over the years, while negative racial attitudes against people of color declined by about 17 percent.
The data were the first to definitively show that implicit attitudes can change in response to a shifting zeitgeist. The changes in attitudes weren’t due to any class or training program. Rather, they reflected societal changes, including marriage equality laws and protections against racial discrimination. Reducing explicit discrimination altered the implicit
attitudes instilled by cultures and communities—and thus helped people rearrange their mental associations and biases.
Until societal shifts occur, however, researchers are finding alternate ways to reduce the harms caused by implicit bias. People’s beliefs may not matter as much if they can be persuaded not to act on them. According to the new way of thinking, managers wouldn’t just enter training to reduce their bias. Instead, they could be trained to remove implicit bias from hiring decisions by setting clear criteria before they begin the hiring process.
Faced with a stack of resumes that reveal people’s names, ethnicities, or gender, an employer’s brain automatically starts
slotting them based on preconceived notions of who is more professional or worthy of a job. Then bias supersedes logic.
When we implicitly favor someone, we are more likely to regard their strengths as important. Consider, for example, a hiring manager who perceives men as more suited to a role than women. Meeting a male candidate with a low GPA but considerable work experience may lead the manager to think that real-world experience is what really matters. But if the man has a higher GPA and less experience, the manager might instead reason that the latter isn’t important because experience can be gained on the job.
To avoid this all-too-common scenario, employers could define specific criteria necessary for a role, then create a detailed list of
questions needed to evaluate those criteria and use these to create a structured interview. Deciding in advance whether education or work experience matters more can reduce this problem and lead to more equitable decisions. “You essentially sever the link between the bias and the behavior,” explains Benedek Kurdi, a psychologist at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. “What you’re saying is the bias can remain, but you deprive it of the opportunity to influence decision making.”
In the long run, reducing the biases and injustices built into our environment is the only surefire path toward taming the harmful implicit biases in our heads. If we see a world with greater equity, our internal attitudes seem to adjust to interpret that as normal. There’s no magical way to make the whole world fair and equitable all at once. But it may be possible to help people envision a better world from the start so that their brains form fewer flawed associations in the first place.
To Pauker, achieving that goal means teaching children to be flexible in their thinking from an early age. Children gravitate toward same-race interactions by about the age of 10. In one study, Pauker and her colleagues found that offering stories to children that nudged them to think about racial bias as flexible made them more likely to explore mixed-race friendships. In another study, Pauker and team found that children who thought about prejudice as fixed had more uncomfortable interactions with friends of other races and eventually avoided them. But those who thought about prejudice as malleable—believing they could change their minds about people of other races—were less likely to avoid friends of other races.
The key, Pauker suggests, is not to rethink rigid mental categories but to encourage mental flexibility. Her approach, which encourages children to consider social categories as fluid constructs, appears to be more effective. The data are preliminary, but they offer a powerful route to change: simply being open to updating the traits we associate with different groups of people.
Thinking of implicit bias as malleable allows us to constantly reframe our judgments about people we meet—evaluating each unique individual for what they are, rather than reducing them to a few preconceived traits we associate with their race, gender, or other social category. Rather than trying to fight against our wariness toward out-groups, reconsidering our mental classifications in this manner allows us to embrace the complexity of human nature and experience, making more of the world feel like our in-group.
Blurring the implicit lines in our minds might be the first step to reducing disparities in the world we make.
This story is part of a series of OpenMind essays, podcasts, and videos supported by a generous grant from the Pulitzer Center's Truth Decay initiative.
Social and economic pressures have long compelled Black girls and women to straighten their hair to conform to Eurocentric beauty standards.
Deanna Denham Hughes was stunned when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer last year. She was only 32. She had no family history of cancer, and tests found no genetic link. Hughes wondered why she, an otherwise healthy Black mother of two, would develop a malignancy known as a “silent killer.”
After emergency surgery to remove the mass, along with her ovaries, uterus, fallopian tubes, and appendix, Hughes said, she saw an Instagram post in which a woman with uterine cancer linked her condition to chemical hair straighteners.
“I almost fell over,” she said from her home in Smyrna, Georgia.
When Hughes was about 4, her mother began applying a chemical straightener, or relaxer, to her hair every six to eight weeks. “It burned, and it smelled awful,” Hughes recalled. “But it was just part of our routine to ‘deal with my hair.’”
The routine continued until she went to college and met other Black women who wore their hair naturally. Soon, Hughes quit relaxers.
Social and economic pressures have long compelled Black girls and women to straighten their hair to conform to Eurocentric beauty standards. But chemical straighteners are stinky and costly and sometimes cause painful scalp burns. Mounting evidence now shows they could be a health hazard.
African American women’s often frequent and lifelong application of chemical relaxers to their hair and scalp might explain why hormone-related cancers kill disproportionately more Black than white women, say researchers and cancer doctors.
“What’s in these products is harmful,” said Tamarra James-Todd, an epidemiology professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who has studied straightening products for the past 20 years.
She believes manufacturers, policymakers, and physicians should warn consumers that relaxers might cause cancer and other health problems.
In conversations with patients, Gore sometimes also talks about how African American women once wove messages into their braids about the route to take on the Underground Railroad as they sought freedom from slavery.
But regulators have been slow to act, physicians have been reluctant to take up the cause, and racism continues to dictate fashion standards that make it tough for women to quit relaxers, products so addictive they’re known as “creamy crack.”
Michelle Obama straightened her hair when Barack served as president because she believed Americans were “not ready” to see her in braids, the former first lady said after leaving the White House. The U.S. military still prohibited popular Black hairstyles like dreadlocks and twists while the nation’s first Black president was in office.
California in 2019 became the first of nearly two dozen states to ban race-based hair discrimination. Last year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed similar legislation, known as the CROWN Act, for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair. But the bill failed in the Senate.
The need for legislation underscores the challenges Black girls and women face at school and in the workplace.
“You have to pick your struggles,” said Atlanta-based surgical oncologist Ryland Gore. She informs her breast cancer patients about the increased cancer risk from relaxers. Despite her knowledge, however, Gore continues to use chemical straighteners on her own hair, as she has since she was about 7 years old.
“Your hair tells a story,” she said.
In conversations with patients, Gore sometimes also talks about how African American women once wove messages into their braids about the route to take on the Underground Railroad as they sought freedom from slavery.
“It’s just a deep discussion,” one that touches on culture, history, and research into current hairstyling practices, she said. “The data is out there. So patients should be warned, and then they can make a decision.”
The first hint of a connection between hair products and health issues surfaced in the 1990s. Doctors began seeing signs of sexual maturation in Black babies and young girls who developed breasts and pubic hair after using shampoo containing estrogen or placental extract. When the girls stopped using the shampoo, the hair and breast development receded, according to a study published in the journal Clinical Pediatrics in 1998.
A 2017 study found white women who used chemical relaxers were nearly twice as likely to develop breast cancer as those who did not use them.
Since then, James-Todd and other researchers have linked chemicals in hair products to a variety of health issues more prevalent among Black women — from early puberty to preterm birth, obesity, and diabetes.
In recent years, researchers have focused on a possible connection between ingredients in chemical relaxers and hormone-related cancers, like the one Hughes developed, which tend to be more aggressive and deadly in Black women.
A 2017 study found white women who used chemical relaxers were nearly twice as likely to develop breast cancer as those who did not use them. Because the vast majority of the Black study participants used relaxers, researchers could not effectively test the association in Black women, said lead author Adana Llanos, an associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
Researchers did test it in 2020.
The so-called Sister Study, a landmark National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences investigation into the causes of breast cancer and related diseases, followed 50,000 U.S. women whose sisters had been diagnosed with breast cancer and who were cancer-free when they enrolled. Regardless of race, women who reported using relaxers in the prior year were 18% more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer. Those who used relaxers at least every five to eight weeks had a 31% higher breast cancer risk.
Nearly 75% of the Black sisters used relaxers in the prior year, compared with only 3% of the non-Hispanic white sisters. Three-quarters of Black women also self-reported using the straighteners as adolescents, and frequent use of chemical straighteners during adolescence raised the risk of pre-menopausal breast cancer, a 2021 NIH-funded study in the International Journal of Cancer found.
Another 2021 analysis of the Sister Study data showed sisters who self-reported that they frequently used relaxers or pressing products doubled their ovarian cancer risk. In 2022, another study found frequent use more than doubled uterine cancer risk.
After researchers discovered the link with uterine cancer, some called for policy changes and other measures to reduce exposure to chemical relaxers.
“It is time to intervene,” Llanos and her colleagues wrote in a Journal of the National Cancer Institute editorial accompanying the uterine cancer analysis. While acknowledging the need for more research, they issued a “call for action.”
No one can say that using permanent hair straighteners will give you cancer, Llanos said in an interview. “That’s not how cancer works,” she said, noting that some smokers never develop lung cancer, despite tobacco use being a known risk factor.
The body of research linking hair straighteners and cancer is more limited, said Llanos, who quit using chemical relaxers 15 years ago. But, she asked rhetorically, “Do we need to do the research for 50 more years to know that chemical relaxers are harmful?”
Charlotte Gamble, a gynecological oncologist whose Washington, D.C., practice includes Black women with uterine and ovarian cancer, said she and her colleagues see the uterine cancer study findings as worthy of further exploration — but not yet worthy of discussion with patients.
“The jury’s out for me personally,” she said. “There’s so much more data that’s needed.”
Not long ago, she considered chemically straightening her hair for an academic job interview because she didn’t want her hair to “be a hindrance” when she appeared before white professors.
Meanwhile, James-Todd and other researchers believe they have built a solid body of evidence.
“There are enough things we do know to begin taking action, developing interventions, providing useful information to clinicians and patients and the general public,” said Traci Bethea, an assistant professor in the Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities Research at Georgetown University.
Responsibility for regulating personal-care products, including chemical hair straighteners and hair dyes — which also have been linked to hormone-related cancers — lies with the Food and Drug Administration. But the FDA does not subject personal-care products to the same approval process it uses for food and drugs. The FDA restricts only 11 categories of chemicals used in cosmetics, while concerns about health effects have prompted the European Union to restrict the use of at least 2,400 substances.
In March, Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) asked the FDA to investigate the potential health threat posed by chemical relaxers. An FDA representative said the agency would look into it.
Natural hairstyles are enjoying a resurgence among Black girls and women, but many continue to rely on the creamy crack, said Dede Teteh, an assistant professor of public health at Chapman University.
She had her first straightening perm at 8 and has struggled to withdraw from relaxers as an adult, said Teteh, who now wears locs. Not long ago, she considered chemically straightening her hair for an academic job interview because she didn’t want her hair to “be a hindrance” when she appeared before white professors.
Teteh led “The Cost of Beauty,” a hair-health research project published in 2017. She and her team interviewed 91 Black women in Southern California. Some became “combative” at the idea of quitting relaxers and claimed “everything can cause cancer.”
Their reactions speak to the challenges Black women face in America, Teteh said.
“It’s not that people do not want to hear the information related to their health,” she said. “But they want people to share the information in a way that it’s really empathetic to the plight of being Black here in the United States.”
Kara Nelson of KFF Health News contributed to this report.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
As Medicare Advantage continues to gain popularity among seniors, three Southern California companies are pioneering new types of plans that target cultural and ethnic communities with special offerings and native-language practitioners.
Clever Care Health Plan, based in Huntington Beach, and Alignment Health, based in nearby Orange, both have plans aimed at Asian Americans, with extra benefits including coverage for Eastern medicines and treatments such as cupping and tui na massage. Alignment also has an offering targeting Latinos, while Long Beach-based SCAN Health Plan has a product aimed at the LGBTQ+ community. All of them have launched since 2020.
Asian Americans may want coverage for traditional Eastern treatments, while LGBTQ+ patients might be especially concerned with HIV prevention or management
While many Medicare Advantage providers target various communities with their advertising, this trio of companies appear to be among the first in the nation to create plans with provider networks and benefits designed for specific cultural cohorts. Medicare Advantage is typically cheaper than traditional Medicare but generally requires patients to use in-network providers.
“This fits me better,” said Clever Care member Tam Pham, 78, a Vietnamese American from Westminster, California. Speaking to KFF Health News via an interpreter, she said she appreciates the dental care and herbal supplement benefits included in her plan, and especially the access to a Vietnamese-speaking doctor.
“I can always get help when I call, without an interpreter,” she said.
Proponents of these new culturally targeted plans say they can offer not only trusted providers who understand their patients’ unique context and speak their language, but also special products and services designed for their needs. Asian Americans may want coverage for traditional Eastern treatments, while LGBTQ+ patients might be especially concerned with HIV prevention or management, for example.
Health policy researchers note that Medicare Advantage tends to be lucrative for insurers but can be a mixed bag for patients, who often have a limited choice of providers — and that targeted plans would not necessarily solve that problem. Some also worry that the approach could end up being a new vector for discrimination.
“It’s strange to think about commodifying and profiting off people’s racial and ethnic identities,” said Naomi Zewde, an assistant professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “We should do so with care and proceed carefully, so as not to be exploitive.”
Still, there’s plenty of evidence that patients can benefit from care that is targeted to their race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.
A November 2020 study of almost 118,000 patient surveys, published in JAMA Network Open, underscored the need for a connection between physician and patient, finding that patients with the same racial or ethnic background as their physicians are more likely to rate the latter highly. A 2022 survey of 11,500 people around the world by the pharmaceutical company Sanofi showed a legacy of distrust in health care systems among marginalized groups, such as ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities.
Clever Care, founded by Korean American health care executive Myong Lee, aimed from the start to create Medicare Advantage plans for underserved Asian communities, said Peter Winston, the senior vice president and general manager of community and provider development at the company. “When we started enrollments, we realized there is no one ‘Asian,’ but there is Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino, and Japanese,” Winston added.
The company has separate customer service lines by language and gives members flexibility on how and where to spend their allowances for benefits like fitness programs.
Winston said the plan began with 500 members in January 2021 and is now up to 14,000 (still very small compared with mainstream plans). Herbal supplement benefit dollars vary by plan, but more than 200 products traditionally used by Asian clients are on offer, with coverage of up to several hundred dollars per quarter.
Sachin Jain, a physician and the CEO of SCAN Group, said its LGBTQ+ plan serves 600 members.
“This is a group of people who, for much of their lives, lived in the shadows,” Jain added. “There is an opportunity for us as a company to help affirm them, to provide them with a special set of benefits that address unmet needs.”
Alignment also has an offering aimed at Latinos, dubbed el Único, in parts of Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Florida, and California.
SCAN has run into bias issues itself, with some of its employees posting hate speech and one longtime provider refusing to participate in the plan, Jain recounted.
Alignment Health offers a plan targeting Asian Americans in six California counties, with benefits such as traditional wellness services, a grocery allowance for Asian stores, nonemergency medical transportation, and even pet care in the event a member has a hospital procedure or emergency and needs to be away from home.
Alignment also has an offering aimed at Latinos, dubbed el Único, in parts of Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Florida, and California. The California product, an HMO co-branded with Rite Aid, is available in six counties, while in Florida and Nevada, it’s a so-called special needs plan for Medicare beneficiaries who also qualify for Medicaid. All offer a Spanish-speaking provider network.
Todd Macaluso, the chief growth officer for Alignment, declined to share specific numbers but said California membership in Harmony — its plan tailored to Asian Americans — and el Único together has grown 80% year over year since 2021.
Alignment’s marketing efforts, which include visiting places where prospective members may shop or socialize, are about more than just signing up customers, Macaluso said.
“Being present there means we can see what works, what’s needed, and build it out. The Medicare-eligible population in Fresno looks very different from one in Ventura.”
“Just having materials in the same language is important, as is identifying the caller and routing them properly,” Macaluso added.
Blacks, Latinos, and Asians overall are significantly more likely than white beneficiaries to choose Medicare Advantage plans, according to recent research conducted for Better Medicare Alliance, a nonprofit funded by health insurers. (Latino people can be of any race or combination of races.) But it’s not clear to what extent that will translate into the growth of targeted networks: Big insurers’ Medicare Advantage marketing efforts often target specific racial or ethnic cohorts, but the plans don’t usually include any special features for those groups.
Utibe Essien, an assistant professor of medicine at UCLA, noted the historical underserving of the Black community, and that the shortage of Black physicians could make it hard to build a targeted offering for that population. Similarly, many parts of the country don’t have a high enough concentration of specific groups to support a dedicated network.
Still, all three companies are optimistic about expansion among groups that haven’t always been treated well by the health care system. “If you treat them with respect, and bring care to them the way they expect it, they will come,” Winston said.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
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