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Health Hazard
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Health Hazard
By Charles Mills
Charles Mills is the author of more than 50 published books and over 300 articles. Mills began his career at Faith for Today and the Adventist Media Center in Newbury Park, California. For the past 35 years, he has been an independent media producer, writer, and radio/television host. W hen social justice is ignored, even the unborn suffer.
Kim Anderson went into labor with her first child two and a half months early. “I didn’t get to take my baby home,” she remembers. “Instead of gently laying my newborn in the soft bassinette in her own little bedroom, I had to travel back to the hospital each day to look down at my precious creation tethered to wires, monitored by machines, and sleeping fitfully in an environmentally-controlled incubator.”
What had happened? The answer uncovers a long-hidden danger when social justice is ignored.
According to a 2006 study by the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control, infant mortality for children born to white college graduates is around 3.7 deaths per 1,000 births. For African American college graduates such as Kim Anderson, that number rises to 10.2 deaths per 1,000 births— almost three times higher.
Thankfully, little Danielle survived and eventually attended Emory University, studying public health. But the emotional scars of that event still linger in her mother these many years later. Some of those scars scientists are only now beginning to identify.
Research conducted by Chicago neonatologists Richard David and James Collins and reported in the documentary “Unnatural Causes” rules out genetics as a factor in the rise of infant mortality in minorities. They cite information gathered during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 70s that showed a
marked improvement in healthy birth rates for African American women as society became more supportive and racial prejudices faded somewhat.
But, as social programs lost support during 1980s and 90s and overt racism once again flowed unchecked across American society, those healthy birth rates quickly fell. In contrast, the numbers have always remained on the positive side in countries other than the United States. Genetic adjustments take generations. Hate works quickly.
Bottom line? Social injustice in the form of racism not only disrupts the lives of those targeted by it, it can also be deadly to their unborn children.
Power to heal
As Christians, when we in any way turn our backs on people or show little or no respect for what they believe or who they are, we’ve stopped reflecting the very God we’re trying to represent.
Conversely, acceptance, respect, and social justice carry the power to heal. When we wave and smile at that new neighbor from another culture, when we strike down long-held ordinances in our community that discriminate on the basis of color or creed, when we support religious accommodation in the workplace, when we look upon people as equal and insist that they enjoy the same rights, freedoms, and resources we demand, we’re making a difference in their lives clear down to the cellular level.
Kim Anderson, former CEO of Families First, a non-profit organization in Atlanta, says there are three steps to healing racism, even the unrecognized brands. It begins with intent. “First,” Kim says, “we need to be intentional about our desire to learn, intentional about broadening our horizons, intentional about our positive interactions with one another.
“Second, we have to model that for our children and grandchildren.
We’ve all been given the opportunity to join in a heaven-ordained healing ministry by expressing—with our words and actions—the full meaning of Christ’s powerful invitation to combat racism, discrimination, and injustice. “A new commandment I give you,” He said. “Love one another” (John 13:34).
