In Maryland, the Montgomery County Council has introduced a resolution deeming racism a public health crisis.
In an interview with Cheddar, councilmember Will Jawando says disparities the black community faces are staggering. Recent social uprisings might have lit the flame under Jawando to introduce the resolution but the issue of racial inequality goes back hundreds of years, he said.
"Racism is the direct result, for 401 years, we've been either property or legally discriminated against for most of that time," Jawando told Cheddar.
In Montgomery County, systemic racism is not limited to just over-assertive and sometimes lethal policing of the black community, he said. It's also running rampant in the healthcare system. As COVID-19 continues to ravage communities of color nationwide, 18 percent of the black population in his county makes up a quarter of the deaths related to the virus.
For Jawando, racism in the Washington DC suburb is simply a reflection of society on a smaller scale.
"If you look at maternal health and childbirth, black women die at three times the rate," he said. "When they come in with problems, often doctors — look at Serena Williams — don't believe that they're sick."
Introducing the resolution, which he expects to pass next week, is a first step for curing the public health crisis in his county, Jawando said, but he hopes the measure is eventually recognized on both the state and federal levels. He also supports other methods of combating racism including the growing call to defund police departments nationwide.
"We shouldn't have stats driven by policing," he explained. "De-escalation, that should be rewarded just as much as we reward arrests and tickets."
President Biden on Tuesday called on the Senate to change its rules to allow the passage of voting rights legislation in his most pointed remarks yet on the issue.
2021's supply chain woes are quickly becoming a 2022 problem as well. Here's what experts are anticipating for Year Two of the supply chain crisis.
U.S. employers added a modest 199,000 jobs last month while the unemployment rate fell sharply, at a time when businesses are struggling to fill jobs with many Americans remaining reluctant to return to the workforce.
A top Tennessee House Republican lawmaker has apologized for losing his temper and being ejected from watching a high school basketball game after getting into a confrontation with a referee.
Locked in a dispute over his COVID-19 vaccination status, Novak Djokovic was confined to an immigration detention hotel in Australia on Thursday.
President Joe Biden addressed the nation Thursday from the U.S. Capitol Building, as it marks one year since rioters breached the building in a deadly attack.
Federal Reserve policymakers at a meeting last month said the U.S. job market was nearly at levels healthy enough that the central bank's low-interest rate policies were no longer needed.
The U.S. and the Iraqi military say a Katyusha rocket has struck an Iraqi military base hosting U.S. troops at Baghdad’s international airport, and in Syria, eight rounds of indirect fire hit a base where members of the U.S.-led coalition are deployed.
A record 4.5 million American workers quit their jobs in November, a sign of confidence and more evidence that the U.S. job market is bouncing back strongly from last year’s coronavirus recession.
American activists are appealing to Tesla Inc. to close a new showroom in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang, where officials are accused of abuses against mostly Muslim ethnic minorities.
