4-THE CAROLINA TIMES
SAT., MAY‘19,1979
THE BLACK COMMUNITY CAM AND MUST DO THE JOB
ARB WB^INd TO SIT ON OUR
HANDS AND LETBLACHCOmUNITIBS
CRUhSLE AROUND US? GRASS ROOTS
COMMUNTTY ORGANIZATIORS MUST
emerge to forge a united effort
AGAINST CRIMBNARCOTICS TRAFFICH
EDUCATION IS AN
OPPORTUNITY
The top Student among North
Carolina A ’ T’s graduating class
of 950 last week in Greensboro
was Sebastian Sarwatt, a native
of Tanzania (Africa). Sarwatt
compiled a 3.967 grade point
average on a 4.000 scale.
The top graduate in Benedict
(Columbia, S.C.) College’s 1979
class is Glen Duncan of Grenada,
West Indies, a chemistry major
weho earned a perfect 4.0 grade
point average on a 4.0 scale.
While we do not begrudge these
honors going to foreign students,
the increasing incidence of more
disadvantaged foreign students
being able to overcome their han
dicaps than American blacks
makes us wonder if our post
desegregation generations of
blacks have lost, or never known,
the me^ng: of the word
“opportunity.” Education is a
privilege and an opjportumty —
an opportunity to lift one s self
out of whatever doldrums fate
m^ have decreed.
Entirely too many young
American blacks believe that
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who propose to
favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops
without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and
lightning. They want the oceans majestic waves without the awful roar
of its waters.”
-Frederick Douglass
THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW
yoUSSAINT
ro Bl fQlUl
HOW MANY DOCTORS DO
WE NEED?
By Vernon Jordan
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
NATIONAL URBAN
LEAGUE
One of the most curious concepts to come
along in quite a while is the growing notion
that America has too many doctors. Just try
telling that to minorities and the poor, who
frequently live in rural areas or urban
neighborhoods that have no doctors at all.
It’s the old story of looking at gross
figures. The annual output of new doctors
has doubled in the past two decades. But
that doesn’t mean they practice where the
people who need their skills live. Nor does it
mean they are in specialties most needed by
the average health consumer.
Still, the so-called doctor shortage is an
excuse foe support for cutting federal aid to
medical s jols. It’s even being used as a ra
tionale io. opposing a national health in
surance plan.
It is arged that the more doctors there are,
the more people will use them, and the more
inflationary will health costs become.
Stronge, At the same time, we’re told that
he new law of supply and demand has not
been repealed. The more there is available of
a good or service, the lower its price is likely
to become.
But that doesn’t hold true for health care.
Why? The answer is that organized medicine
operates like an internal OPEC monopoly,
freed from the normal constraints of the
marketplace. Fee-for-service medicine keeps
health care costs high, as does the cost-plus
insurance system.
It’s hard to understand the argument that
it’s bad if people use physician’s services
more often. If more people use more doc
tors, that obviously means they need those
doctors and the health care they provide.
Whenever sales of some consumer item in
crease we never say that’s bad. We recognize
that people want more of that item and
business takes steps to supply it. But why
then to we say that items in human services,
like health care, should be carefully rationed
and kept limited?
Those limits are today imposed by ex
cessive costs. If you can afford to pay a doc
tor you use his services, if you can’t, you
don’t. Poor people covered by Medicare and
Medicaid programs have some access to
health care since the government will pay for
it. And there’s been a rise in health services
utilization since those programs were
started.
hospitals would stop dead in their trai
without foreign trained physicians, and
long as medical professionals
maldistributed, America doesn’t have |
many doctors.
It’s troubling that calls for limiting
number of doctors come just as blacks i
other minorities are gaining a tenu
toehold in medical schools.
Even with the rise in minority med
school enrollments, blacks are oly about
per cent of America’s doctors. And while
total number of places in medical school
increasing, the number of blacks admitte
shrinking.
So in this post-Bakke era, calling fc
doctor freeze is tantamount to calling
permanent minority underrepresenatior
the medical professions.
That’s good, it means more people are get
ting better health care. But millions of others
are not. They don’t have access to doctors.
The financial structure of medical profes
sions is such that esoteric speicaltiess draim
of many who in former years might have
been general practitioners and family physi
cians.
The result is that some areas and people
arenot served at all, some are underserved,
and relatively few have full access to the
health care they need. So long as the nation s
ghettos and barrios are virtually without
health practitioners, so long as many public
The numbers of doctors should be incr
ed. Incentives should be given to encoui
them to practice in poverty neighborhc
and to prefer general practice to the kind
specialties society needs less. Massive |
grams to increase the numbers of quali
minority health professinals should be a
priority, so that the most underserved
underrepresented communities get their
share of health care.
And all of this should be in the framw
of a national health policy that prov
universal, comprehensive access to qut
health care for all.
education is a right and that op
portunity is a right. How wrong
they are1 They both haye to be
earned. They cannot be earned by
majoring in ppt-smokmg, card
playing and illicit sex — all of
which have entirely top many
enrollees in our schools, both
secondary and collegiate.
These foreign students came to
college with a purpose m mind —
not only to succeed, but to excel,
and they use their opportunity to
the utmost.
Congressman Hawkins’ Column
GOODBYE TO THE FAMILY CAR
By Augustus F. Hawkii
We beg and urge and plead and
cm ole young American blacks
who get an opportunity for
education to use it to the utmost.
These foreign students can teach
a lesson that used to be taught m
black schools every single day
make whatever sacrifice is
necessary to “be the best!” That
door of opportunity that, swung
so wide open in the sixties has
already closed to all but “the
best” in the seventies. The rest
surrender to the forces that will
destroy us.
It’s been said often enough that
Americans have a love affair with the
automobile. Of course they’ve been ably
assisted by the giant auto industry, which
has given us the ultimate in unnecessary
style, wasteful decor, gas guzzling engines,
and other gadgets that have made enormous
contributions to the energy crisis.
In the wake of these things, have come a
variety of industries, all designed to feed our
need to ride to the corner grocer instead of
walking for that pound of butter.
So we have automobile insurance com
panies; auto repair shops; auto supply
stores; drive-in hotels; motels; banks,
theaters; auto accessory stores; used car
businesses; automobile service associations;
and so forth.
We also have been strangled, not only by
auto pollution, but by eight-lane highways;
beltways, freeways, thru-ways and other
forms of gigantic cement roadways.
We’ve helped to create an auto repair in
dustry, which according to the U.S. Depart
ment of Transportaion gives us lousy service
and then overcharges us 53 cents for every
dollar we spend on auto repairs.
Then let’s not forget the great auto in
surance industry, which has developed rate
formulas and insuring practices only they
understand. And who used to charge their
black customers higher insurance than their
non-black customers.
With all of this activity to keep us driving,
we have woefully neglected the major alter
native to the one-car, one-man (or woman)
sickness; rapid, mass transit.
Even though most major urban areas have
some form of public transportation, it is
painfully inadequate for the impending
energy crisis we face. (That is, the crisis
manufactured by the oil industry, to force
oil decontrol on the nation, without an ex
cess profits tax.)
What we needed to parallel the growth of
the auto industry, was an effective, fast,
mass transit system, its citizens might have
opted to use it, instead of the auto.
So through a combination of factors, or
chestrated by all the industries dedicated to
the one-car, one man (or woman) sickness,
we allowed through our short-sightedness,
the prevention of the building of fixed-rail,
mass rapid transit systems throughout the
country.
(Fortunately, amendments to the Highway
Act in’ 1973, allowed the federal government
to provide assistance to urban areas in finan
cing mass transit projects.)
In my district, for example, there i
such animal as rapid transit, although v
have a so-called “rapid transit” authori
you need to get any place in my disrict
if you don’t have a car, walking ii
ultimate solution. It may not be plea
but it will probably be less frustrating
waiting for buses that show up when
want to, or may not show up at;all.
We criss-cross this Country .'with a
highway system, using for the most
federal taxes. Until 1973 none of these
were allowed to be used for fixed-rail,
rapid transit systems, because'the total
industry was influential enough to pr
such usage.
Obviously local municipalities such a
Angeles need a fixed-rail, rapid t
system now, in order to prevent the ki
chaoes that came in the wake of the i
gasoline shortage in California.
Whatever the cause of the oil shortag
automobile as now manufactured, s
does not have the capability of addr
the country’s mass transit needs.
Either we face this fact, or else we’d
get use to walking.
BUSINESS IN THE BLACK
U.S. Budget Built for Bullets Not Butter
By CHARLES E. BELLE
1743 -1803
Su
LAVE-BORN, UNSCHOOLED AND UNKNOWN
FOR 48 YEARS; HE ROSE TO BECOME DICTATOR
OF HAITI! MADE FURIOUS BY THE ATROCITIES
AND INJUSTICES OF THE WHITE'fcOLONIALISTSj
and INSPIRED BY THE SUCCESSES OF THE REV
OLUTION IN FRANCE; THE OPPRESSED BLACKS
PUT TOGETHER AN ARMY LED BY TOUSSAINT
and drove the OUTSIDERS AWAY ! AS RULER
HE MADE MANY IMPROVEMENTS IN SCHOOLS,
ROADS,ETC. NAPOLEON GREW JEALOUS.AND
WHEN HIS BEST TROOPS FAILED TO TAKE HIM BY
'FAIR''MEANS,(60,000 TO 20,000),VILE TREACHERY
SUCCEEDED !
As,
. .. A SLAVE-BOY TENDING CATTLE,
HE HAD EDUCATED HIMSELF WITH BOOKS M
OF GREAT MEN'S LIVES...
AJc i^eAnKes
Since the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics, Russia, has been said to have
recently bought 280,000 tons of U.S. sugar,
not all American hate Russia or at least com
munist coins. This being about a $45 million
contract. , , . , j
Excessive rain in Cuba had delayed cane
cutting. Cuba supplied the U.S.S.R. with
almost four million tons of sugar in 1978.
Clearly the U.S. is interested in trade with
Russia whatever its relationship with other
countries. . ,
Commerce is the course enjoyed by
American businessmen. But the U.S. budget
is built for bullets not butter. The defense
budget overshadows all others and gets white
House O.K. for getting bigger.
Black America suffers when social pro
grams are placed behind the priorities of the
Defense Department in the balanced budget
atmosphere of today. Especially when there
is little evidence that the defense budget
could not be cut to the size of its job.
Just providing military might may well
have already been paid for by U.S. Poseidon
submarines. Presidential aides are put in an
awkard position of hacking needed health,
education and welfare projects out of the
1980 fiscal budget.
Buying more military hardware than me
current 31 Poseidon submarines is suspect to
sophisticated budget watchers. These
nuclear submarines are capable of sustaining
damage to more than 200 Soviet cities. Ex
perts point out that each of the nation s
Poseidon submarines carries sixteen missiles
and each missile can carry up to fourteen
war-heads, everyone of thern twice as power
ful as the kiloton bomb (equivalent to 20,000
tons of TNT) that devastated Hiroshima.
General Alexander M. Haig, Jr., supreme
allied commander, Europe, speaking to a
capacity crowd at the Shearton Palace Hotel
luncheon of the Commonwealth Club of,
California, stated that the U.S. is “till vastly
superior in military and economic assets”
over the Soviet Union.”
General Haig is concerned, as is President
Carter, in maintaining this position, while
the present occupant of the White House,
got a three per cent real growth in the
Defense budget this fiscal year. General
Haig wants to get a three per cent increase
for the next six years. Such devotion to duty
seems to be done only in the case of Defense.
Deploying more of the nation’s resources
for Defense does precious little for the poor
and unemployed people. Black American
unemployment continues to climb without
White House notice. General Haig, having
officially resigned his position, is having a
good time practicing being President of the
podium.
Presidents who put bullets before people
are bound to wake up one day and find the
foundation of their country has collapsed.
The total cost of U.S. weapons programs
leaped by nearly $22.5 million late last year.
The addition of one more nuclear powered
attack submarine alone was responsible for
almost $1.2 billion boost in the U.S. Navy
program.
President Carter’s new CETA programs
put only one-third this arnount oyer a period
of four years to look for jobs in industry for
those Americans who are very poor and
long-term unemployed. People must become
a priority with the President and those who
would be President, from the white or black
American perspective.
Poseidon submarines are augmented with
39 othe submarines, 376 bombers and 1054
land based missiles carrying a total of 9200
warheads. When we have decided to place
the same overkill instincts on integrating all
of our citizens into our business and sociai
life, then we will far surpass the Soviets in
defense of this or any other country.
Clie€ar§ii|a€4ra^0
(USPS 091-380)
L. E. AUSTIN
Editor-Fubliihw, 1937 -1971
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