By Rosetta Miller Perry NASHVILLE, TN — The numbers don’t lie. Black, Brown and poor communities are suffering disproportionately— economically and physically —from the COVID-19 pandemic, the deadliest to hit the nation in a little over a century. That’s true locally and across the nation. But those communities don’t appear to be a concern in Tennessee, as the state’s distribution list for the first shipment of the Pfizer vaccine failed to include Meharry Medical College, which serves a large portion of Nashville’s minority and low-income communities. Dr. James Hildreth, the college’s President and a member of the COVID-19 task force,…
Author: Rosetta Miller Perry
By Rosetta Miller Perry Black legislators are asking the same question the Tribune raised earlier: how did Meharry, a medical school very much involved in the fight against COVID-19 and providing frontline workers to battle it, somehow get overlooked by state health officials when it came time to distribute the vaccine to fight the disease? It’s even more galling because Meharry has been a partner with the city in administrating COVID-19 testing at various local sites, and has been nationally recognized as one of the nation’s HBCUs most involved in COVID-19 research and testing from the earliest days of the…
By Rosetta Miller Perry Nashville, TN (TN Tribune)–Black legislators are asking the same question the Tribune raised earlier: how did Meharry, a medical school very much involved in the fight against COVID-19 and providing frontline workers to battle it, somehow get overlooked by state health officials when it came time to distribute the vaccine to fight the disease? It’s even more galling because Meharry has been a partner with the city in administrating COVID-19 testing at various local sites, and has been nationally recognized as one of the nation’s HBCUs most involved in COVID-19 research and testing from the earliest…
By Rosetta Miller Perry One doesn’t have to be a billionaire or a stock market wizard to recognize strange fiscal policies and decisions, and Nashville’s city government continues to do things that are at best questionable, and at worse ill-advised. The latest was the announcement Thursday by Mayor John Cooper that the Metro finance office and his office would be filing Metro Council resolutions to authorize the refinancing of $629 million in general obligation bonds. The plan was approved by the state’s comptroller earlier in the week. These were both officially set to be filed last Friday. The Mayor maintains…
By Rosetta Miller Perry Bigots of all kinds for decades have long used buzzwords and code phrases to sanitize and justify their language and actions. Richard Nixon talked about “law & order” (as has Donald Trump) to excuse police misconduct and brutality, and make it seem as though public safety was incumbent on how much police could physically punish even demonstrators who weren’t violating any laws. Ronald Reagan talked about “welfare queens” in an attempt to make his harsh rhetoric against the poor seem as though he was merely speaking up for working people. Last week it was Utah Republican…
By Rosetta Miller Perry President-elect Joe Biden’s first wave of candidates for Cabinet and Cabinet-level positions are generally getting raves from the mainstream press for diversity and inclusion. Sunday night he announced the appointment of an all-women Communications staff. But so far there’s been a disturbing absence of Black male candidates for top-level, highly visible, powerful positions. A prime example of the Biden campaign recognizing the importance of having a Latino male presence was the selection of Alejandro Mayorkas to head the Department of Homeland Security. He’d be the first Latino in that position, and his appointment is being hailed…
By Rosetta Miller-Perry President-elect Joe Biden hasn’t yet taken office nor named any potential Cabinet appointees, but already the same Republican senators backing the ridiculous attempts of Donald Trump to remain President despite losing the election by millions of votes are once again showing their total lack of integrity and willingness to do anything except act like cult members. This week the worthless bunch warned Biden he would spark “a fight” if he chooses to nominate to his cabinet either Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders or former national security adviser Susan Rice. This is the same crew who blocked…
By Rosetta Miller Perry Just as Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 victories in the presidential election were historic, Kamala Harris’ win in 2020 is equally an incredible landmark. America for the first time has a Black and Asian woman in that office. The daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India and a proud HBCU graduate and my soror (Alpha Kappa Alpha, Inc.). Harris’ ethnic, racial, and cultural biography represents a slice of the U.S. population that is becoming ascendant but that has never been represented in the nation’s second-highest office. It’s laughable that there were actually people in the Trump camp, as…
By Rosetta Miller Perry There’s a lot of verbal garbage coming from the White House about “law & order,” and even some gutless Black conservatives want to pretend there’s no problem with police in Black communities. This crew claims that people protesting about the bad actions of those who are supposed to be enforcing the law, but instead emulate the behavior of criminals, are unconcerned about crime and violence. But in truth, there’s been a policing crisis in this nation for decades. Now, thanks to who’s in power, police in cities across this nation are routinely beating, shooting and/or killing…
By Rosetta Miller Perry Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden made not just the right pick but the best choice Wednesday when he selected California Senator Kamala Harris as his Vice-Presidential pick. Harris becomes the first Black woman and first woman of color on a national ticket, and fulfills a promise Biden had made earlier that he would have a woman VP. However no one should look at Harris as a mere token tabbed to appease or mollify a constituency, Indeed, she is far more qualified to hold either spot on the ticket than the current resident of the White House.…