Jay Rosen on the resistance to getting vaccinated among Republicans:
We're still underplaying what a bizarre result this is. https://t.co/AFM5LQx85F
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) June 14, 2021
"Bizarre." Is this also bizarre?
In the case of the Black community, we insist on being understanding about their low vaccination rates. They don't trust the medical community and they've got good reason. So, while we have to work with them to get their vaccination rates up, we also need to display a proper empathy for their fears and history.
But when it comes to conservatives, no such empathy is required despite the fact that conservatives are historically averse to vaccinations too. So even though their vaccination rate is close to that of independents, it's dismissed as "bizarre." They're all just a bunch of idiot Trumpies anyway, amirite?
This is pissing me off. Either show some damn empathy for everyone or stop pretending.¹
¹I plan to make this sentence my personal motto going forward.
In the case of the Black community, we insist on being understanding about their low vaccination rates.
I don't think the issue is so much lack of understanding vis-a-vis white conservatives so much as lack of acknowledgment about the serious issue with Black vaccine hesitancy. I'm seeing about 100x more focus on the former than the latter. None of this should be an exercise in shaming. But we need to have a clear understanding of the parameters of the challenge if we're to move ahead as a society. And I'm not sure many of us do.
Gee, I’m trying to recall when the government conducted medical experiments on conservatives.
Maybe someone can help me out here.
Tuskegee is hardly unique; obsessing over it mainly shows that you know nothing of the full sweep of history. Something similar, for example happened in New York City
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hideyo_Noguchi#Human_experimentation_scandal
There's a long history of medical experimentation on prisoners.
Perhaps even your hippie-addled mind recalls MKUltra?
Maybe these were terrible scandals; maybe they are overblown. But they are NOT some sort of sui generis that was only performed against black people.
It’s a great IQ test.
No, I'm not sympathetic to right wingers who won't get vaccinated. They're spoiled, WATBs who are refusing the vaccine to pwn the libs and/or because they believe some stupid crap they heard on Fox about Dr. Fauci being a former Nazi camp doctor or something who personally synthesized Covid in a secret lab to make Trump look bad. I'm sorry, but that *is* different than vaccine hesitancy among Blacks and other minorities who have received substandard (or outright abusive) care from the medical establishment for generations.
There is a single Southern Culture in America. Family church food honor resentment blah. All the the same thing. Even the interaction between whites and blacks is family interaction, with the pathologies on one end, and unimportant squabbles (misinterpreted by outsiders) on the other end.
Woke wants to hate the white version of Southern Culture -- and love the black version of it. Since this is a contradiction, it ends up constantly making no sense.
The vaccine contortions are just the latest version of this incoherence. cf earlier versions, like black lack of enthusiasm for gay rights.
Ultimately I think it's orientalism in action -- white southerners are "us", just bad us. While african americans are, in spite of the lip service, an exotic breed of other who need to be understood using a different vocabulary and ontology, they aren't just "us" wearing different skin.
I don't have any empathy for black refuseniks either. Regardless of the history of poor medical treatment of black people, black people have seen disproportionately large numbers of black people sicken and die of covid, and they've seen white people in large numbers pushing to get vaccinated. There is simply no plausible way that covid vaccinations can be another of those medical experiments conducted on black people.
No. My empathy needs to be earned.
Kevin, this is a TERRIBLE argument. Black communities dont trust the medical establishment for excellent historical reason
Conservatives dont trust the medical establishment for .... habit, as far as I can tell. There's certainly no evidence that might support the mistrust
Pingback: Links 6/16/21 | Mike the Mad Biologist