[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 198 (Tuesday, December 20, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9627-S9629]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         SUBMITTED RESOLUTIONS

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     SENATE RESOLUTION 875--DECLARING RACISM A PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS

  Mr. BROWN (for himself, Mr. Booker, Mr. Padilla, Ms. Warren, Ms. 
Stabenow, Mr. Warnock, Mr. Menendez, Mr. Cardin, Mr. Merkley, Mr. 
Blumenthal, Mrs. Feinstein, Ms. Baldwin, Mr. Carper, Ms. Klobuchar, Mr. 
Leahy, Mr. Sanders, Ms. Smith, Mr. Van Hollen, Mr. Wyden, Mr. Markey, 
Ms. Hirono, Ms. Duckworth, Mr. Reed, and Mr. Whitehouse) submitted the 
following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Health, 
Education, Labor, and Pensions:

                              S. Res. 875

       Whereas a public health issue is an issue--
       (1) that affects many people, is a threat to the public, 
     and is ongoing;
       (2) that is unfairly distributed among different 
     populations, disproportionately impacting health outcomes, 
     access to health care, and life expectancy;
       (3) the effects of which could be reduced by preventive 
     measures; and
       (4) for which those preventive measures are not yet in 
     place;
       Whereas public health experts agree that significant racial 
     inequities exist in the prevalence, severity, and mortality 
     rates of various health conditions in the United States;
       Whereas examples of such inequities include--
       (1) life expectancy rates for Black and Native American 
     people in the United States being significantly lower than 
     those of White people in the United States;
       (2) Black and Native American women being 2 to 4 times more 
     likely than White women to suffer severe maternal morbidity 
     or die of pregnancy-related complications;
       (3) Black and Native American infants being 2 to 3 times as 
     likely to die as White infants, and the Black infant 
     mortality rate in the United States being higher than the 
     infant mortality rates recorded in 27 of the 36 democratic 
     countries with market-based economies that are members of the 
     Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development; and
       (4) during the COVID-19 pandemic, Black, Hispanic/Latino, 
     Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and Native 
     American communities experiencing disproportionately high 
     rates of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and mortality 
     compared to the White population of the United States;
       Whereas inequities in health outcomes are exacerbated for 
     people of color who are LGBTQIA+ and have disabilities;
       Whereas, historically, explanations for health inequities 
     focused on false genetic science (for example, eugenics) and 
     incomplete social scientific analyses that narrowly focus on 
     individual behavior to highlight ostensible deficiencies 
     within racial and ethnic minority groups;
       Whereas modern public health discourse recognizes the 
     broader social context in which health inequities emerge and 
     acknowledges the impact of historical and contemporary racism 
     on health;
       Whereas, since its founding, the United States has had a 
     longstanding history and legacy of racism, mistreatment, and 
     discrimination that has perpetuated health inequities for 
     members of racial and ethnic minority groups;
       Whereas that history and legacy of racism, mistreatment, 
     and discrimination includes--
       (1) the immoral paradox of freedom and slavery, which is an 
     atrocity that can be traced throughout the history of the 
     United States, as African Americans lived under the 
     oppressive institution of slavery from 1619 through 1865, 
     endured the practices and laws of segregation during the Jim 
     Crow era, and continue to face the ramifications of systemic 
     racism through unjust and discriminatory structures and 
     policies;
       (2) the failure of the United States to carry out the 
     responsibilities and promises made in more than 350 treaties 
     ratified with sovereign indigenous communities, including 
     American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians, as 
     made evident by the chronic and pervasive underfunding of the 
     Indian Health Service and Tribal, Urban Indian, and Native 
     Hawaiian health care, the vast health and socioeconomic 
     inequities faced by Native American people, and the 
     inaccessibility of many Federal public health and social 
     programs in Native American communities;
       (3) the enactment of immigration laws in the United States, 
     such as--
          (A) the Page Act of 1875, which effectively prohibited 
     the entry of East Asian women into the United States;
          (B) the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which ostracized 
     thousands of Chinese-born laborers, who were essential in the 
     completion of the transcontinental railroad and development 
     of the West Coast; and
          (C) the Immigration Act of 1917, which barred all 
     immigrants from the ``Asiatic zone'' and prevented the 
     migration of individuals from South Asia, Southeast Asia, and 
     East Asia, scapegoating Asians, separating families, and 
     branding Asians as perpetual outsiders in the United States;
       (4) during the Great Depression Era, the deportation by the 
     United States of approximately 1,800,000 individuals based on 
     their Mexican ethnic identity, when approximately 60 percent 
     of the individuals deported to Mexico were United States 
     citizens, and the targeting of individuals of Mexican descent 
     for ``repatriation'' due to scapegoating efforts, which 
     blamed them for ``stealing'' jobs from ``real'' Americans; 
     and
       (5) in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson establishing the 
     National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, which 
     concluded that White racism is responsible for the pervasive 
     discrimination and segregation in employment, education, and 
     housing, resulting in deepened racial division and continued 
     exclusion of Black communities from the benefits of economic 
     progress;
       Whereas overt racism was embedded in the development of 
     medical science and medical training during the 18th, 19th, 
     and 20th centuries, causing disproportionate physical and 
     psychological harm to members of racial and ethnic minority 
     groups, including--
       (1) the unethical practices and abuses experienced by Black 
     patients and research participants, such as the Tuskegee 
     Syphilis Study, which serve as foundations for the mistrust 
     the Black community has for the medical system; and
       (2) the egregiously unethical and cruel treatment enslaved 
     Black women were forced to endure as subjects of insidious 
     medical experiments to advance modern gynecology, including 
     those perpetuated by the so-called ``father of gynecology'', 
     J. Marion Sims;
       Whereas structural racism cemented historical racial and 
     ethnic inequities in access to resources and opportunities, 
     contributing to worse health outcomes;
       Whereas examples of that structural racism include--
       (1) that, before the enactment of the Medicare program, the 
     United States health care system was highly segregated, and, 
     as late as the mid-1960s, hospitals, clinics, and doctors' 
     offices throughout northern and southern States complied with 
     Jim Crow laws and were completely segregated by race, leaving 
     Black communities with little to no access to health care 
     services;
       (2) the landmark case Simkins v. Moses H. Cone Memorial 
     Hospital (323 F.2d 959 (4th Cir. 1963)), which challenged the 
     use of public funds by the Federal Government to expand, 
     support, and sustain segregated hospital care, and provided 
     justification for title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 
     (42 U.S.C. 2000d et seq.) and the Medicare hospital 
     certification program, establishing Medicare hospital racial 
     integration guidelines that applied to every hospital that 
     participated in the Federal program;
       (3) Pacific Islanders from the Freely Associated States 
     experiencing unique health inequities resulting from United 
     States nuclear weapons tests on their home islands, while 
     they have been categorically denied access to Medicaid and 
     other Federal health benefits; and
       (4) language minorities, including Chi-
     nese-, Korean-, Vietnamese-, Russian-, and Spanish-speaking 
     Americans, not being assured nondiscriminatory access to 
     federally funded services, including health services, until 
     the signing of Executive Order 13166 (42 U.S.C. 2000d-1 note; 
     related to improving access to services for persons with 
     limited English proficiency) in 2000;

[[Page S9628]]

       Whereas, although overt racism has been outlawed in the 
     United States, subtle or implicit racism in all sectors of 
     the medical service profession continues to cause 
     disproportionate physical and psychological harm to members 
     of racial and ethnic minority groups;
       Whereas examples of subtle or implicit racism in the 
     medical service profession include--
       (1) the history and persistence of racist and nonscientific 
     medical beliefs, which are associated with ongoing racial 
     inequities in treatment and health outcomes;
       (2) implicit racial and ethnic biases within the health 
     care system, which have an explicit impact on the quality of 
     care experienced by members of racial and ethnic minority 
     groups, such as the undertreatment of pain in Black patients;
       (3) nearly 1 in 5 Hispanic/Latino Americans avoiding 
     medical care due to concern about being discriminated against 
     or treated poorly;
       (4) the United States health care system and other economic 
     and social structures remaining fraught with biases based on 
     race, ethnicity, sex (including sexual orientation and gender 
     identity), and class that lead to health inequities;
       (5) women of color, including Black, Native American, 
     Hispanic/Latina, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific 
     Islander women, continuing to face attacks on their prenatal, 
     maternal, and reproductive health and rights throughout 
     history; and
       (6) physicians routinely, through the late 1960s and early 
     1980s, sterilizing members of racial and ethnic minority 
     groups, specifically African American and Latina women, 
     performing excessive and medically unnecessary procedures 
     without their informed consent;
       Whereas structural racism perpetuates racial and ethnic 
     inequities in the social determinants of health, which 
     produces unintended negative health outcomes for members of 
     racial and ethnic minority groups;
       Whereas examples of that structural racism include--
       (1) that there are fewer pharmacies, medical practices, and 
     hospitals in predominantly Black and Hispanic/Latino 
     neighborhoods, compared to White or more diverse 
     neighborhoods;
       (2) environmental hazards, such as toxic waste facilities, 
     garbage dumps, and other sources of airborne pollutants, 
     being disproportionately located in predominantly Black, 
     Hispanic/Latino, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific 
     Islander, and low-income communities, resulting in poor air 
     quality conditions, which can increase the likelihood of 
     chronic respiratory illness and premature death from particle 
     pollution;
       (3) that employed Black adults are 10 percent less likely 
     to have workplace insurance than are employed White adults 
     because of racial segregation in occupation sectors and types 
     of organizations they work in, and that certain groups of 
     nonelderly Asian American adults, including Native Hawaiian, 
     Pacific Islander, Korean, Vietnamese, and Cambodian adults, 
     also have lower levels of insurance than White adults;
       (4) that several States with higher percentages of Black, 
     Hispanic/Latino, and Native American populations have not 
     expanded their Medicaid programs, continuing to 
     disenfranchise minority communities from access to health 
     care to this day;
       (5) discriminatory housing practices, such as redlining, 
     which have, for decades, systemically excluded members of 
     racial and ethnic minority groups from housing, robbing them 
     of capital in the form of low-cost, stable mortgages and 
     opportunities to build wealth, and the Federal Government 
     using its financial power to segregate renters in newly built 
     public housing;
       (6) social inequities such as differing access to quality 
     health care, healthy food and safe drinking water, safe 
     neighborhoods, education, job security, and reliable 
     transportation, which affect health risks and outcomes;
       (7) that, as much as 60 percent of the health of a person 
     in the United States can be determined by their zip code;
       (8) that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated economic, 
     health, housing, and food security barriers for Black, 
     Hispanic/Latino, and Native American households, which 
     already suffer from disproportionately higher rates of food 
     insecurity; and
       (9) members of the Black, Native American, Alaska Native, 
     Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and 
     Hispanic/Latino communities being disproportionately impacted 
     by the criminal justice and immigration enforcement systems 
     and facing a higher risk of contracting COVID-19 within 
     prison populations and detention centers due to the over-
     incarceration of members of those communities;
       Whereas structural racism perpetuates ongoing knowledge 
     gaps in data, research, and development, which produces 
     unintended negative health outcomes for members of racial and 
     ethnic minority groups;
       Whereas examples of that structural racism include that--
       (1) most participants in clinical trials are White, so 
     there is insufficient data to develop evidence-based 
     recommendations for people from racial and ethnic minority 
     groups;
       (2) medical research equipment and medical devices are 
     typically developed by majority-White teams and thus can have 
     racial blind spots unintentionally built into their design, 
     rendering them less effective for people from racial and 
     ethnic minority groups, such as--
          (A) electroencephalogram (EEG) electrodes used in 
     neuroimaging research do not collect reliable data when used 
     on scalps with thick, curly hair; and
          (B) pulse oximeters produce less accurate oxygen 
     saturation readings when used on fingertips with darker skin;
       (3) a lack of images depicting darker skin in medical 
     textbooks, literature, and journals contributes to higher 
     rates of underdiagnosis or misdiagnosis in patients with 
     darker skin; and
       (4) many health-related studies fail to include 
     disaggregated data on, or do not disaggregate data among, 
     Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, 
     leading to their invisibility in health data and unjust 
     resource allocation and policies;
       Whereas racism produces unjust outcomes and treatment for 
     members of racial and ethnic minority groups, with such 
     negative experiences serving as stressors that over time have 
     a negative impact on physical health (leading, for example, 
     to high blood pressure or hypertension) and mental health 
     (leading, for example, to anxiety or depression);
       Whereas there is evidence that racial and ethnic minority 
     groups continue to face discrimination in the United States, 
     examples of which include that--
       (1) compared to White Americans, Black Americans are 5 
     times more likely to report experiencing discrimination when 
     interacting with the police, Hispanic/Latino Americans and 
     Native Americans are nearly 3 times as likely, and Asian 
     Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders are nearly 
     twice as likely;
       (2) 42 percent of United States employees have experienced 
     or witnessed racism in the workplace;
       (3) social scientists have documented racial 
     microaggressions in contemporary United States society, 
     including--
          (A) assumptions that members of racial and ethnic 
     minority groups are not true Americans;
          (B) assumptions of lesser intelligence;
          (C) statements that convey color-blindness or denial of 
     the importance of race;
          (D) assumptions of criminality or dangerousness;
          (E) denial of individual racism;
          (F) promotion of the myth of meritocracy;
          (G) assumptions that one's cultural background and 
     communication styles are pathological;
          (H) treatment as a second-class citizen; and
          (I) environmental messages of being unwelcome or 
     devalued;
       (4) Muslims, South Asians, and Sikhs were unjustly targeted 
     for profiling, surveillance, arrest, discrimination, 
     harassment, assault, and murder after 9/11;
       (5) xenophobic rhetoric, including anti-immigrant rhetoric 
     and scapegoating people of East Asian and Southeast Asian 
     descent for the COVID-19 pandemic, has resulted in a surge of 
     hate incidents against Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and 
     Pacific Islanders, including increased harassment, 
     discrimination, bullying, vandalism, and assault; and
       (6) more than 50 percent of Hispanic/Latino adults 
     experience at least one form of discrimination due to their 
     racial or ethnic heritage, such as being treated as if they 
     were not smart, criticized for speaking Spanish, told to 
     return to their country, called offensive names, or unfairly 
     stopped by the police;
       Whereas Black people in the United States experience overt 
     and direct forms of violence that, when not fatal, can cause 
     severe physical or psychological harm;
       Whereas examples of such forms of violence include--
       (1) Black people being confronted and threatened by armed 
     citizens while performing everyday tasks, such as jogging in 
     neighborhoods, driving while Black, or playing in a park;
       (2) Black people being 3 times more likely to be killed by 
     police than White people, and police violence being the sixth 
     leading cause of death for young Black men;
       (3) Black communities leading the United States in mourning 
     the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, 
     Elijah McClain, and countless other Black Americans, and in 
     calling for justice and long-term changes to dismantle 
     systems of oppression;
       (4) that it took the United States 66 years after the 
     senseless and brutal murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till to 
     make lynching a Federal crime;
       (5) since 2015, mass shootings around the country, such as 
     in Buffalo, New York, and Charleston, South Carolina, serving 
     as reminders of the unresolved history of racism in the 
     United States and highlighting the threats Black people must 
     take into consideration when going about their daily lives, 
     both when outside their communities and within those 
     communities; and
       (6) the real threat of brutality and violence adversely 
     impacting mental health among Black communities;
       Whereas Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Hispanic/Latinos, 
     Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders 
     experience racially motivated kidnapping, murders, and mass 
     violence, such as shootings in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, El Paso, 
     Texas, Atlanta, Georgia, and Indianapolis, Indiana, that, 
     even when not fatal, can cause severe physical or 
     psychological harm;
       Whereas, throughout the history of the United States, 
     members of racial and ethnic minority groups have been at the 
     forefront

[[Page S9629]]

     of civil rights movements for essential freedoms, human 
     rights, and equal protection for marginalized groups and 
     continue to fight for racial and economic justice today;
       Whereas racial inequities in health continue to persist 
     because of historical and contemporary racism;
       Whereas public health experts agree that racism meets the 
     criteria of a public health crisis, because--
       (1) the condition affects many people, is seen as a threat 
     to the public, and is continuing to increase;
       (2) the condition is distributed unfairly;
       (3) preventive measures could reduce the effects of the 
     condition; and
       (4) those preventive measures are not yet in place;
       Whereas the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention--
       (1) declared racism a serious threat to public health; and
       (2) acknowledged the need for additional research and 
     investments to address that serious threat;
       Whereas a Federal public health crisis declaration defines 
     racism as a pervasive health issue and alerts the people of 
     the United States to the need to enact immediate and 
     effective cross-governmental efforts to address the root 
     causes of structural racism and the downstream impacts of 
     that racism; and
       Whereas such a declaration requires the response of 
     governments to engage significant resources to empower the 
     communities that are impacted: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the Senate--
       (1) supports the resolutions drafted, introduced, and 
     adopted by cities and localities across the United States 
     declaring racism a public health crisis;
       (2) declares racism a public health crisis in the United 
     States;
       (3) commits to--
       (A) establishing a nationwide strategy to address health 
     disparities and inequities across all sectors in society;
       (B) dismantling systemic practices and policies that 
     perpetuate racism;
       (C) advancing reforms to address years of neglectful and 
     apathetic policies that have led to poor health outcomes for 
     members of racial and ethnic minority groups; and
       (D) promoting efforts to address the social determinants of 
     health for all racial and ethnic minority groups in the 
     United States, and especially for Black and Native American 
     communities; and
       (4) places a charge on the people of the United States to 
     move forward with urgency to ensure that the United States 
     stands firmly in honoring its moral purpose of advancing the 
     self-evident truths that all people are created equal, that 
     they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, and that 
     among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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