THE SAN BERNARDINO
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AMERICAN
“A Man In Debt is So Far A Slave” -Emerson
NEWSPAPER A Community Newspaper Serving San Bernardino, Riverside & Los Angeles Counties Volume 51 No. 25
Mailing: P.O. Box 837, Victorville, CA 92393
October 8, 2020 - October 14, 2020 Office: (909) 889-7677
Email: Mary @Sb-American.com
Website: www.SB-American.com
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them and these will continue till they have resisted either with words or blows or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance those of whom they suppress. —Fredrick Douglass (1849)
Trump, COVID and Needless Suffering
What is the president’s obligation to those sickened or killed by a virus he could have done far more to tame? By Danny Feingold
The current saga of Donald Trump and his struggle with COVID-19 raises a host of questions. Some of these are political, but others cut deeper, including this: What is the responsibility of leaders to limit the needless suffering of others? Neither the Constitution nor any acts of the courts or Congress compel a president to make the reduction of human suffering a priority. But the value of decency, and the expectation that power should be exercised for the common good, certainly do. Trump’s illness, and that of the growing number infected within his circle, could probably have been avoided with basic safety
measures. He will, and should, be judged for refusing to insist on such obvious precautions as mask wearing and social distancing. But what about the 7.4 million Americans who have contracted COVID-19, the more than 200,000 who have died? What was Trump’s obligation to those who have endured serious complications, or those who succumbed to the disease? Compassion for a president in the throes of sickness should not preclude a clear-eyed assessment of whether he has used the immense authority of his office to limit needless suffering. In the context of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump’s
failure to protect Americans from preventable pain and death will forever be intertwined with his legacy. The road not taken – strong federal leadership in testing, PPE production and distribution, contact tracing, mandatory use of masks and public education – traces the nation’s despair. And we should not forget that millions of Americans face the threat of the pandemic without health insurance. An estimated 5.4 million American workers lost their health insurance between February and May of this year. During the President’s first three years in office, while the Trump administration worked to undermine the
Affordable Care Act, the number of uninsured Americans increased by 2.3 million. The revelation contained in Bob Woodward’s book “Rage” that Trump understood the ravages of COVID-19 early on puts his inaction into stark relief. Since he cannot invoke ignorance, what is left to explain the toxic mixture of lies and denial that has defined the president’s response to the worst infectious disease outbreak since the flu of 1918? If it was political calculation, nothing could be more morally bankrupt. If it was a lack of empathy, we reach the same conclusion. And if it was an inability to rise to the challenge of shielding a nation
from intolerable anguish, then only a titanic ego would have precluded leaning on others to help mount a vigorous defense. In contemplating the inescapable fact that the president could have blunted the horror of COVID-19 but chose not to, another question emerges: Would he have acted differently had his own infection and illness come much earlier? There is no way to know, of course – but assuming Trump survives, his words and actions in the weeks to come will at least be telling. Will he finally acknowledge publicly that COVID-19, far from on the verge of disappearing, is a mortal threat to the country? Will he take
responsibility for the dereliction of duty that has defined his response to the pandemic? Will he express genuine sympathy for those who have suffered and died, and the mourning families left behind? Doing so, with no consideration for the political fallout, would not redeem Trump for the tragedy that has transpired on his watch. But it would save lives and serve as a warning to future presidents that spin, bravado and neglect are no substitute for leadership. Perhaps those who follow him will embrace this variation on the Hippocratic Oath: Do everything possible to prevent needless suffering, because the wellbeing of a nation depends on it.
Generation Lost: UC-Berkeley’s Missing Black Graduates Dr. Harry Edwards
In the mid-1960s, the University of California, Berkeley started its Educational Opportunity Program to target underrepresented applicants and combat this history of discrimination. Unsurprisingly, this program was a success and the number of Black freshmen continued to rise until 1996. That year,
Governor Pete Wilson and Black conservative Ward Connerly led an effort to repeal these education gains by passing Proposition 209. Prop. 209 prohibited public universities from considering race and ethnicity in admissions decisions, which has closed Berkeley’s doors to countless minority students. But Black
students were hit especially hard. After Prop. 209, Black freshman enrollment at Berkeley dropped from 258 to 126. The numbers at professional schools were even more troubling. For example, there was only 1 Black student among Berkeley Law’s 268 first-year students. The lack of Black students at Berkeley has not improved with time. Since Prop. 209 passed, the percentage of Black enrollees at Berkeley has only once reached 4%, and the percentage has hovered around 3% since 2007. Had the percentage of Black freshman stayed at pre-209 levels, there would have been
4,061 more Black enrollees since 1998 at Berkeley. This has also led to declining participation in science, technology, degree attainment, average wages, and the likelihood of earning higher wages throughout to the Black community. Meanwhile, a state auditor found that UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and UC San Diego admitted dozens unqualified students based on their connections to staff and donors since 2013. Each one of those admissions came at the expense of other qualified applicants, with most of the freshmen spots going to White applicants
from families making at least $150,000 per year. Specifically, the auditor scolded UC Berkeley because their admissions practices for the wealthy and well-connected “demonstrates that campus leadership has failed to establish a campus culture that values commitment to an admissions process based on fairness and applicants’ merits and achievements.” While Prop. 209 has hamstrung Berkeley’s ability to recruit Black students, public universities from 41 other states can still take race into account when making college admissions decisions. This is also true of private universities
that still consider race and ethnicity in their admissions policies to create avenues for Black applicants to access higher education. For example, Stanford’s Fall 2019 freshman class was 8% Black or African American. That percentage nearly triples Berkeley’s freshman class for last year. Those numbers are even worse when omitting student-athletes. C a l i fo r n i a’s b a n o n affirmative action perversely limits our top universities from enrolling promising minority students and forces those that continued on page 2