Jackson: America has confused priorities

By Kathryn Foxhall
Monitor staff

In remarks that brought repeated, sustained applause, the Rev. Jesse Jackson urged psychologists to combat the incarceration of the mentally ill.

In his keynote address to the APA Convention, Jackson told the audience, "The wave of deinstitutionalization of the 60s and 70s left the mentally ill with no place to go. The jail-industrial complex gobbled up these lost and lonely people with no concern for their health."

"More bodies for the beds. More profit to the private jail-industrial complex. This is not right. I say again that this is a shame and a disgrace. As people who are aware of the unique challenges of mental health, you must help me combat this trend. As an army of hope, you must fight tooth and nail against those who would imprison the mentally ill. Or who would execute them. We must be sane. We must be sane."

Confused priorities

Jackson also called health care "one of the great unresolved issues of American history."

"We have made the choice," he said, "to allow the rolls of the underserved, the uninsured to swell to over 45 million without health insurance. That's right. Sixteen percent of Americans go to bed every night just one illness away from financial ruin."

With the emergence of HMOs, he said, shareholder value, big salaries for top executives and payment of regular dividends have become the core mission for many in the health-care business.

Citing the conflict of profit versus availability of health care to the poor, he said, "It's hard to make a profit on the poor, the chronically ill," he said. "As long as the overriding value of our health-care system is the concern for the bottom line, we cannot reasonably expect that the underserved or the uninsured in our country will receive the share that democracy requires. Our grandmothers, our grandfathers, our mentally ill children must not be the basis of our cars and houses and surpluses."

In an example of health-care demands, Jackson alluded poignantly to APA President Richard M. Suinn's priority focus on cancer and to his own life. That morning, Jackson had attended the funeral of his half-brother, George Robinson, who died of the disease. Robinson, an activist in Jackson's Rainbow-PUSH coalition, was 55.

Does it matter?

Contrasting such tragic news to questions swirling in the media on whether presidential candidate George W. Bush used drugs, Jackson said, "Fifteen hundred Americans a day die of cancer. A coal miner dies every six hours of black lung disease. And we are chasing one man's drug encounter as the center of national news. That's psychologically real sick."

Deriding the August Repub-lican straw poll in Iowa, Jackson said, "They judge the winner by the most money, and his biggest sin is he may have taken a hit of drugs beyond seven years ago. The fact is that Mr. Bush did not attend James Byrd's funeral. He did not fight for the Texas hate-crime bill. Texas has the most loose gun laws. The most prisoners. The most executions. The most mentally retarded executions. Does that matter?"

"Does hate matter?" Jackson fairly bellowed to the quieted audience.

Jackson then took aim at the nation's disparity in criminal sentencing between black and white people, noting that if a man has 500 grams of powder-cocaine he may get probation. But if it is five grams of crack it is a five-year mandatory sentence, "a 100-to-1 ratio."

The crack-cocaine sentencing gap has been cited as a reflection of racism because crack is more often connected to black people.

Again, Jackson asked the audience, "Does it matter?"

Such injustices are driving what he called "the jail-industrial complex," Jackson suggested. At a time when schools seemed to have been relegated to second-class status, "every city that I have been to has at least two new buildings: a new ballpark and a new jail."

In a summary plea for the public debate to focus on issues, Jackson told the audience, "Morality must inform our politics. Politics must not inform our morality.... It really must be about health care. Patients' bill of rights.... Hate groups and terror. The attempt to purchase the candidate and privatize the White House. It must be about integrity, about democracy. It must be about leadership on matters of public policy."



Read our privacy statement and Terms of Use

Cover Page for this Issue

PsychNET®
© 1999 American Psychological Association

APA Home Page . Search . Site Map