Recent editorials from North Carolina newspapers:
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March 3
The Fayetteville Observer on the federal and statewide response to coronavirus:
The novel coronavirus outbreak crept a little bit closer to home on March 3. A Wake County man became the first person in the state to be diagnosed with COVID-19, the deadly respiratory illness caused by the virus, which originated in China and has spread across the globe. The man had recently traveled from Washington state, where an outbreak there has killed seven people.
Gov. Roy Cooper said in a press statement that he knows people are worried but that the state was prepared.
“Our task force and state agencies are working closely with local health departments, health care providers and others to quickly identify and respond to cases that might occur,” he said.
We appreciate his assurances. We also know there is no cause for panic, and the best course of action is for people to follow the advice to wash their hands frequently, as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
However, we believe at least part of the public anxiety relates to a reasonable opinion among many, including a number of health professionals, that the U.S. government at the federal level has fallen behind in containing the outbreak.
On top of that, there seem to be conflicting messages on its severity. On the one hand, we are told coronavirus is less of a threat than seasonal influenza. On the other, we see news reports about cancellations of major events and conferences; the National Basketball Association even told its players to refrain from giving each other high five’s.
Criticism of the U.S. response has focused on a lack of test kits and other forms of low-cost, widely available testing. Other countries, including South Korea, Italy and the United Kingdom, are testing people by the tens of thousands. South Korea, which is trying to contain a widespread outbreak, has tested nearly 70,000 people; health officials there have even set up “drive-thru” screening facilities, reports Fortune magazine.
Meanwhile, fewer than 4,000 people have been tested in the U.S. so far, reported National Public Radio on March 1. The CDC, which also runs tests, had done around 500 by that time. And some of the test kits that have gone out have been defective and delayed lab results; the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services is investigating.
The HHS is ramping up distribution efforts, according to Alex Azar, the department secretary, who said 75,000 kits were available nationwide with plans to “expand radically.”
Here in Cumberland County, we can have a little more faith in local efforts to prepare for coronavirus - but they are still highly dependent on the federal and state response.
Jennifer Green, director of the Cumberland County health department, said through a spokesman on March 2 that there were no confirmed cases of the virus in the county.
She said testing was available through the CDC, and that the state lab was completing a verification process so it could do in-state testing. The local department will be made aware when the state has that capability, she said.
She said Cumberland’s health department and other local departments had a role “in specimen collection for Persons Under Investigation,” and local officials would call the state epidemiology division if the need arose. A courier service would be sent to collect the specimen.
Green also repeated the CDC admonition that people who are well should not wear face masks to protect against respiratory illnesses, including COVID-19: “We urge the public to follow these guidelines so that face masks are available to those that are most vulnerable,” she said.
Green added that the county department was in weekly contact with the state department of Health & Human Services.
Janet Conway, spokeswoman for Cape Fear Valley Health System, said on March 2 the system was “expecting the state laboratory to have the capability to test very soon.”
She said the health system has been preparing for the virus since January and noted a recent news release about additional visitor restrictions because of the virus.
Meanwhile, Fort Bragg officials met on March 3 with state and local officials with a goal of reducing the threat of the virus and making plans to act fast to contain an outbreak.
“It’s going to affect all of us,” Bragg spokesman Tom McCollum said. “We have to work together to protect the whole community.”
That an important concept for all of us to keep in mind, as we wait for federal health officials to play catch-up.
Online: https://www.fayobserver.com
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Feb. 27
Winston-Salem Journal on a university’s apology for its role in historical injustices:
It was a bold statement, one that acknowledged past misdeeds and asked for forgiveness. It couldn’t have been easy.
But it was a necessary step.
We appreciate President Nathan Hatch’s recent apology on behalf on Wake Forest University for its historic role in perpetuating slavery. We hope it will be beneficial to the university’s students, faculty, staff and alumni, and help to bring about a sense of healing and unity.
“I apologize for the exploitation and use of enslaved people - both those known and unknown - who helped create and build this university through no choice of their own,” Hatch said during Wake Forest’s Founders’ Day Convocation at Wait Chapel this month, as the Journal’s Wesley Young reported.
Hatch acknowledged that the university’s founder, antebellum presidents and trustees owned slaves. The students, too, perpetuated slavery, he said. He acknowledged the sad truth that slaves helped build and maintain the college’s original campus in the town of Wake Forest, as well as serving as economic fodder: as many as 16 slaves were sold to the benefit of Wake Forest.
Hatch’s speech follows other such public reckonings. UNC Chapel Hill and Salem College and Academy offered similar apologies in 2018, and Georgetown University in 2017. Several long-standing businesses have made similar apologies. The U.S. House of Representatives offered an apology for slavery and for Jim Crow laws in 2008, followed by the U.S. Senate in 2009.
In many ways, both literal and figurative, much of our nation and its wealth were built on slave labor. The remnants can be seen on campuses, on the sides of roads, in historic buildings - and in institutional profits. Truthfully acknowledging these raw facts allow us, we hope, to achieve forgiveness and to move forward together.
There are still a few who will try to downplay or excuse the role of slavery in our nation’s history. It’s true that sensibilities were different then.
But it’s also true that the U.S. was late to realize the injustice of owning human beings as property. Our European contemporaries outlawed slavery decades before us. And even before our nation’s founding, abolitionists tried to enlighten our societies. The reluctance to give up slavery led to one of our nation’s darkest chapters, the Civil War.
Some will say that the university’s apology is too late. Those who were forced to labor on Wake Forest’s campus are long gone.
But today’s institutional leaders can only do what they can do.
The acknowledgement of the university’s role should just be the first of many steps to follow.
Many, like sophomore Kate Pearson, who attended the convocation, will be waiting for the follow-through. “I’d like to see, particularly with the conclusion of the President’s Commission, what the administration intends to do to put action behind their apology,” she told the Journal.
Wake Forest has taken other steps, establishing the afore-mentioned commission on race, equity and community and joining a consortium of universities studying slavery. We feel certain there will be more, if only because students and faculty will hold the university’s leaders accountable.
In the meantime, the ugly stain of racism has reared its head in other ways in recent times, seemingly emboldened. It’s an evil that should be confronted, especially by our institutions of learning, with reason, compassion and, when appropriate, forgiveness. Most of all, it should be confronted by the truth. That, we’re told, is what sets us free.
Online: http://www.journalnow.com
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Feb. 26
The StarNews on lessons still to be learned at the conclusion of Black History Month:
Black History Month has come again, and is nearly gone. And, once again, the folks who need to learn most from it are missing the point.
One still hears comments that this is some kind of P.C. entitlement thing, and why isn’t there a White History Month?
The short answer, of course, is that white folks get the other 11 months of the year.
It’s a cliche, of course, that victors write the history books. And in Wilmington, in particular, the victors were the white supremacists who overthrew the legally elected city government in November 1898 and ran black (and white Republican) leaders out of town.
The city’s big monuments honor Confederate figures. It wasn’t until very recently that highway markers were for figures like David Walker or Abraham Galloway.
Walker, a free black Wilmington native in the days of slavery, moved north to write “An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World.” Walker took the Declaration of Independence and argued that if whites were justified in violent revolution over unfair taxes, weren’t slaves entitled to revolt as well?
Galloway, an escaped slave from Brunswick County, became a spy for the Union out of New Bern and recruited thousands of ex-slaves to enlist as soldiers. He met Abraham Lincoln as part of the delegation urging the president to support black voting rights. Coming home, he became state senator after the war and a key local leader in Reconstruction — all before dying at the age of 33.
It’s safe to say that most schoolkids — until recently — didn’t learn about the Wilmington coup or Walker and Galloway. Or about Caterina Jarboro, a Wilmington native who sang in Italian opera houses and at the Met in New York. Or about David Clarke Virgo, a local pioneer in vocational education. Or about Gen. Joseph A. McNeil, who as a young college student organized the first “sit-in” in the South to desegregate lunchrooms.
That’s changing now, but slowly, and there are a few hopeful signs. Two local entrepreneurs have posted a well-researched app that offers a guided walking tour to sites of importance in African-American history in downtown Wilmington.
Making part of Third Street a “Commemorative Way” in honor of Gen. McNeil (with appropriate signs but without actually renaming the street) is a symbolic gesture, but a welcome one.
The point to be learned is that African Americans have been here for centuries, that they helped build Southeastern North Carolina through sweat labor and that they contributed and still have much to contribute.
Eventually, perhaps, skin color will be as irrelevant as the color of one’s hair or eyes. Then, perhaps, Black History Month, will be retired.
But we’re not there yet.
Online: https://www.starnewsonline.com
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