Breaking the Fine Rain of Death: African American Health Issues and a Womanist Ethic of Care - Hardcover

In 1996, 42 million Americans had no medical insurance and the rise of managed care organizations (HMOs) in the late 1990s is changing the kind of healthcare other Americans receive. This text focuses on the health and health care (or lack of it) for one group of Americans - African Americans - and does so from a black feminist (or womanist) perspective in which attention is paid to race and class as well as gender. The text describes the history of health care in African American communities (most notably the Tuskegeee syphilis experiment, where a group of African American men in Alabama had treatment deliberately withheld to study the effects of the disease on their bodies). A close look is taken at the diseases that affect African Americans disproportionately: hypertension, diabetes, low birth-weight babies and drug related illnesses. In addition it studies the combination of factors - cultural genetic, socio-economic - that accounts for them. The author offers models of care that have worked in some African American communities and need to be used on a broader scale. Exploring healing models sensitive to class and cultural context, the text provides recommendations relevant to the needs of the Black Church and the African American community.

Emilie M. Townes is Professor of Christian Social Ethics and Black Church Ministries at Saint Paul School of Theology, Kansas City, Missouri.