The Sister Act at Barack Obama’s Nomination
By Kenneth J. Cooper
If it wasn’t, “We Are Family” should have been declared the official theme song of the Democratic convention. The tune was played often enough, and its unifying message fits Barack Obama’s call for Americans to come together, despite differences of race, class, region or party.
That was the obvious political message Democrats were trying to send. A subtler one was resonating with some portion of half the nation’s voters. “We Are Family” is a 1970s tune by Sister Sledge about sisters being together.
So apt for a national political convention where women were more prominent than ever before. The first night’s biggest speech was Michelle Obama’s, the second’s was Hillary Rodham Clinton’s. Only a single speech by a woman, Geraldine Ferraro’s as the vice presidential nominee in 1984, compares in the amount of public attention either received.
From the podium in Denver, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi guided official business with light taps of her gavel. Memorial tributes to Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones, who died last week in Cleveland, flowed from Hillary Clinton and other speakers. For the first time, women made up a majority of the party’s convention delegates.
Lesser-known women rose to score political points for the party. The curiously-named Quincy Lucas, a black teacher from Delaware, offered her senator, Joe Biden, as the nominee for vice president. She began, stiffly, by noting her sister had been killed by an ex-boyfriend five years ago. Why did she start with a personal tragedy? Biden, she pointed out, wrote the Violence Against Women Act to combat domestic violence.
A humble “grandmother from Alabama,” Lily Ledbetter, conceded in her drawl that she was a surprising choice to speak at the convention. She told how, after years as a supervisor at a Goodyear plant, she learned she had long been paid less than men doing the same job. She sued, and won, until the Supreme Court ruled last year she should have sued within six months of the first pay disparity–even though she didn’t know about it.
Ledbetter called for equal pay for equal work, a cause usually associated with feminists who are younger and from big cities like New York or San Francisco. To hear it from a retired white woman from Alabama busted up that stereotype.
Women carried much the party’s message on the big issue of health care. Their stories about people struggling with health problems carried an emotional load that the same anecdotes, if told by men, would not. Who, after all, usually cares for a sick child or, for that matter, a parent?
Perhaps the most touching passage in Michelle Obama’s speech was remembrance of her father, who was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in his 30s but coped for years without complaint.
“As he got sicker, it got harder for him to walk. It took him longer to get dressed in the morning,” she recalled. “But if he was in pain, he never let on. He never stopped smiling and laughing, even while struggling to button his shirt, even while using two canes to get himself across the room to give my mom a kiss. He just woke up a little earlier and worked a little harder.”
Hillary Clinton related a memorable meeting at a campaign stop. “I will always remember the single mom who had adopted two kids with autism, didn’t have health insurance and discovered she had cancer,” Clinton recalled. “But she greeted me with her bald head painted with my name on it and asked me to fight for health care.”
Congresswoman Louise Slaughter from New York decried the millions without health insurance after reading aloud this letter from a Nevada woman: “My husband has Parkinson’s and was forced to retire. He has been on disability for three years and Medicare doesn’t meet his prescription needs. I have to pay my own insurance premium so our Medicare expenses are quite high. Our health care system doesn’t work.”
Women played a major role in showing the party has family values–and doesn’t just talk about them, in the intolerant way conservative Republicans do.
Cameras showed Michelle Obama in tears as she listened to Beau Biden, Delaware’s attorney general and the senator’s son, talk about being a little boy when his biological mother and a sister were killed in a car accident–as the mother was taking her children to buy a Christmas tree.
After her speech, Michelle Obama walked daughters Malia and Sasha over to a video screen where Barack Obama appeared. The girls called him “Daddy.” That night technology united a family separated by 600 miles.
White TV commentators rushed to put the family into a context viewers would grasp, comparing the Obamas to the only Kennedys ever to live in the White House, or the Huxtables on the Cosby Show. That a metaphor was needed at all suggests the commentators, and many white viewers, have trouble seeing the Obamas as individuals or recognizing them as an ordinary family with educated parents and happy children.
They’re a family, an American family.
Kenneth J. Cooper is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.
Multiple Sclerosis & Michelle Obama’s Father
In her speech at the Democratic National Convention, Michelle Obama disclosed that her father, Fraser Robinson, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in his early 30s. Learn more about the disease in “The Word on Multiple Sclerosis” and “MS Study Reveals Differences in Immune System of Blacks and Whites.” These articles are part of Heart & Soul’s award-winning series on how MS affects African Americans, including singer Tamia, who was featured in the accompanying cover story. The National Association of Black Journalists recently honored Heart & Soul for the MS series as well as the design of a cover story on Erykayh Badu at its Salute to Excellence ceremony at the Unity conference in Chicago.
The Word on Multiple Sclerosis
The Tricky Autoimmune Disease of the Central Nervous System Still Baffles the Medical Community
By Stacy Gilliam
Anne Mari e Johnson’s symptoms crept up during a smoke break back in the fall of 2002. She lit up as usual, but could barely hold the cigarette between her fingers. The following day, she experienced a pins-and-needles feeling in her hands, arms and throughout the bottom half of her 5′2″ frame.
“I couldn’t lift my hands to button my shirt, to hold a cup or a pen,” says Johnson, 36, a social services professional in Brooklyn, New York. “I was in such pain. A week later, I couldn’t walk.” On New Year’s Eve, she received the diagnosis–multiple sclerosis (MS). “I was scared to death,” says Johnson, who had just finished graduate school at the time. “How am I going to work? Who will date someone like me? Can I have kids? What exactly is multiple sclerosis?”
Desperate for answers, she researched and learned, like more than 400,000 Americans diagnosed today, that MS is an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system. That means it can affect your brain, spinal chord and optic nerves. It isn’t contagious or deadly, and what causes it is a mystery. But MS is a disabling, quite fickle disease that can produce loss of vision, numbness, loss of balance and muscle coordination, bowel and bladder dysfunction, and fatigue, among many other varying symptoms, which come and go, lighten up and worsen. At its most debilitating, MS can take away a person’s ability to walk, write and talk. In less severe cases, one might feel tired and experience slight mobility issues.
“In most people, it becomes a progressive disease with a downward, slow progression over the years,” says John Richert, M.D., executive vice president, research & clinical programs at the National MS Society. “The symptoms may be mild or vague to the point that sometimes the person may ignore them. Or they’ll go to a doctor who can’t find anything. It may take years to diagnose it.”
Or a matter of weeks, as in Johnson’s case. The quick loss of physical control can be dumbfounding and traumatic. Feelings of loneliness and depression aren’t uncommon, as patients try to adjust to a new way of living. “I went from wearing three-inch high Manolos to someone who couldn’t button her shirt,” says Johnson, who mostly wears pullovers now.
Cheryl Chatman understands. In 1990, she began losing vision in her left eye. “I started crying because I knew something was wrong with me,” says the 42-year-old wife and mother of two who lives in Jacksonville, Florida. While one doctor assured Chatman her vision would return, Chatman insisted on a second opinion from a doctor who nailed the diagnosis as MS. Seventeen years later, she’s legally blind. “My vision didn’t come back. I only see shadows and silhouettes.” At age 19, she lost feeling in the bottom of her feet and the palms of her hands. She didn’t know it was MS then.
The Face of MS
Johnson and Chatman are textbook examples of MS patients diagnosed in their early 20s and 30s, in the prime of their lives. But their heritage lumps them in with the seemingly small, but really unknown number of African Americans with the disease. According to the National MS Society, blacks make up just 5 percent of the population. It is one of the few diseases that don’t disproportionately affect the black culture, so the research suggests. But some aren’t so convinced. “The mentality is that it affects Caucasians,” says Kamilah Martin, founder of the Martin MS Alliance Foundation, a Washington, D.C., organization researching MS in communities of color. Martin, 30, felt her first symptom at 16, and was diagnosed a few years later in college. “It’s affecting African Americans quietly,” she says.
Radio personality Kym Sellers, diagnosed in 1992, believes African Americans are20uncomfortable sharing that they even have MS. She admits to fibbing to some about why she would limp some days. “Either I pulled a muscle or my leg was bothering me” Sellers says. “I got tired of lying.”
Studies don’t indicate a cut-and-dried reason why African Americans account for fewer cases of MS. But research shows those living closest to the equator are at less of a risk. MS is rare in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, and more prevalent among whites in northern Europe.
“As the gene pool gets mixed in the United States, you find more African Americans with MS,” Dr. Richert says. “It also has a tendency to be severe in African Americans. It’s a very important issue to understand why that occurs.”
Answers will hopefully arise from two studies underway, one a Harvard University project, comparing the genes of African Americans to Caucasians, and a University of California study, which is looking at the genetic background of families with MS. For sure, there are more women–two to three times more–developing MS than men. The reasons for that are uncertain, too. But researchers are currently digging for conclusions, with some studies comparing genetics and common habits of men and women.
Battling MS
There is no cure for MS. But treatment has come a long way. With drugs and therapy, most people with MS can live full, productive lives. Current FDA-approved treatments, such as Avonex and Betaseron, manage symptoms such as pain and fatigue, treat relapses and slow down the disease’s affect on the nervous system. All are injected by needle, however, oral treatments are in the pipeline. “We understand a lot more about the disease than we did 10 years ago,” Dr. Richert says. “For the first time in history, we have drugs that can slow the damage.”
Researchers are excited about recent initiatives geared toward learning how to repair the nervous system and protect the brain and spinal chord, ideas Dr. Richert says sounded like science fiction five years ago. “Available drugs slow the damage,” he says, “but don’t have much capability to repair the nervous system.”
The current slate of drugs do work well, Johnson says. So well that the average person may not know Johnson has MS. The disease has also encouraged her to be proactive with her own health. In addition to a once-a-week injection, she combats her MS with yoga and Pilates, eating healthy and relaxing as often as possible. She ev en gave up smoking. “I believe healing and wellness is body, mind and spirit,” she says.
Exercise is good, particularly strength building, which the medical community once discouraged for MS patients for fear it would hasten feelings of fatigue. “If people can be encouraged to engage in a program of strength-building, it can counteract that secondary weakness that comes with a sedentary lifestyle,” says Nicholas LaRocca, Ph.D., associate vice president of Healthcare Delivery and Policy Research. Cutting-edge technologies underway include body weight-supported treadmill training, which could retrain the body to walk again for some with MS; specialized seating devices for the wheelchair-bound and a way to enhance the computer experience for those with limitations.
“We realize that with the young generation, at least, the computer is how people obtain information and connect with others,” LaRocca says.
Lifestyle changes are necessary for many to manage day to day. Chatman, who also works out, walks with a cane when necessary. She also depends on her teammate of a husband, Len, and minds her limitations.
Johnson rarely wears button-up shirts, she uses cups with big handles and she’s extr a careful with her curling iron. She still loves her heels, but goes for the aerosol pump variety now. “You make the best of it. You have to laugh about it,” she says. “Your state of mind is crucial in dealing with this.”
Spreading Hope
Equally important to finding a cure is embracing those with MS, educating those who don’t have MS and letting the world know the disease isn’t a death sentence. “I wanted to help people and let them know you can live with it,” says Sellers, who in 2002, started the Kym Sellers Foundation, a non-profit organization that has raised $100,000 annually to support those with MS.
Chatman shares that sentiment through the Art of Living With MS (www.alwms.org), a four-year old organization she founded with her husband. The couple organizes life-management programs for couples and families all over the country. “We provide avenues to get together and connect,” says Chatman, who recently wrote a book, Six Secrets For Managing MS as a Team. “We talk about issues that we face each day. Sometimes the only people who understand are people who walk in our shoes.”
In similar spirit, Johnson juggles speaking engagements, mentors and has written an unpublished book about her first-year experiences with MS called Hey, Me Too. A Sister’s Journey with Multiple Sclerosis. “There is somebody out there feeling alone in despair,” she says. “But if they see people living with MS, that makes the difference.” v
Stacy Gilliam, a Washington, D.C., freelancer, is grateful for the lessons she learned about multiple sclerosis while writing this story.
MS Study Reveals Differences in Blacks and Whites
with MS may be closer to being solved. According to a study published in the
July 3, 2007, issue of medical journal Neurology, an antibody used to diagnose
multiple sclerosis is present in greater levels in the spinal fluid of blacks with MS than whites with the disease.
respons
ible for anti-myelin activity in the spinal fluid were 29 percent higher
in blacks than whites. The study also confirmed that African Americans with MS
often require walking aids far earlier than whites, but doesn’t nail down why. On average, African Americans had MS
for nine years before needing ambulatory assistance such as a cane, compared to 17 years for whites,
reports the National MS Society.
Medicine in St. Louis and study co-author, says it’s possible that unevenly distributed
genes between ethnic groups could account for different susceptibility to some diseases. “In multiple sclerosis,=0
Arecent genetic studies have begun to identify certain genes, which may explain
why African Americans experience more disability,” Dr. Rinker says. However, exactly what these genes do is still a mystery.
–S.G.
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Boot Camp Tips
Ewunike Akpan, who runs 10-week C.O.R.E. Boot Camps for women and
men in Washington, D.C., has these tips for finding the best boot camp
for you:
sergeant types if you prefer a more supportive, one-on-one approach.
Pay Attention to the Little Things
By Iyanla Vanzant
big things in life. We can get the children clothed and fed, the bills
paid and, on our good days, even wash a dish or two. We can get along
with some of the most difficult people and survive very draining
situations. We can even bounce back from those disappointing
relationships and bad breakups without pulling out all of our hair.
Even though we don’t like it, we seem to have the big stuff covered.
that it’s the little things in life we tend to overlook. To be
specific, I am addressing those little principles and values that
nourish our spirit, nurture our hearts and keep the crazies from our
doorsteps. Four in particular, I call HIPS: Honor, Integrity, Passion
and Stillness. Many of us have convinced ourselves that HIPS can be too
big to handle.
In this instance, honor means honoring yourself by speaking what’s
on your heart, aka telling the truth about what you feel and know. It
means asking for what you need and letting others know what works and
what does not work for you. In the business of life, it is very easy to
forget that you are the only one who gets to say what goes on in your
life.
that what you think, feel, say and do are in alignment. It means
standing up within yourself, for yourself and not abandoning yourself
to make or keep other people happy.
lust. It is about having that one thing in your life that you do just
for the joy of it. You don’t have to be good at it. You may never get
paid for it. The only requirement is that it makes you feel good. It
puts a light in your eyes.
without feeling guilty. It is a time to empty your heart, mind and
spirit. It means giving yourself permission to listen within, to refuel
and to love on you.
big stuff gets handled and that everyone else is taken care of. In the
process, our HIPS can become disjointed. Perhaps it is time to consider
doing some HIPS-building exercises.
- Promise yourself that you will not go to bed without a bubble bath at least three days a week. It honors your body.
- Don’t spend more than you have, and refuse to wear shoes that
hurt your feet–no matter how good they look. You cannot be in integrity
when your feet hurt! - Take a day just for you. Do something that makes you smile and
laugh, and then take a nap. When you wake up, if you listen deeply, I
promise, you will hear your heart sing. - Finally, make a promise to life that this year you will pay close
attention to the people, situations and circumstances that do not sit
well on your HIPS.
founder and director of Inner Visions Institute of Spiritual
Development.
STD Alert
We may know more about sexually transmitted diseases these days, but that doesn’t mean they’ve gone away. In fact, they are on the rise, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). From 2002 to 2006, chlamydia rates increased by 17.2 percent among African Americans, and gonorrhea is 18 times more prevalent in blacks than in whites. Here are the most common STDs in women and how they are treated.
Chlamydia: The most frequently reported and fastest growing sexually transmitted disease, Chlamydia usually carries no symptoms. When they do occur, symptoms include abnormal vaginal discharge, burning when urinating and spotting between periods. Chlamydia is cured with antibiotics. If left untreated, it can cause pelvic inflammatory disease and infertility.
Gonorrhea: The second most commonly reported infectious disease in the United States, Gonorrhea is often mistaken for a bladder infection. Symptoms include pain or burning upon urination, yellowish or bloody vaginal discharge, abdominal pain, heavier menstrual flow and spotting between periods. Gonorrhea is treated with antibiotics, but left untreated it can cause chronic pelvic pain, ectopic pregnancy and infertility.
Genital Herpes: The virus can lay dormant for years. When an outbreak does occur, look for painful blisters, itching, burning, fever, headaches and muscle aches. There is no cure for genital herpes, but current treatments can shorten outbreaks. Left untreated, genital herpes can be passed onto an infant. This STD is the leading cause of blindness in newborns.
Trichomoniasis: Caused by a parasite, symptoms include a pungent yellow, green or gray vaginal discharge and painful urination and intercourse. Trichomoniasis is usually treated with flagyl. Left untreated, this STD will increase your chances of getting HIV.
HIV/AIDS: Blacks account for almost half of all new HIV cases. CDC studies show that 66 percent of black women with AIDS contracted it through heterosexual contact. The virus can lay dormant for 10 years before exhibiting symptoms, including extreme tiredness; rapid weight loss; fevers and night sweats; long-lasting infections; diarrhea; swollen glands; coughing; oral and vaginal yeast infections; pelvic inflammatory disease (PID); discolored blotches. There is no cure, but treatments can slow the disease. If left untreated, it is fatal.
–Beverly James
Beverly Johnson’s Model Behavior
Beverly Johnson was the definition of fierce gracing magazine
covers and stalking down catwalks at the top of the modeling game 30 years
ago. Who would have guessed that
during that time, Johnson, 55, subscribed to the “don’t eat work out,” she
says. “I love modeling. It gave me my start. It made me who I am and it’s
lucrative. But the money that the models get, they deserve every penny and
more. The discipline it takes is unbelievable. I’m talking about literally
eating a bowl of brown rice and two eggs a week.”
spent the height of her career weighing between 103 and 117 pounds, battling
anorexia and bulimia. “I was starving brain cells and organs, doing years of
damage. It took years to gain weight,” says Johnson, the first African-American
cover model of American Vogue. “I’ve just, in the
last year or two, recognized when I was hungry, because I suppressed that for
so many years.”
California, and is an avid participant in the sport. While she was learning to
play golf she recognized how important the core is for maintaining a strong=0
Aback and a sense of balance as you
mature. “Golf takes an awful lot of core strength for the swing so I began
working out with a trainer four times a week doing golf-specific exercises,
like working with a heavy ball and 10 pound weights,” she says.
when she accepted the offer to be a judge on “She’s Got the Look,” a reality
show on TVLand that finds supermodels models older than 35. “Muscle is heavier
than fat and I got very bulky,” says Johnson, who desired a more svelte-look
for the show. “I started doing a lot of cardiovascular. In the morning I would
walk to where I worked up a sweat–about 45 minutes, which is about 3-1/2 miles
for me. And then I’d do it again in the evening.”
day. Breakfast might be a protein shake, granola with milk, or scrambled eggs
and piece of toast. For lunch and dinner, she’ll have a tuna fish sandwich and
an apple, or chicken, vegetables and rice.
butter and shortbread cookies. She controls her cravings by keeping temptations
out of her home and soothing her sweet tooth with dried fruit and licorice.
wants to engage a nutritionist and a chef. “I can eat cheese or dairy and still
loose weight. I can eat a teaspoon of peanut butter and it’s okay. My
girlfriend can’t.”
much more healthy regime than we had, and they have a burden of responsibility
that I didn’t have–this whole epidemic of young women growing up dangerously
obsessing about being really, really thin. The secret is out. It’s no longer
true, the whole ‘I’m a model, I’m naturally thin, I can eat anything I want.’
The jig is up, part
icularly when you are growing older.”
Anna Deveare Smith Acts Out Life
Anna Deavere Smith is taking her trailblazing blend of journalistic interviewing, engaged listening and artistic interpretation to explore the body as the vehicle for life and the human will as its fuelin her new one-woman show, “Let Me Down Easy.” Smith’s riveting characters are based on scores of interviews.
“The constant question I’m pursuing is: Is there anything in our human experience beyond the human body?” she says. “We chronicle life from when the body emerges to when the body is gone. But the spirit must be a part of who we are and what we are. Love is obviously a part of who we are. But our feeling and will are what keep us going. They’re the fuel that keeps us in motion.”
Smith conceived the project while interviewing patients at Yale University School of Medicine as a visiting professor. “When I talked to people about their bodies, they’d go on and on,” she recalls. “Usually, we’re so full of our thoughts and aspiration and our fears–we’re always trying to move forward–that we don’t think about our bodies. But if you have a toothache, and I don’t cut you off, you’ll talk at length about it. I thought it’d be very interesting to talk to people who are extremely aware of what’s going on in their body because they are suffering or because they are using it to make a living.”
Smith listened to patients at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and wounded U.S. soldiers at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. “I talked to a swimmer about what it meant to lose a race by two-one-hundredths of a second,” she says. “I talked to boxers about what it means to be a champion. I talked to a mother leaving a hospital with her cancer-free child after two years. The body is a vehicle. What happens when the vehicle stops working?”
Smith is known for theatrical works on life in the United States, especially on controversial racial issues. In her award-winning “Fires in the Mirror,” she used the words of black and Jewish residents to portray the racial tension of the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York, in 1991. Likewise, her 1992 play, “Twilight,” catalogued sentiments in Los Angeles, after police were acquitted in the beating of motorist Rodney King.
In “Let Me Down Easy,” however, Smith goes beyond the nation’s borders to examine the human will. She included the stories of South African children impacted by AIDS. She also visited Rwanda, the site of brutal tribal genocide in 1994.
“I talked to both tribes–the Tutsis, who were the victims, and the Hutus, who were the perpetrators of the genocide,” she says. “Hutu prisoners who’ve been in jail for the last 10 years for their role in the genocide are about to be released. There’s a national campaign for forgiveness. I listened to Tutsis, some of whom had lost family members, some who had been tortured themselves, talk to me about how important it is to for give the Hutus because if they didn’t, there was no way for the country to move forward.” Smith says the Rwandan experience illustrates how forgiveness is part of the human will to survive.
“Forgiveness comes under the category of being human,” she says. “It’s a nonphysical way we negotiate our way through life. It’s part of our resiliency. Can you image what we’d be like if we didn’t forgive? We forgive because we know there’s something else about life–grace. Forgiveness is about grace.”
–Yvette Moore
