Prostate cancer disparity: The color line as a determinant of health and death

“ Early detection is important in successfully treating prostate cancer. Preventative screenings can reveal a man's current health status and identify whether he needs to adjust his diet or behavior. I urge men, particularly those over 50, to learn more about the disease and to talk to their doctors about when to start preventative screening. Healthcare providers can advise men as to which tests are most appropriate. Through early detection and treatment, we can reduce the number of deaths caused by prostate cancer. ”

“ By increasing awareness about the causes and signs of prostate cancer and by expanding research into preventative, remedial, and curative therapies, we can save more lives, improve the lives of those suffering from this cancer, and reduce its incidence in America. All men of middle age, and particularly those above the age of 50, should learn the risk factors, symptoms, and diagnostic tools that can help with the early recognition of prostate cancer, when treatment is most successful. ”

“ As we observe National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, we underscore our commitment to defeating prostate cancer by raising awareness about its risk factors, promoting the importance of early detection and treatment, and advancing our understanding of the disease and how to stop it.
Medical research has shown that there are steps men can take to reduce their chance of developing prostate cancer. For many men, regular exercise and healthy eating habits may decrease the likelihood of developing this deadly disease. ”

“ Although we cannot yet prevent prostate cancer, we know that early detection and treatment often make the difference between life and death. Screenings available include blood tests and physical examinations that can help detect the cancer at earlier, less dangerous stages. Researchers and scientists are also working to find more effective treatments that will give patients and their families greater hope. My Administration is committed to funding vital research and finding a cure for prostate cancer. ”

“ Through my HealthierUS Initiative, my Administration is also encouraging all citizens to lead healthier lives by eating right, exercising, and taking advantage of preventative screening. By working together, we will improve our ability to prevent, treat, and cure prostate cancer. ”

“ We do not fully understand the role of environmental and dietary factors in prostate cancer. We do not fully understand why the disease progresses at such varying rates in different men. We do not yet know why prostate cancer disproportionately affects African-American men. And we do not yet know how to eliminate the risks of treatment for prostate cancer that discourage too many men from seeing their doctors.
The only way we will ever answer these questions and the only way we will ever beat prostate cancer is by continuing to invest in research. ”

“ Men over the age of 50, African-American men, and men with family medical histories that include prostate cancer face the greatest risk and they can realize the greatest benefits from early detection, when treatment is most effective. All men should discuss their risk of prostate cancer with their physicians, determine the best screening and early-detection options, and adopt healthy lifestyles. Young men are also encouraged to find out whether a family member has ever been diagnosed with prostate cancer and to seek medical advice at an earlier age if a medical history exists. ”

“ They are negroes -- and that is enough, in the eye of this unreasoning prejudice, to justify indignity and violence. In nearly every department of American life they are confronted by this insidious influence. It fills the air. It meets them at the workshop and factory, when they apply for work. It meets them at the church, at the hotel, at the ballot-box, and worst of all, it meets them in the jury-box. Without crime or offense against law or gospel, the colored man is the Jean Valjean of American society. ”

“ Thus in all the relations of life and death we are met by the color line. We cannot ignore it if we would, and ought not if we could. It hunts us at midnight, it denies us accommodation in hotels and justice in the courts; excludes our children from schools, refuses our sons the chance to learn trades, and compels us to pursue only such labor as will bring the least reward. While we recognize the color line as a hurtful force, a mountain barrier to our progress, wounding our bleeding feet with its flinty rocks at every step, we do not despair. We are a hopeful people. ”

“ Slavery had the power at one time to make and unmake Presidents, to construe the law, dictate the policy, set the fashion in national manners and customs, interpret the Bible, and control the church; and, naturally enough, the old masters set themselves up as much too high as they set the manhood of the negro too low. Out of the depths of slavery has come this prejudice and this color line. It is broad enough and black enough to explain all the malign influences which assail the newly emancipated millions to-day. ”

“ If, on the other hand, seized by the brutal afterthought, we debauch the race thus caught in our talons, selfishly sucking their blood and brains in the future as in the past, what shall save us from national decadence? Only that saner selfishness which, Education teaches men, can find the rights of all in the whirl of work.
Again, we may decry the color prejudice of the South, yet it remains a heavy fact. Such curious kinks of the human mind exist and must be reckoned with soberly. They cannot be laughed away, nor always successfully stormed at, nor easily abolished by act of legislature. ”

“ For 5 years now, we've worked hard to increase public awareness about prostate cancer and to find a cure. Since I first took office, we have increased funding for prostate cancer research at the National Institutes of Health by 100 percent. This year alone we're funding more than 450 critically important research projects on prostate cancer, ranging from prevention to detection to treatment. Last year scientists at the Human Genome Project and Johns Hopkins University located the first gene known to predispose men to prostate cancer. ”

“ Scientists are examining risk factors to identify ways to prevent prostate cancer, and they are finding ways to detect this disease earlier, when it is easier to treat. In addition, newer treatments are helping to slow or stop the spread of prostate cancer in men with advanced stages of the disease. This progress offers hope to men who are living with prostate cancer and those who are at risk. ”

“ This morning I want to talk to you about our overall vision of cancer care and research as we approach the 21st century. This is a time of striking progress, stunning breakthroughs. With unyielding speed, scientists are mapping the very blueprint of human life, and expectations of the human genome project are being exceeded by the day. We are closing in on the genetic causes of breast cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer. New tools for screening and diagnosis are returning to many patients the promise of a long and healthy life. ”

“ A good diet, regular exercise, and healthy choices help people reduce their risk of developing many chronic diseases, including cancer. Research suggests that being overweight or obese accounts for 14 percent of cancer deaths among men and 20 percent among women.
Regular check-ups are also important in the fight against cancer. Preventive health screenings can detect many forms of cancer at earlier, less dangerous stages, allowing doctors to stop cancer before it spreads. I encourage all Americans to talk to their doctors about preventive screenings and regular check-ups. ”

“ Despite these advances, cancer is still the second leading cause of death in our country, and some cancers, such as breast, prostate, lung, leukemia, and melanoma, continue to be too prevalent. By increasing public awareness and encouraging people to take appropriate steps to protect themselves, we can help prevent certain types of cancer. Individuals can reduce the risk of developing the disease by avoiding tobacco and excessive alcohol and by making healthy lifestyle choices. ”

“ In spite of a common nature and the equality framed into law, this hate works injustice, of which each in their own name and under their own color may justly complain. The apology for observing the color line in the composition of our State and National conventions is in its necessity and in the fact that we must do this or nothing, for if we move our color is recognized and must be. It has its foundation in the exceptional relation we sustain to the white people of the country. A simple statement of our position vindicates at once our convention and our cause. ”

“ Curiosity is the only feeling. The office of color in the color line is a very plain and subordinate one. It simply advertises the objects of oppression, insult, and persecution. It is not the maddening liquor, but the black letters on the sign telling the world where it may be had. It is not the hated Quaker, but the broad brim and the plain coat. It is not the hateful Cain, but the mark by which he is known. The color is innocent enough, but things with which it is coupled make it hated. Slavery, ignorance, stupidity, servility, poverty, dependence, are undesirable conditions. ”

“ Of all the races and varieties of men which have suffered from this feeling, the colored people of this country have endured most. They can resort to no disguises which will enable them to escape its deadly aim. They carry in front the evidence which marks them for persecution. They stand at the extreme point of difference from the Caucasian race, and their African origin can be instantly recognized, though they may be several removes from the typical African race. ”

“ Their slavery would itself stamp them with odious features, and give their oppressors arguments in favor of oppression. Besides the long years of wrong and injury inflicted upon the colored race in this country, and the effect of these wrongs upon that race, morally, intellectually, and physically, corrupting their morals, darkening their minds, and twisting their bodies and limbs out of all approach to symmetry, there has been a mountain of gold -- uncounted millions of dollars -- resting upon them with crushing weight. ”

“ Few evils are less accessible to the force of reason, or more tenacious of life and power, than a long-standing prejudice. It is a moral disorder, which creates the conditions necessary to its own existence, and fortifies itself by refusing all contradiction. It paints a hateful picture according to its own diseased imagination, and distorts the features of the fancied original to suit the portrait. As those who believe in the visibility of ghosts can easily see them, so it is always easy to see repulsive qualities in those we despise and hate. ”

“ In the midst, then, of the larger problem of Negro education sprang up the more practical question of work, the inevitable economic quandary that faces a people in the transition from slavery to freedom, and especially those who make that change amid hate and prejudice, lawlessness and ruthless competition. ”

“ The Negro colleges, hurriedly founded, were inadequately equipped, illogically distributed, and of varying efficiency and grade; the normal and high schools were doing little more than common school work, and the common schools were training but a third of the children who ought to be in them, and training these too often poorly. At the same time the white South, by reason of its sudden conversion from the slavery ideal, by so much the more became set and strengthened in its racial prejudice, and crystallized it into harsh law and harsher custom ”

“ It is claimed that this wonder-working prejudice -- this moral magic that can change virtue into vice, and innocence to crime; which makes the dead man the murderer, and holds the living homicide harmless -- is a natural, instinctive, and invincible attribute of the white race, and one that cannot be eradicated; that even evolution itself cannot carry us beyond or above it. Alas for this poor suffering world (for four-fifths of mankind are colored) , if this claim be true! In that case men are forever doomed to injustice, oppression, hate, and strife ”

“ This Committee was composed of some of the most "respectable" men of Fulton—lawyers, merchants, and others of like position. The reader will doubtless think it strange that such men should be members of a mob; and so it would be, if prejudice against color were not the saddest of all comments upon the meanness of human depravity. ”

“ The college was founded by a few noble-minded men, whose object was to combat the vulgar American prejudice, which can see no difference between a man and his skin. They sought to illustrate the doctrine of Human Equality, or brotherhood of the races; to elevate the nation's morals, and give it more exalted views of the aims and objects of Christianity. Such a college, in the midst of corrupt public sentiment, could not fail to meet with the greatest opposition. It was persecuted on all sides, and by all parties, showing how deep-seated and virulent is prejudice against color. ”

“ Let not the reader suppose, however, that the white people of America are in the habit of exercising such honor towards the people of color, as is here ascribed to this planter. Far from it. [Pg 46] The laws of the Southern States, on the one hand, (I allude not now to any particular law of Louisiana, but to the laws of the Slave States in general) , have deliberately, and in cold blood, withheld their protection from every woman within their borders, in whose veins may flow but half a drop of African blood ”

“ The function of the Negro college then is clear: it must maintain the standards of popular education, it must seek the social regeneration of the Negro, and it must help in the solution of problems of race contact and cooperation. And finally, beyond all this, it must develop men. Above our modern socialism, and out of the worship of the mass, must persist and evolve that higher individualism which the centres of culture protect; there must come a loftier respect for the sovereign human soul that seeks to know itself and the world about it ”

“ Surely we have wit enough to found a Negro college so manned and equipped as to steer successfully between the dilettante and the fool. We shall hardly induce black men to believe that if their bellies be full it matters little about their brains. They already dimly perceive that the paths of peace winding between honest toil and dignified manhood call for the guidance of skilled thinkers, the loving, reverent comradeship between the black lowly and black men emancipated by training and culture. ”

“ If, still further, this averson* to the negro arises out of the fact that he is as we see him, poor, spiritless, ignorant, and degraded, then whatever is humane, noble, and superior, in the mind of the superior and more fortunate race, will desire that all arbitrary barriers against his manhood, intelligence, and elevation shall be removed, and a fair chance in the race of life be given him. ”

“ Soothly we have been told that first industrial and manual training should have taught the Negro to work, then simple schools should have taught him to read and write, and finally, after years, high and normal schools could have completed the system, as intelligence and wealth demanded.
That a system logically so complete was historically impossible, it needs but a little thought to prove. Progress in human affairs is more often a pull than a push, surging forward of the exceptional man, and the lifting of his duller brethren slowly and painfully to his vantage ground. ”

“ And to-day the institute is filled with college graduates, from the energetic wife of the principal down to the teacher of agriculture, including nearly half of the executive council and a majority of the heads of departments. In the professions, college men are slowly but surely leavening the Negro church, are healing and preventing the devastations of disease, and beginning to furnish legal protection for the liberty and property of the toiling masses. ”

“ Here, then, is the plain thirst for training; by refusing to give this Talented Tenth the key to knowledge can any sane man imagine that they will lightly lay aside their yearning and contentedly become hewers of wood and drawers of water?
No. The dangerously clear logic of the Negro's position will more and more loudly assert itself in that day when increasing wealth and more intricate social organization preclude the South from being, as it so largely is, simply an armed camp for intimidating black folk. Such waste of energy cannot be spared if the South is to catch up with civilization. ”

“ If any considerable number of white people have overcome this prejudice in themselves, have cast it out as an unworthy sentiment, and have survived the operation, the fact shows that this prejudice is not at any rate a vital part of human nature, and may be eliminated from the race without harm. ”

“ Natural qualities are common and universal, and do not change essentially on the mountain or in the valley. I come therefore to the second point -- the existence of countries where this malignant prejudice, as we know it in America, does not prevail; where character, not color, is the passport to consideration; where the right of the black man to be a man, and a man among men, is not questioned; where he may, without offense, even presume to be a gentleman. ”

“ There is hope for a people when their laws are righteous whether for the moment they conform to their requirements or not. But until this nation shall make its practice accord with its Constitution and its righteous laws, it will not do to reproach the colored people of this country with keeping up the color line—for that people would prove themselves scarcely worthy of even theoretical freedom, to say nothing of practical freedom, if they settled down in silent, servile and cowardly submission to their wrongs, from fear of making their color visible. ”