VII. CONCLUSION
“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
African-Americans have been struggling for equality for almost five hundred years. Illustrative of the never-ending struggles of African-Americans to obtain equality is the failure of African-Americans to access quality health care regardless of their gender, education, or income-level. The United States long-term care system has not only been plagued by racial discrimination, but also with significant failures in providing quality care to minority populations. The federal government intervened on behalf of African-Americans to rectify this injustice of inequality by enacting Title VI, but seemingly grew weary and returned to its sponsorship of racial discrimination and segregation. This sponsorship entails funding of nursing homes that discriminate through institutionalized racism, under funding of the agency [p1004] responsible for combating discrimination in nursing homes, and barring private parties from suing to prevent the discrimination allowed by the government.
Institutional racism is so entrenched in the long-term care system that two decades of empirical studies show that intuitional racism is the norm in nursing home admissions and provision of quality care. The failure of OCR, charged with enforcing Title VI, to prevent racial discrimination and segregation, has caused elderly African-Americans to be relegated to substandard nursing homes, which are under funded and ineffectual. The failure of OCR to enforce Title VI is in direct violation of the CERD that requires the United States to prevent racial discrimination by government-funded entities. Even when brought to the attention of nursing home administrators, state regulators, and federal regulators, there has been no change.
Though losing the battle domestically to prevent racial discrimination and segregation, African-Americans cannot give up the fight. To solve this problem, African-Americans need to take the fight to the international community by filing a claim with the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination for the United States violation of the CERD. By filing a claim, African-Americans can force the federal government to fulfill the requirements of Title VI and the CERD. Hence, it is time to turn to the international community for support to induce the United States to comply with its own laws to provide elderly African-Americans with equal access to quality health care.
. Assistant Professor, Loyola University Chicago School of Law, B.A. (Honors Biology), University of Michigan, 1996; J.D., Georgetown University Law Center, 2000; M.P.H., Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, 2000.
