One of the most important ideas that weaves through the various readings we have been assigned is the idea of cause and effect. Our sociological structure is so fragile, made up of so many interconnecting pieces, that when abused, tragedy ensues. The fields of sociology and public health are all about identifying these relationships and coming up with ideas to repair the social structure. Ghost Map provided us with our first example: raw sewage mixed with the drinking water supply can cause a cholera epidemic. Root Shock provided us with another: the disruption of communities can cause an increase in mental illness and AIDS in the people who are displaced. And now Roderick Wallace gives us another, even more sinister example- when fire safety services are deliberately cut from disadvantaged areas, the rate of urban decay and the amount of AIDS diagnoses both increase significantly.
But there are important differences in readings like Ghost Map and readings like Wallace’s article- like the idea of deliberate action. The further we’ve gotten in the semester, the more we’ve seen an active hand in these cause and effect relationships; a level of deliberate action on the part of some dominating authority that endangers the minority. The New Jim Crow brought a myriad examples of court cases and legal practices that demonstrated how white law enforcement deliberately traps minorities like blacks in a vicious cycle of drugs, incarceration and poverty. While our focus as sociological thinkers should certainly be on how to solve the issues we have been reading about, another idea to ponder is how to put an end to the deliberate side of the cause and effect cycle, to identify and take punitive action against the policies and ideas that have a hand in causing these public health issues.
