By Perly Viasmensky
It is very difficult for me to believe all those stories of racism that have been instigated during the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency and continue now with Joe Biden, causing hatred and animosity between races that once upon a time got along so very well.
Nobody can deny that the Obamas are racists, forgetting the fact that Barack Obama’s mother was White. Joe Biden is of the same ilk; consider when he made the derogatory statement that Kyle Rittenhouse is a White supremacist terrorist.
Not too long ago Joe Biden also expressed the opinion that “Young Black entrepreneurs are just as capable of succeeding, given the chance, as White entrepreneurs are, but they don’t have lawyers, they don’t have accountants. Black poor kids are just as smart as White kids.”
Apparently, a man like Joe Biden, who claimed he double-majored in college in history and political science, knows very little about the men and women who make all of us proud.
More than a century ago, Dr. James McCune Smith did what had never been done before. He became the first Black person to earn a medical degree and practice medicine in this country.
There are many Black doctors who made a great name in their profession. Some of them have not only been first in their class but
achieved first in their field of medicine. They have gone to open doors to the most elite medical schools including Yale and Johns
Hopkins.
They never were denied opportunities, they have ventured into new fields, including transplant surgery and ophthalmology. All those Black doctors that I am about to mention have earned the respect of people around the world.
Someone I have never met, but that I admire and consider my idol, is Dr. Benjamin Solomon Carson, better known to the world as Ben Carson and who is considered a pioneer in the field of neurosurgery. At 32 years of age, he earned the title of Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Dr. Carson is the son of a single mother who couldn’t read. After graduation from Medical School, he broke new ground in his field and famously separated conjoined twins who were joined at the back of the head. He performed the first successful neurosurgical procedure on a fetus inside the womb, developing new methods to treat brain-stem tumors.
Were opportunities denied to Dr. Ben Carson for being Black? Of course not. Dr. Charles Modlin is an accomplished kidney transplant surgeon, one of only 17 African-Americans to hold that title. He is also a urologist.
Dr. Harold Freeman in 1970 established two free breast and cervical cancer screening centers in Harlem to improve the chances of early detection.
Dr. Keith Black is a world-renowned neurosurgeon, scientist, and researcher in the field of cancer treatment. In 2007 he opened the Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. Brain Tumor Center at Cedars Sinai, a research center named after his former patient. Everybody should read his autobiography entitled “Brain Surgeon,” and see if any opportunities were denied to him for being Black.
If Black people do not advance in life it is not for being Black, but for lack of interest to prove to the world who they are.
Dr. Wesley Hicks Jr. is a Professor of Oncology at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, a Professor of the Department of Head and
Neck/Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, and Director of the Head and Neck Surgical Fellowship Program. He also holds a degree in dentistry.
Dr. Michael Parks is an orthopedic surgeon with an impeccable reputation for performing minimally invasive total joint replacements: knee and hip revision surgery.
Black women also came a long way. Dr. Alexa Canady, the first African American woman in the United States to become a neurosurgeon specialized in hydrocephalus, congenital spine abnormalities, skull abnormalities, and brain and spinal tumors.
Dr. Patricia Bath, born in Harlem, is an ophthalmologist recognized as the first Black American woman doctor to receive a patent for a medical purpose. The patent covered an apparatus for ablating and removing cataract lenses, a version of the device designated to remove cataracts with a fiber-optic laser. In the legal field, Black Americans are highly recognized.
As a Nevadan, I am highly proud of a woman I once had the opportunity to meet and interview for the Las Vegas Tribune, Johnnie Blakeney Rawlinson. Her integrity allows her to be fair to all defendants regardless of their race; she is the United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and a former United States District Judge for the District of Nevada.
Judge Rawlinson became the first African American woman admitted to practice law in Nevada and she was the first female judge in the United States District Court in Nevada.
I can’t fail to mention prominent attorney Johnny Cochran, one of the most respected Black lawyers of all times, and Willie Gary, who has won some of the largest United States court settlements in history.
Violette Neatly Anderson, on January 29, 1926, was the first African American woman to practice law before the United States Supreme Court.
Ida Platt was the first African American woman to practice law in Illinois, and the third in the United States.
There is no need to promote hate among us. In this country, everybody has opportunities for advancement in business and education. If not, how does Joe Biden explain all the professionals so highly recognized by the country and the world?
Joe Biden likes to confuse everybody according to his desires.
President John Kennedy during his presidency was hospitalized for adrenal insufficiency. No big deal, he went in and out and everything was fine.
President Ronald Reagan was shot in the chest after giving a speech to AFL-CIO leaders in D.C. and he even walked unassisted to the emergency room.
President Donald Trump got the COVID virus that Dr. Fauci spread all over the world, was hospitalized, and continued working from his hospital suite.
Joe Biden went to the hospital for a simple colonoscopy and he made a federal case out of arbitration, even transferring duties to his Vice-President. Everybody that has a colonoscopy goes to the hospital at 7 in the morning and is back home by 10 a.m.
He sure loves dramas!
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Perly Viasmensky is the General Manager of the Las Vegas Tribune. She writes a weekly column in this newspaper. To contact Perly Viasmensky, email her at pviasmensky@lasvegastribune.co
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