A veteran activist’s death is a calling to Black men to take care of their health
I don’t know why Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to inform President Joe Biden, Pentagon staff or the general public about his cancer diagnosis.
But, as good soldiers are often instructed, he offered no excuses, just an apology.
“I want to be crystal clear. We did not handle this right. And I did not handle this right,” Austin said at a Pentagon news conference after his hospital stay that began after he received a diagnosis in December for prostate cancer.
As a good soldier, he said, he was “offering all of this as an explanation and not an excuse.”
“The news shook me, as I know that it shakes so many others, especially in the Black community,” he said of his diagnosis. “It was a gut punch.”
Yes, his first instinct was to keep the matter private, noting that he’s generally a private person and doesn’t like burdening others with his problems.
However, “I’ve learned from this experience that taking this kind of job means losing some of the privacy that most of us expect,” Austin said. “The American people have a right to know if their leaders are facing health challenges that might affect their ability to perform their duties, even temporarily. So a wider circle should have been notified, especially the president.”
Fair enough. A cancer diagnosis for the secretary of defense is too big a matter to be kept under wraps. But, as a fellow Black man of advanced age, I think I know why Austin was so reluctant to reveal his true condition.
Hard experience has taught us to be suspicious — sometimes too suspicious for the good of our own health.
Collectively, we Black folks have higher mortality than any other broadly defined racial or ethnic group for most cancers and other leading causes of death, including heart disease, stroke and diabetes, according to the latest American
Cancer Society statistics.
During the most recent fiveyear period, Black men had a 6% higher incidence rate but 19% higher mortality than white men overall, the society reports, including an approximately two-fold higher risk of death from myeloma, stomach cancer, and prostate cancer.
But statistics are one thing. What him home for me about being extra careful about cancer threats was the death of a friend and colleague.
Joe Madison was an award-winning radio host and tireless activist for causes ranging from voter registration, relieving hunger in troubled regions in Eastern Africa, and fighting apartheid and other oppression in South Africa — before he died Jan.
31 of prostate cancer at age 74.
I’ve known Joe since the late 1960s after which he became the youngest executive director of the NAACP’s Detroit branch at age 24.
He soon hit the path of pursuing radio talk-show gigs in Detroit, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and, ultimately, SiriusXM Radio, which exposed him to a nationwide satellite radio audience,
There he built national fame as “The Black Eagle,” akin to the “voice of truth” represented by Howard Beale in the movie “Network,” although maybe without as much bombast.
When listeners phoned in their gripe of the day with rising anger and frustration, Joe often responded with what became his catchphrase: Madison would demand action and challenge his audience by asking, “What are you going to do about it?”
In other words, he wouldn’t let us, his audience, leave all the thinking to him
He didn’t hesitate to take his show on the road, covering hurricanes, scandals and.other disasters to which he wanted to call our attention.
That included such dangers as prostate cancer, which takes a disproportionate toll on Black men in particular. Yet too many of us are too paranoid about vaccines, blood tests and other conventional checkup methods to make sure we’re OK.
I have often said that dictionaries trying to define “activist” should just publish a photo of Madison. Like the young Rev. Jesse Jackson, Madison often seemed to be everywhere at once.
In 2021, Madison went on a 73-day hunger strike to encourage passage of voting rights bills. Unbeknownst to his listeners, he was fighting prostate cancer during his hunger strike. When asked if he understood the danger he was in, he replied, “I am willing to die.”
He was not ready to leave us then. Time ran out on him this time. Yet, he left good memories and a bold model for tackling social and political problems:
Before you complain, remember Joe’s question: “What are YOU going to do?”