Ok, I see we are still talking about vaccines & the Tuskegee Syphilis Study...YES, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was HORRIFIC, and public health/medical professionals should CONTINUE to atone for our institutionally racist legacy in all the work we do from now till forever. BUT...

BIPOC are not sitting in our homes, separating the government into component parts to figure out which component we trust. Decisions about certain government institutions are made on the whole, given a range of our own experiences as well as those of others in our communities. 2/

Tuskegee is a (horrific) blip on our US radar of government abuses. But it's only a part of the list that includes:
-Slavery
-Tail of Tears
-Japanese internment
-Jim Crow
-Operation Wetback
-Rodney King
-mass incarceration
-TUSKEGEE
-Floyd/Taylor/Gardner
-border separation
3/

Take Tuskegee off the list. Would something change? Maybe. But I have doubt that Tuskegee is THE incident that damaged relationships between BIPOC communities & the US government. One incident. Even a critical incident. But not the only incident. We have plenty to atone for. 4/

But continually citing ONLY Tuskegee allows all other branches of government to absolve themselves of any blame for contributing to community distrust, and thus any need for systemic change.

Every part of our US Government has a Tuskegee. 5/

Keep pointing fingers at our public health system (of which I am a part). But how are law enforcement, DHS, Department of Ed, etc, addressing their historic racism and its consequential impact on public health? We all have a role to play in being worthy of trust.

KEEP TALKING ABOUT TUSKEGEE, but not as the lynchpin that spurred doubt of the US government. Rather, discuss it as ONE example of one egregious instance of government abuses of BIPOC communities, and use your platform ( reporters & op-ed-ers) to bring up and address others too