When Dr. Earlexia Norwood was 28 years old, she went to a dermatologist with her husband after experiencing post partum hair loss.

The skin doctor had one question for her: “Is this your pimp?” He asked, nodding toward her husband and donning gloves before using pencils to examine her scalp without touching it.

It didn’t occur to that doctor, a white male, that a black woman could be anything but a prostitute, let alone a Doctor. But at the time Norwood was a doctor herself, constantly fighting stereotypes and blazing trails for blacks in healthcare.

Today, Norwood is the physician in charge at the Troy Medical Center and President of OPAL—an organization dedicated in supporting African America leaders in health and sciences for Ford Health Systems.

Norwood shared this chilling experience of discrimination in healthcare at the unveiling of Real Times Media’s inaugural publication of Vital Signs: A tribute to African Americans in the Healthcare Industry last night.

Sadly, she said her story is far from unique, even today. “Most people that this kind of thing happens to are not doctors, they don’t have the letters PH.D behind their names,” she said. That’s why most people who face similar discrimination, especially when it comes to something as personal as healthcare, shrink into the shadows of embarrassment after such an encounter instead of fighting it, she added.

“We need culturally sensitive care and to make sure we never stereotype patients,” Norwood said. “We need people who understand our community, our people.”

The Vital Signs book unveiling party was appropriately held at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African History and served as a call to action among leading African Americans in the healthcare field.

Dr. Patricia Maryland, President and CEO of the St. John Providence Healthcare System, in an impassioned speech, told the crowd that the Vital Signs book is a crucial tool to organize black healthcare leaders. It also brings fresh diverse minds into the field of medicine and can be used to treat the "vital signs" of a stuggling community. She listed some grave statistics on the state of black health in Michigan, calling the health disparity between whites and blacks “startling”.

“We’ve got to bring more African Americans into the medical field. Cultural competence to deal with patients who are of African America heritage,” she said:

• The Mortality rate is 27 percent higher in African Americans than in Caucasian Americans
• African Americans are twice as likely to get diabetes than their Caucasian counterparts.
• The infant mortality rate in African Americans in Michigan is three times (3x!) as high as Caucasian Americans

“Take this book and use it,” Maryland urged, noting that the Vital Signs publication identifies the key black leaders in the field between its covers and in doing so makes these faces more accessible to black youth as mentors. The book also makes black healthcare leaders aware of their network so it’s much easier to collaborate for a healthier community.

“This book has the power of bringing us all together and identifying us. Now we have to figure out how to work together on changing some of these numbers,” Maryland said in her speech. She called for a “strategic forum” to organize around bringing more blacks into the field and collaborating to fight the health crisis. “How can we work together? That’s the call to action,” Maryland said.

Maryland ended her speech with a reference to Dr. Martin Luther King’s vision: “If you don’t feel good you can’t accomplish much,” she said. “His dream for our nation cannot be realized without healthy people and a healthy community.”

But I remember three years ago when Bing just got into office and he was trying to do make the cuts needed without state intervention. Remember the union contracts? I particularly remember when lawsuits were flying then namely around AFSCME Local Council 25. The city charter was again in question. Bing had terminated union contracts saying basically the same thing: If I don't there will be payless paydays, the city is broke, and so on. Only, then he estimated the city had a month or two to go before it crumbled--financially that is.
 
Bing is doing what he and many others feel is best for the city. Concede some power to the state so the city doesn't go bankrupt -- which would be bad for everyone involved. What has to happen is it has turned into an "us vs them" argument when now is the time people need to be working together. If Bing is right this time and the city IS running out of cash, then that is, indeed, perilous for all residents. Too bad Bing used the running out of money in x amount of time warning too many times before.
 
No doubt he wasn't kidding then, but now, since he is giving the city four days before bust, it's similar to what he said before to get the cuts he needed. So now that the situation has escalated and the stakes have risen, people are acting apathetic. Threats of running out of money are nothing new because the city has been running out of money for a long time. What is the case now? Is it literally a count down to chaos? Does all of Detroit's future really hung on Krystal Crittendon and the lawsuit she filed to hold up the consent agreement? The stakes are high, yes. But does that mean the drama needs to escalate, too?

Will the state pull it funding from Detroit? Will there be payless paydays? These are the questions that remain unsanswered after a meeting this morning between Mayor dave bing  and the Detroit City Council.

Despite mounting pressure from the state to drop a lawsuit stalling the consnet agreement, Council told the mayor this morning in a meeting that they would not ask Krystal Crittendon, the city's top lawyer, to drop a lawsuit that calls the consent agrement void due to some $200 million in unpaid water bills and parking ticekets. The council plans on letting the lawsuit run its course, despite serious pleas from Bing and threats from the state to cut $80 million in revenue sharing dollars. 

While Bing has been warning of payless paydays for city employees since he got into office, this time it is a reality, he says, calling it a "perilous" position. Stay tuned for what happens next.

Remember when former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was getting into all that trouble? There was much talk about the city charter then, how the law department was powerless to control the mayor, how the charter had to be updated. The talk ramped up into action and an elected charter revision commission worked for two years to revise the city’s law book.

Now, two years later, the new and supposedly improved charter is taking affect, big time.

But a lot has changed since Kilpatrick’s mess and the revised charter is giving the law department the power to act independently of a new kind of Mayor: one caught in a financial crisis and trying to keep the city afloat with state funds—and state mandated financial experts to the tune of controversy. There are those who believe the city could do without state mandated experts taking over city finances.

The new charter has city’s law department separate from the executive branch so that neither the Mayor nor the City Council can give city law officials orders. What’s more, the law department has the power to remove elected officials from office if they violate the charter. The mayor and the council can also remove law officials.

The stakes were raised last week for Detroit Mayor Dave Bing and City Council members. Threats from state treasury officials are putting city leaders in with a financial time bomb: Drop the lawsuit that's holding up the consent agreement or loose $80 million in revenue sharing, a state treasury official threatened. The threat came in a letter to Jack Martin, the state appointed financial guru to head the conditions of the stalled consent agreement.

That spells stalemate for Bing, the Council and Law Department.

Bing and the Council are set to meet behind closed doors today to figure out what their options are.

What’s interesting to me is why the state is so eager to force the city to drop the lawsuit. The state and the mayor contend that the city doesn’t have enough time to wait for a legal battle to play out.

But it seems like that state is worried the lawsuit really might just void the legality of the consent agreement. Why else would state officials be so forceful in making the city drop the lawsuit—a lawsuit that they claim hold no water?

A question for city leaders is: is the law bendable under the weight of an impeding financial crisis?