Ouch! "Melissa Harris-Perry compares Tavis Smiley to Tuskegee syphilis study's black nurse"

(Via All Voices) " This morning on her MSNBC weekend gabfest, Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry compared radio and TV talk show host Tavis Smiley to the black nurse who helped administer the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (TSE) from 1932 to 1972.

 Sponsored by the federal Public Health Service, the TSE remains America’s longest running bio-medical research experiment. Researchers followed, but did not treat, the progression of syphilis in 600 black men from Alabama for its entire 40-year run. To attract men to the study, promises of free health care and burial insurance were offered. Neither the men nor their families were ever told that they had syphilis. And, as stated, they were never treated for the disease despite the discovery of penicillin as an effective treatment and cure for syphilis in the late 1940s.

 .... The problem Dr. Harris-Perry has with Tavis Smiley involves his contracting with Wells Fargo (for a reported $4 million) to hold “Wealth Building” seminars in black neighborhoods nationwide starting in 2005. The Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan demurred and called these seminars nothing more than sales pitches for high-rate subprime loans through Wells Fargo.

Since the settlement has occurred, however, Richard Prince has reported in his “Journal-isms” column that Smiley has promised to sever all ties with Wells Fargo. Interestingly, until recently Wells Fargo sponsored Smiley’s radio show on Public Radio International (now canceled), and underwrote the annual C-Span-televised “State of the Black Union” conference that Smiley organizes (now also defunct). Smiley’s foundation also distributed Wells Fargo materials to young people at foundation events.

 ... “I cut everything off with Wells Fargo,” Smiley declared. He said the move cost “a lot of money”; he would not say how much. Smiley said his relationship with Wells Fargo was a “package deal.” In return for the company helping to finance his radio show, he went on the road for Wells Fargo.

 On her show today, Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry argued that the seminars only appeared on the surface as a way to help black borrowers build wealth. They were actually just the opposite. By signing up for subprime mortgages which they could not afford, foreclosure was the inevitable result.

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