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Roger Wareham, Correspondent
Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, once stated, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman.”

Black people in the United States are dying from the coronavirus in numbers far out of proportion to their presence in the population.

According to a May 3 New York Times report: “On April 6, Louisiana became one of the first states to release Covid-19 data by race: While making up 33 percent of the population, African-Americans accounted for 70 percent of the dead at that point.

“Around the same time, other cities and states began to release racial data in the absence of even a whisper from the federal government — where health data of all kinds is routinely categorised by race. Areas with large populations of black people were revealed to have disproportionate, devastating death rates.”

Added the May 3 report: “In Michigan, black people make up 14 percent of the population but 40 percent of the deaths. (All data was current as of press time.). In Wisconsin, black people are seven percent of the population, but 33 percent of the deaths.

“In Mississippi, black people are 38 percent of the population, but 61 percent of the deaths. In Milwaukee, black people are 39 percent of the population, but 71 percent of the deaths. In Chicago, black people are 30 percent of the population but 56 percent of the deaths.”

It further states: “In New York, which has the country’s highest numbers of confirmed cases and deaths, black people are twice as likely to die as white people. In Orleans Parish, black people make up 60 percent of the population, but 70 percent of the dead. Data from the Louisiana Department of Health shows that neighbourhoods in the parish with large numbers of black residents have been hit hardest.”

In the early stages of the pandemic, Dr Uche Blackstock, working at a New York City Urgent Care facility, said she had seen numerous black patients with classic Covid-19 symptoms who had been refused testing and treatment by New York City hospitals.

New York did not begin to issue statistics broken down by race until the Black, Latin and Asian Caucus of the New York City Council wrote to the Mayor and the Governor of New York City and State, respectively demanding it.

A concern voiced by the Caucus Co-Chairs I Daneek Miller and Adrienne Adams was that, “Neighbourhoods (of color) possess the highest rates of several of the underlying conditions exacerbated by Covid-19: lung disease, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and asthma.”

On the national level, the US is still not keeping statistics on the racial effects of Covid-19, i.e. a racial breakdown of where the cases occur, who the victims are, who recovers and who dies.

Even with the limited state and local statistics becoming available, it is clear how the toxic mixture of the history of US slavery, white supremacy and structural racism have so marginalised the health conditions of its Black population that the Covid-19 pandemic appears weaponised against it.

This seemingly genocidal reality was even acknowledged by the New York Times which concluded in the article cited above, “[T]hough these health disparities [for Black people] are certainly worsened by poverty, they are not erased by increased income and education. The elevated rates of these serious illnesses have weaponised the coronavirus to catastrophic effect in black America.”

Viola Plummer, Chairperson of the December 12th Movement says, “US systemic racism weakens Black people’s ability to withstand a Pandemic like Covid-19, in a similar manner to US sanctions on Zimbabwe making it harder for the country and region to prepare for and recover from disasters such as droughts and cyclones.”

The damages are not restricted to health issues: “This is a public health crisis, but it’s also a housing justice crisis and a racial justice crisis. This is the point where every single piece of infrastructure we thought we could rely on is starting to crumble, and the people most impacted are the most marginalised…”, noted Lena Afridi, Policy director of a coalition of New York City housing and economic justice community organisations.

The history of Black people’s relationship to medical care in the US is fraught with human rights violations of denial of access, violence, poverty and racist disregard for human life. This history has left Black people with a highly disproportionate set of pre-existing conditions and thus susceptibility to disease in general and now the lethal Covid-19 pandemic.

Racist biases that underlie this mistreatment are reflected in how Black people are generally treated when they do present for medical care.

Linda Sprague, a community health research expert, maintains that the government’s failure to pay close attention to race, will result in a failure to mitigate its damage.

She says, “When Covid-19 passes and we see the losses… it will be deeply tied to the story of post-World War II policies that left communities marginalised . . . Its impact is going to be tied to our history and legacy of racial inequities. It’s going to be tied to the fact that we live in two very different worlds.”

Viola Plummer concludes, “I can’t help but compare the history of US doctors conducting unauthorised experiments on Blacks with the recent statements by French physicians who had proposed conducting Covid-19 vaccine tests in Africa, where ‘there are no masks, no treatments, no resuscitation.’

“They view African people as guinea pigs without any human rights. We ask that Africa draw attention to the current racist impact of the Covid-19 on Black people in the US and demand that the US:

1) provide equitable, quality health care for its Black residents, and,

2) begin to keep and release national statistics by race.”

Roger Wareham is an attorney and December 12th Movement member.

The article was supplied by the December 12th Movement, a black human rights organisation based in New York City, US