“While everyone is facing the battle against coronavirus, black people in America are still facing the battle against racism…and coronavirus”. This was a phrase I heard Trevor Noah say, for those who don’t know, Trevor Noah is a mixed South-African man who was born during the apartheid. Today he is a comedian and TV host of the Daily Show. Since he was born, Trevor has suffered numerous racism attacks because of his skin colour. His mother was a black woman and his father a white Swiss man, so he was born as a mixed child what at that time was a crime.
This phrase got stuck in my mind, and for a long time, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. How come in a pandemic, where hundreds of thousands of people are dying from the virus, there are still people making discrimination and being racist towards others that need just as much or even more help than they do? How can minorities be still suffering from prejudice and be neglected treatment from something that is affecting the whole world?
The virus doesn’t respect boundaries but still, vulnerability is spread unevenly. The largest inequality seen so far has involved race and ethnicity. Minorities around the world found themselves in a difficult place when the pandemic started. Being part of poor neighbourhoods where medical conditions normally are scarce, and where economic injustices and discrimination take place, it was harder for them to fight against the virus.
“This virus is exposing endemic inequalities that have too long been ignored.”
All over the world, there are reports that show how this disparity is happening. In England, there were at least 3,876 deaths of black minority ethnic (BAME) individuals in hospitals up to 9 June. This means that BAME people represented 15.5% of all deaths to this point. The Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that people from ethnic minority backgrounds are “disproportionately” dying with coronavirus. A study made by The Institute for Fiscal Studies reported that after accounting for differences in age, sex and geography, it was estimated that the death rate for people of black African heritage was 3.5 times higher than for white Britons.
This problem has been present for a long time, it is not something that appeared with the pandemic. The white supremacist myth believes that the current conditions in black communities are mainly the result of black people’s collective choices and moral failing, but it is, in reality, a historic in systemic housing devaluation, economic injustice and discrimination in health care that created these conditions that increase rates of mortality, especially during this pandemic.
“Black people simply are not receiving the same quality of health care that their white counterparts receive.”
There are some reasons that explain why the death rate is larger in minorities, besides discrimination and racism, there are housing problems, social and medical care issues to be addressed. To start, people that belong to this group are more likely to have low-paying jobs that do not allow remote work options or offer health insurance or paid medical leave. People of colour normally live in low-income communities with a lack of access to basic resources for health and wellness. Structural inequalities have kept black people poorer than white people, and economic disparity creates health disparities. In addition to this problem, minorities are more likely to live in more populated places and more densely populated areas and have more people per household. According to the UK government, 15% of black Africans live in overcrowded households while only 2% of white British households are classified as being overcrowded. This makes almost impossible for this group of people to take measures like social distancing and being able to keep themselves and their family and friends safe.
Every day it is reported stories about black people being refused treatment for the coronavirus. Like the case of Deborah Gatewood. A black nurse who worked for 21 years in a hospital in Detroit, USA. After being denied from treatment by hospital doctors for four times, she died from Covid-19. This is just one example of incidents that happen all of the time. Unfortunately, this type of racism is still something that black people and other minorities have to deal with every single day, and in this particular case of the pandemic, the situation gets more severe because they are dying from the virus without having the chance to get treatment in a hospital and the essential care that it is needed to kill this disease.
Besides that, having a lack of access to consistent nutrition makes Asian and black populations more likely to be overweight and have diabetes or heart disease than white people This can be explained if we go back to the years of the slave trade in America for example. The black slaves that were put on the ships for the transatlantic slave trade and that survived the trip had to retain water, and the physiology that is associated with that is high blood pressure. This natural selection that occurred, shaped African Americans in such a way that until today this group of people have higher rates of hypertension. These diseases are considered to be of high risk in contact with the coronavirus. If we add these diseases with the lack or denial of good medical care, the conclusion is that black people and other minorities will be way more vulnerable and likely to die from Covid-19.
“African Americans in their 20s, 30s, and 40s are more likely to live with or die from conditions that typically occur at older ages in whites”
The coronavirus does not discriminate, but the housing, economic and health care policies do. Environmental racism, unaffordable housing, lack of job opportunities, poverty and inadequate health care are basic social conditions, strongly influenced by a racism system, that put all the minorities at risk. My question is: when will this be changed?
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