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  • Adithi Sumitran

Can A Virus Be Racist?

Racism. It’s been around for as long as anyone can remember. No, it’s nothing new, but there is a new forum into which this issue has entered. According to recent discoveries, the coronavirus affects people of color disproportionately, giving them higher rates of contraction and death. It’s hard to believe that a virus can be targeting people by the color of their skin because, quite frankly, it can’t. Instead, it appears that systemic racism is to blame. While there have been great strides made in the racial equity movement, racism is still very much prevalent in America, affecting minorities in every way possible. From income levels to blatant discrimination, people of color are being left defenseless against a pandemic in a country where the opposite should be true.


For starters, income level is a major factor in virus contraction.To prove this, let’s imagine there are two families, one with a $46,000 dollar annual income and one with a $76,000 annual income. Consider: how much would both families be willing to spend on healthcare? Chances are, the one with more money will spend more. Now, how likely are these families to use public transportation in order to get where they need to go? Most likely, the high income family will use their personal car, while the low income family is forced to take the subway. And what happens if a person’s job poses a risk of contraction? Which family is more likely to quit and find a better career? As you’ve probably guessed, that low-income family will try to stick with it due to the financial uncertainty that comes with unemployment, while the higher income family might look for other opportunities. Overall, people in the low income family are at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19 due to risks posed by lack of healthcare, social mobility, and less safe transportation options. This might seem like something that has nothing to do with race, but unfortunately, it has a direct correlation. According to the US Census Bureau, the median income per home for African-Americans in 2019 was $46,703, while the median income for white families was $76,057. That’s a $30,000 difference in income— a difference that could make the difference between life or death.

Some may question if systemic racism is really to blame for this income disparity. They might fall prey to their own biases and wonder if the discrepancy stems from competency rather than racial targeting. However, these people would be utterly, unequivocally, wrong.

African-Americans have been and continue to be the target of wage discrimination, employment discrimination, legal discrimination, housing discrimination, educational discrimination, and medical discrimination. These are not empty statements. These are facts. In a study conducted by NPR and the Harvard School of Public Health, researchers discovered that African-Americans had been personally discriminated against while being paid or promoted (57%), applying for a job (56%), interacting with police officials (50%), renting or purchasing property (45%), applying to or going to college (36%), and visiting a medical clinic (22%). Trying to increase one’s income while faced with discrimination at virtually every level would be incredibly difficult, and as evidenced by these statistics, this is the situation African-Americans face every single day. So when looking at that $30,000 difference in salary, remember that this is a product of a system that perpetuates and normalizes the inequality between races. And, since lower income people are at higher risk of contracting COVID-19, the clear effects of systemic racism on minorities do not bode well during a pandemic.


Healthcare discrimination is another major factor in virus contraction. The existence of this factor is shocking in itself; the medical system is something that is supposed to be fair to all people, immune to the pestilent spread of racial prejudice. However, the real values of the American healthcare system are self-evident. For instance, black women have the highest maternal mortality rate of any race because they have access to lesser treatments. In addition, AfricanAmerican men are at the highest risk of contracting lung, colon, and prostate cancer, and this ethnicity has the highest mortality rate for almost every cancer type, once again alluding to reduced availability of treatment. And no, that isn’t just a postulate. A study by the National Academy of Medicine determined that black patients are more likely to be given outdated and/or cheaper treatments than white patients. Not only is that surprising, it shows that even from a medical standpoint, people of color are being given less opportunities to thrive. The effects of poorer treatments can be seen in the life expectancies of African Americans as well: in general, they tend to live shorter than their white counterparts, even when poverty rates are taken into account. Most shockingly, research by David R. Williams, a professor at Harvard University, found that African Americans receive only four different medical procedures more often than their white counterparts, and they are all typically done as a result of misdiagnosis or delayed diagnoses. That means that almost every general procedure— be it a surgery or a treatment— is given in higher levels to caucasians than to people of color, and when those people of color do get a treatment in greater amounts, it is because of a medical misstep, not because they are actually being looked out for.


This blatant discrepancy should be infuriating in itself. To think that, in the 21st century, African Americans are still facing tangible effects of racial bias is evidence that real progress is yet to be made. And in a pandemic, that lack of progress is clear. People of color are contracting the coronavirus at higher rates than Caucasians and dying from it in equally high amounts. In addition, the CDC has found that African-Americans alone have 2.8 times more COVID-related deaths than white people. Hispanic groups also have 2.8 times the number of deaths, and even Native Americans have 2.6 times the Caucasian amount. This data is consistent with the data surrounding the rates of contraction of many other illnesses, so it follows that because people of color are both more susceptible to and less provided for in their illnesses, they are at greater risk of contracting and succumbing to COVID-19. Overall, the inherent racism in the medical industry poses a major challenge during the pandemic. As vaccines are starting to be distributed across the country, one has to ask: are people of color going to get this vaccine in fair amounts? Surely those who are at higher risk of contracting and dying from the virus should be given it first? Unfortunately, and not surprisingly, this is not the case. Business Insider reviewed the demographics of those who received the COVID-19 vaccine in Delaware and found that only 6% of those who got it were Black, in comparison to 41% of receivers who were White. That isn’t exclusive to Delaware, either. The trend of seriously low vaccination rates is echoing in Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia as well.


This is infuriating, to say the least. It proves that even though people of color have been systemically oppressed for centuries and forced to constantly overcome economic and social discrimination, they are still being pushed behind more privileged people when it comes to a serious threat to their health. What’s more outrageous is that there is not nearly as much coverage about this as there should be. It’s gotten to the point where people just accept discrimination, as a fact of life, as a part of this country, and allow it to continue because they don’t believe there is anything they can do about it. That mentality is wrong, and it gives prejudiced people room to continue their behavior, since no one is willing to actively stand up against it.


So here’s the bottom line: we need to start talking about the racial disparity in coronavirus contraction. We need to advocate for a fairer distribution of the vaccine. There’s no way around it this time, not when there are people’s lives at risk, and when people could die because they are held down by a system that should be equal. Ultimately, the coronavirus isn’t the only deadly illness around. There’s a bigger one that’s been plaguing this country for centuries. And that virus is racism.

 
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