Millions of black people affected by racial bias in health-care algorithms

The universal impact of COVID-19 is undeniable as the death tolls climb and communities continue to self-isolate. People utilize the rhetoric that this is a priority issue for everyone. Commercials, internet posts, zoom meetings and White House gatherings preach solidarity in the effort to cleanse the world of this sickness. Now, imagine for a moment, if our society took the same stance when it comes to ending racism and anti-blackness. While COVID-19 is a uniquely new sickness that has no known cure, racism is an embedded chronic illness that has been perpetuated by United States Federal Government for generations.

Many community members are keen on preserving the dichotomy of racism and COVID-19 being completely separate occurrences. However, the intersections and overlaps of the two realities are proving to be devastating. Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez noted on a twitter post that the connection between racism and the COVID-19 death tolls cannot be ignored.

“COVID deaths are disproportionately spiking in Black + Brown communities,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “Why? Because the chronic toll of redlining, environmental racism, wealth gap, etc. ARE underlying health conditions. Inequality is a comorbidity. COVID relief should be drafted with a lens of reparations.”

The representative from New York is the youngest woman to serve in Congress.

Residents are faced with trepidation when leaving their homes to buy groceries or even to simply get some fresh air. The sudden shift in their lives is traumatic. Yet, this sort of inundating anxiety and fear is nothing new for people of color and Black people. The experience of walking out the front door and living in fear that it will be the last day you make it beyond that threshold is a daily routine for marginalized communities. This visceral feeling of fight or flight with every step represents what it means to live in a society that deems you a criminal that is marked for death.

For Black people, having others avoid any and all bodily contact with us is just a typical day. Blackness has been historically marked as its own pandemonium. When in reality, the greatest ills of society are formulated by structural racism.

That’s why when it comes to fighting COVID-19, Black and Brown people are both criminalized and erased at the same. According to Newsweek,

“70 PERCENT OF CORONAVIRUS DEATHS IN LOUISIANA ARE AFRICAN AMERICANS, DESPITE BEING 33 PERCENT OF THE POPULATION”

Number of coronavirus cases in Louisiana jumps to 479; now 299 in Orleans Parish

The correlation between the health and economic disparities in neighborhoods of color and the COVID-19 death tolls is undeniable. Predominately Black residential areas are more likely to be located near toxic refineries, surrounded by food deserts, and come from multiple income families that are still living beneath the poverty line.

Environmental racism sets the groundwork for marginalized communities to have higher rates of asthma, diabetes, heart disease, depression, anxiety, and more. Prior to COVID-19, the USFG refused to take responsibility for its structural violence, and this pandemic only provides more fuel to continue redlining. Thus, Black and brown people are made more fungible and socially dead by the pandemic. If everyone is at risk of dying, racism becomes more disregarded by lawmakers and community members.

Additionally, as most national disasters, trauma is being commodified and capitalized upon. With “cute” do-it-yourself face masks, some people are offered a sense of catharsis during these troubling times. It’s not that I’m one to turn down a fun DIY project, but for many people, there is nothing fun about anything that could make them stand out even more. Aaron Thomas, from The Guardian explained why even decorative face masks could be the difference between life and death for Black people.

“I’m a black man in America. Entering a shop with a face mask might get me killed — For me, the fear of being mistaken for an armed robber or assailant is greater than the fear of contracting Covid-19.”

It is so important for people, particularly White people, to understand that COVID-19 doesn’t stop anti-blackness, it perpetuates it. With community members more scared and suspicious then ever, Black and brown people are more vulnerable than ever. We are either more likely to die from COVID-19 due to structural racism or more likely to be criminalized and killed due to structural racism. Marginalized people have been rendered the pathologized viruses that seek to infect White civil society.

The Black community must also come to terms with our own in-group cultural mindset surrounding healthcare. The medical industrial complex has historically been an institution that has practiced biopolitcal oppression against Black bodies. With the medical apartheid and the immoral medical experimentation conducted on Black people, there has been an understandable mistrust in such a system. However, this fear, along with the unhealthy coping mechanism that sickness will just magically go away, has landed our Black families on some unsteady ground.

There are two fundamental problems with the lack of accessibility and participation in COVID-19 testing within Black and brown communities. The first is, marginalized people are being denied. According to Emergency Medicine Physician, Dr. Uché Blackstock,

“Although the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, passed on March 18, covers all uninsured people, Black people have the highest rates of not being insured. With COVID-19 testing, it becomes painfully obvious who in reality can access testing and who cannot.”

One of the most infuriating things is, the is something Darwinian about the way in which people explain this phenomena. The idea is that people are dying because they are making foolish decisions, and they get what they deserve. This is a process in which only the “smart” and “careful” people deserve to survive. Okay, Karen, we hear you. But, there is much more to this story. According to Vanessa Baker, Professor of Sociology at Stockholm University,

“This is — a return to Social Darwinism, where only the fittest survive, while the weak, the poor and marginalized die off. — -The fittest are those with the highest social status, those higher on the social hierarchy and recognized as such. Those who already have better health because of better access to resources, material and social wellbeing. Where does that leave labor migrants, the homeless, noncitizens, foreign nationals, refugees and asylum seekers?

Of course, most woke people understand that Social Darwinism is just code for racism. The second fundamental problem is with participation. Black people are plagued with post-traumatic slave disorder, people of color are tormented with histories of dehumanization enacted by the government, the medical field included. So, in many cases, not just with COVID, unfortunately, Black and Brown people opt out of testing. It’s sad, but true. Some Black people will not go to get tested out of fear and denial. It’s something that has existed in our culture as early as when we first heard, “Don’t worry baby, she just got the sugar.” FIY, that means someone is downplaying a diagnoses of diabetes.

The thing is, sometimes I don’t even know how I can convince Black and Brown people to go get tested. My mom and my grandma are both registered nurses, I’ve always grown up in a family that takes the medical field seriously. But how can I tell Black people, that it’s just a test when Henrietta Lacks had her cells stolen after being told it was just a test? How can I tell them that it’s going to help them, when The War on Drugs claimed to be a community initiative to help clean up the streets, and then it proceeded to build the mass incarceration of Black men?

I’m not here to tell marginalized people what to do, because I’d be very arrogant and hypercritical to claim that I have universalized answer. If I was having symptoms, or a loved one was, I would want the COVID-19 test and medical treatment. Not because I believe that they’ll treat me with dignity as a Black woman, but because, I’ll most certainly die without help. I know one thing is for sure, if marginalized communities can survive slavery, genocides, colonialism, ethnocides and so much more, I believe that as a community we will overcome this. Yes, we will lose kinfolk along the way, but we will press on with the spirits of our ancestors beckoning us forward.

Works Cited

account, Alexandria Ocasio-CortezVerified. “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC).” Twitter, Twitter, 14 Mar. 2020, twitter.com/aoc.

Cineas, Fabiola. “Covid-19 Is Disproportionately Taking Black Lives.” Vox, Vox, 7 Apr. 2020, www.vox.com/identities/2020/4/7/21211849/coronavirus-black-americans.

Siobhán O’Grady, Teo Armus. “Live Updates: New York Hopeful It May Be ‘Flattening the Curve’ of Coronavirus Pandemic; Boris Johnson Remains in ICU.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 7 Apr. 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/04/07/coronavirus-latest-news/.

“The Social Borders of Covid-19: From Social Darwinism to Social Recognition.” Oxford Law Faculty, 2 Apr. 2020, www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2020/04/social-borders.

“Stories by Uché Blackstock.” Scientific American, Scientific American, www.scientificamerican.com/author/uche-blackstock/.

Thomas, Aaron. “I’m a Black Man in America. Entering a Shop with a Face Mask Might Get Me Killed | Aaron Thomas.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 7 Apr. 2020, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/07/black-men-coronavirus-masks-safety.