Maybe some people fear that if racial data were to show that COVID-19 is disproportionately harming people of color, then white people will stop caring. In the early stages of the pandemic, some labeled it a “Chinese virus,” leading to attacks on those of Asian descent (and not on the virus). Maybe some fear that white sympathy for victims will recede like Mississippi floodwaters in the fall of 1927, and with it, the flood of public resources. But even if white people were less likely to be infected and die from the coronavirus, they wouldn’t need to care about people like me in order to act. Infection anywhere is a threat to the uninfected everywhere.

Maybe there is only a class issue here. Maybe I should ignore all the racial health disparities that cut across classes. Maybe I should ignore the fact that a black woman with an advanced degree is more likely to lose her baby than a white woman with less than eight years of schooling. Maybe race doesn’t matter in health outcomes. Maybe that’s why there are all sorts of stories spotlighting the class divide. Maybe I should listen to those post-racial Americans suggesting that class is the salient divider of the infected from the healthy, the recovering from the dying. That the irresponsible behavior of disproportionately poor people of color is the problem—not racism—as the post-racial conservatives believe. That the irresponsible policies of capitalism are the problem—not racism—as the post-racial progressives believe. That the malfunctions of poor people of color and capitalism are the problems—not racism—as the post-racial centrists believe.

Derek Thompson: The coronavirus will be a catastrophe for the poor

But no conservative, centrist, or progressive can say for sure whether race or class or even their intersection is the salient divider during the pandemic. We have data on neither the class nor the race of victims, let alone the intersectional data that would allow us to assess, say, whether poor Asian women are dying at higher or lower rates than poor white women; or whether white elites and Latino elites are being infected at similar or dissimilar rates. We just don’t know.

Anti-racist researchers and advocates are walking in a haze of uncertainty about potential COVID-19 health disparities. The virus might be ravaging Latinos in Florida and California, Native Americans in Oklahoma, or Asian Americans and Middle Eastern Americans in New York City at greater rates than others in those same states and cities—or white people could be disproportionately affected. But no one knows, because Americans don’t want to talk about race. But in not talking about race, we may be allowing the coronavirus to slaughter certain races.

My greatest dread is this. What if in a few months, the American curve starts to flatten? What if President Donald Trump and like-minded state officials reopen public life in certain areas? What if we can’t see that the flattening curve of the majority of Americans is overriding the curve of some minority of Americans? What if opening public life leads to a second cycle of infection among one particular group? And what if we claim that we don’t know why? What if we end up blaming COVID-19, when we should really be blaming our racist lack of racial data?