By early March, SARS-CoV-2, a novel coronavirus, had touched off a pandemic. Those studying the virus stoked the claim that COVID-19, the respiratory infection the virus causes, is indiscriminate in whom it tackles and kills. Looking across racial and ethnic groups, and moving from Hollywood A-listers to seniors in nursing homes, to shelf stockers at the local Walmart — no one is immune.
But the coronavirus is not the “great equalizer.”
In the early days, as the U.S. stared a grave and unprecedented public health threat in the face, it wasn’t clear who was getting tested, who was infected and sick, who was hospitalized and who has died. But Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, who in 2017 launched the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, had “a hunch” that the COVID-19 outbreak wasn’t affecting all groups the same way. No doubt, Kendi, a historian of racism, considered that race and racism would be at the root.
COVID-19 has cast an old story of health disparities in a new light. Decades before the coronavirus outbreak, physicians, researchers, advocates and experts concluded that social determinants of health and health disparities are real. That’s why in April, Kendi, “a student of health disparities,” pointed to those as likely causes for COVID-19’s unequal toll. Although data was limited, worrisome to Kendi was what the numbers were beginning to show about the vulnerability of African Americans and other people of color to the virus.
“We anecdotally began to see sizeable numbers of Black and Latinx people dying and being infected,” Kendi remembers. These were people who likely didn’t have the luxury of staying safely at home and social distancing in the workplace. Blacks and other people of color were also likely suffering with pre-existing health conditions and chronic illnesses and confronting other vulnerabilities that put them at higher risk for infection and death from this coronavirus compared to other groups.
Kendi’s hypothesis proved true. And the evidence is mounting. African Americans are being pummeled the hardest by the pandemic. Although 13% of the population, African Americans account for 25% of COVID-19 deaths where race is known, as of May 2020. This means Black people are dying at a rate nearly 2 times higher than their population share, he revealed.
This is a tragic reality that hits home for Kendi who is surviving metastatic cancer. “I know what it’s like to suffer from an extremely debilitating disease and to wonder whether you’re going to live another day,” he told Diverse.
