By now, all of us know that the death rate for African Americans who contract the novel coronavirus which causes covid-19 is much higher than that of white Americans. Making this stark fact even more troubling are the voices — in government, medicine, and media — which have attempted to blame African Americans for this disparity. Even the Surgeon General — who’s black — made a number of distressing statements in support of this incorrect and harmful view.
There are three reasons that covid-19 has proved much deadlier for African Americans than for whites.
Across the United States, people of all races with the lowest incomes have much higher rates of diabetes, obesity, asthma, high blood pressure, kidney disease, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. These are all conditions which put covid-19 patients at a higher risk of severe illness and death. Low income areas of this country have limited access to healthy food, a higher density of fast-food outlets, less green space and areas for recreation, worse housing and infrastructure, limited access to health care, and are more likely to be closer to industrial facilities thereby exposing residents to hazardous pollutants. There is a strong association between long-term exposure to air pollution and higher covid-19 death rates.
There are physiological ramifications from living in an atmosphere of bias and discrimination which have been documented to lead to higher rates of poor health outcomes for black Americans. In her landmark research, Dr. Arline Geronimus termed this phenomenon “weathering”. The lived experience of being black in America exacts a physical price on the bodies of African Americans. Stress, and high-effort coping with that stress, take a constant toll on the body in the form of accelerated aging. There’s plenty of evidence that the wear and tear of racism, the stress of it, is responsible for differences in health outcomes between the country’s black and white populations.
The National Academy of Sciences has documented the effects of bias in the medical system on African Americans. It found that in “every medical intervention” black people receive poorer-quality care than white people. Dr. Clyde W. Yancy, the author of another study of racial health inequities, has said: “These disparities are real, they are deep, and they are exacting a terrible price.”
We can all agree that the toll being taken by the covid-19 pandemic on the black community in this country is far worse than the toll on the white community. Let’s make sure we understand the three reasons for that terrible fact, and not let anyone get away with blaming the African-American community for this tragedy.
