COVID-19 and Racism

Koi, 13 and Valeska,13, TheNew3Rs Class of 2021

The Coronavirus Pandemic, which had claimed over 500,000 lives, has brought the health disparities between different races to light. Black people/ African Americans have a larger chance of catching the disease, getting hospitalized and death compared to White people. Because of lack of proper healthcare or cannot afford a doctor, too many Black people aren’t able to see a doctor before the illness becomes serious enough to be hospitalized.

 

There are many reasons as to why Black people do not get the proper medical attention compared to White people, however, it all ties back to racism. For starters, Black people have a lower income than Whites and Asians. We learned in The New 3Rs class, annually Whites make $163,700, Asians $156,300, Blacks $12,920, and Indigenous People $5,700. This leads to a lack of healthcare, no insurance, and improper medical treatment. Additional factors that create health disparities are environmental racism, food deserts, doctors treating Blacks differently and bad public services.

Environmental injustice is a systemic racism that has plagued many poor communities for decades. This issue mostly affects communities where people are treated like second class citizens. They live in housing that has lead poisoning, poor ventilation, mold, dirty hallways. All things that make people sick and die.  These buildings are mostly in Black or LatinX communities. These neighborhoods also have hazardous waste sites, polluting industrial facilities, and other locally unwanted land uses that causes respiratory diseases.  This is another reason why more Black and LatinX people are dying from COVID-19 than other races.

We are informing people of health racism so that it will be easier to help change and fix this ongoing problem. Nobody should die because of their race or class. We hope using data such as the life expectancy of Blacks and the chances of COVID-19 infection in Black people may open some eyes. Informing them of the income disparities and the environmental racism also will allow people to understand the issue better.  COVID-19 taught us health disparities between different races. We are informing others and asking you to call your local government official and advocate for them to stop health racism, Hopefully we can stop the vicious cycle of innocent Black and LatinX lives cut short.