Structural Racism: Covid-19 and the George Floyd Protests
“All of it comes together. What happened with George Floyd publicized to the world the experience that we live,” he said. “It’s a conglomeration of everything.” (Pastor Timothy Freeman, Washington, D.C.)
While it hasn’t often been mentioned in the context of the past two+ weeks of protest following Derek Chauvin’s killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, there was another immediate contributing factor to the wave of protests: Covid-19.
African Americans’ mortality rate from the coronavirus is hovering between two and three times that of whites, depending on city. We’ve noted in an earlier post the most often-cited co-morbidities (obesity, hypertension, diabetes), but in addition to these, there’s also the inadequacy – aka, structural racism – of the healthcare system itself.
ProPublica focuses on several people who were at last week’s protests in Washington, D.C., with interviews and quotations from these.
Some of their observations:
“They (my friends and acquaintances) were living in impoverished areas. Couldn’t get proper treatment. Lived in crowded conditions, so social distancing was hard to do. And they were still forced to go to work and be put in harm’s way.” (William Smith, age 27, a number of whose friends had died of Covid-19)
“It’s like obstacle after obstacle,” he said. “If it’s not police beating us up, it’s us dying in a hospital from the pandemic. I’m tired of being tired. I’m so tired, I can’t sleep.” (Caleb Jordan, 21)
“We internalized a lot with my generation,” she said, “but I think it’s important for him to see this.” (Carolyn Jackson, 62, Caleb’s grandmother, who attended a protest with her grandson)
Pastor Timothy Freeman of the Trinity African Methodist Episcopal Zion church in D.C.:
“These conversations (about Covid-19), the pastor said, are always infused with an awareness of the medical system’s record of neglect and abuse of black people, from dismissing their pain to using their bodies for research without consent. The virus has forced this all top of mind.
“A licensed occupational therapist for 19 years who spent a decade managing a skilled rehab facility, Freeman said he has seen racial disparities in health care firsthand and that access to adequate insurance coverage is crucial. ‘I have seen diagnostic tests not performed … and hospitalizations cut extremely short — or not happen at all — because of insurance.’ COVID-19 is affecting black and brown people in disproportionate numbers, ‘and not just because we’re black and brown, but because of the social and economic conditions people are forced to live in,’ he said.”
“’All of it comes together. What happened with George Floyd publicized to the world the experience that we live,’ … ‘It’s a conglomeration of everything.’”
“I want these children to live in a different world. It’s not enough to read about it and get outraged and talk about it at the dinner table. Silence makes you complicit.” (Elizabeth Tzehai, 53, speaking about the lessons she wants her two children to take away from the protests)
It wasn’t just the murder of George Floyd, coming as the latest in a long line of black Americans killed by police officers; it was structural racism everywhere suddenly being revealed through the mortal offices of the coronavirus: poverty, segregation, inadequate access to quality health care, and environmental racism as contributing factor to co-morbidities.
A black swan event like Covid-19 is serving – and it’s not over yet, not by a long shot – to tear back the curtain on American racism in every single one of its manifestations, simultaneously.
We need to address it in all its forms, because those forms are deeply intertwined at their roots.
https://www.propublica.org/…/on-the-minds-of-black-lives-ma…