COVID & the BIPOC Community
“Myths about physical racial differences were use to justify slavery — and are still believed by doctors today.”
Hello Friends,
Welcome to Issue 5 of this newsletter! This week’s topic is A Pandemic Within a Pandemic: COVID + the BIPOC Community. Long-standing systemic health and social inequities have put some members of racial and ethnic minority groups at increased risk of getting COVID-19, regardless or age. We will explore a few factors from long-head beliefs about Black people stemming from slavery to greater representation in front Line and essential jobs to a simple lack of culturally-appropriate messaging. Let’s get into it!
You might have noticed this week we are discussing how the Black, Indigenous and Latinx communities are all being affected by Coronavirus. Some individuals, like myself, identify in numerous ways. I am Puerto Rican and Dominican. I am Taino. I am Black. Intersectionality takes into account people’s overlapping identities and experiences in order to understand the complexities of the prejudices they face. It is important to realize this movement is about amplifying marginalized voices, including those with complex identities.
Today we are briefly touching on a lot of complicated and intense topics. Keep learning beyond this newsletter!
Let’s Get Into It
COVID-19 Stats
American Indian and Alaska Native persons have a rate approximately 5 times that of white persons
Black persons have a rate approximately 5 times that of white persons
Hispanic and Latino persons have a rate approximately 4 times that of white persons
(CDC)
Some Factors
A lack of culturally-appropriate messaging in both English and Spanish
Greater representation as front line workers and in essential jobs
Economic barriers to healthcare
Undocumented status resulting in no access to healthcare
Slavery And Modern Medicine
Plantation owners tried to use science to prove that differences between Black people and white people went beyond culture and were more than skin deep, insisting that Black bodies were composed and functioned differently than white bodies.
Common beliefs were: larger sex organs which led to promiscuity, smaller skulls which showed a lack of intelligence, thicker skin, less sensitive nerve endings, high pain tolerance, lower lung capacity that needed to be repaired with long hours or hard labour to “vitalize” the lungs, susceptibility to a “disease of the mind” called Drapetaomania, which caused them to run away from their enslavers, caused by being treated as equals and remedied with whippings.
These beliefs have been internalized by society, leading to individuals, including doctors believing that there are some truths in these myths.
Implicit Bias In Healthcare
The American Medical Association Journal of Ethics found that Black and Hispanic people — from children who needed adenoidectomies or tonsillectomies to elders in hospice care — received inadequate pain management compared with white counterparts.
In a 2016 study, 222 white medical students and residents were studied and showed that half of them endorsed at least one myth about physiological differences between Black people and white people, including that Black people’s nerve endings are less sensitive than white people’s. Medical students and residents insisted that Black people felt less pain.
These centuries-old beliefs in racial differences in physiology has continues to mask the brutal effects of discrimination and structural inequities, instead of placing blame on individuals and their communities for statistically poor health outcomes.
Native Americans And Healthcare
If Native American tribes were counted as states, the fire most infected states in the country would all be native tribes, according to a compilation by the American Indian Studies Center at UCLA.
The United States allocates just $3,943 per person for health care for Native Americans through The Indian Health Service, less than half the $8,602 spent by the bureau of prisons for health care per prisoner.
Rivers run through Navajo lands and end up irrigating golf courses in Phoenix, while Natives lack legal rights to the water and can’t even get plumbing to wash their hands.
COVID And ICE Detention Centers
Poor conditions in detention facilities allow the novel coronavirus to spread at a breakneck pace.
Immigrant advocates and lawyers argue the best way to stop the contagion in detention is to release the detainees, many of whom have only been charged with civil violations.
Detainees from La Palma say they’ve been forced to clean medical wards and common areas without enough protective gear. At Eloy, detainees say they don’t have regular access to showers.
“We have what I would call a concentration camp system,” Pitzer says, “and the definition for that in my book is mass detention of civilians without trial.”
Resources
Next week I am tackling Environmental Racism—the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color. IN LA, we see the largest urban oil field, in Black and Latinx neighborhoods. In Louisiana, cancer alley. Residents of Flint, Michigan have not gotten justice. Detroit has the most pollution of any US zip code with an 80% Black community calling it home. Let’s break it down. See you next week!
