The short answer? Yes, people of color (POC) are disproportionately affected negatively by COVID-19 in numerous ways. Jennifer Sarrett, who teaches and studies at Emory University’s Center for the Study of Human Health, uses the concept of “structural violence” to describe the harm created by social structure or institutions.
Economic Disparity
In the United States, economic disparity is a major factor in this difference. The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) reports the percentages of people who are below the poverty line by ethnic group: white, 10 percent; Black, 23 percent; Hispanic, 19 percent. A study published in August 2020 in World Medical & Health Policy reports that COVID-19 “is exposing health disparities in the United States, which is outranked only by Portugal and Chile on income-based inequities.”
The reasons for this economic disadvantage are many: insufficient educational opportunities, limited transportation options, food deserts (common in lower-income neighborhoods), and limited work opportunities. The latter has a significant impact on access to health care, housing patterns, and discrimination in numerous other areas, including hiring.
Take transportation as an example: Before the pandemic, people from a variety of economic groups used public transportation. With concerns about viral transmission, most people with alternative transportation options are not using public transit. POC are less likely to have private options for transportation, which in turn increases their likelihood of exposure to the virus—a perfect example of structural racism.
Additionally, shutdowns due to the pandemic affect the disadvantaged in a greater variety of ways, and more often. They are more likely to work in occupations that exclude the option of working from home. Grocery store clerks, delivery drivers, healthcare workers, and a host of occupations are physically onsite by their very definition. These essential workers are continually exposed to opportunities for transmission, and they suffer the added burden of having to arrange for childcare and concomitant limitations in helping their children with remote learning. POC are more likely to have lost their jobs during the pandemic than white people. For those who are economically disadvantaged, a job loss or reduction in hours worked can be catastrophic.
Housing circumstances are another factor in the transmission of COVID-19, and in a major way. Minority-majority neighborhoods typically have greater numbers of multigenerational households, and the increased number of people living close to one another provides more opportunities for the virus to spread as the comings and goings of family members and others multiply the odds of exposure.
Access to Vaccines
Access to vaccines is related to economic circumstances. For those of you who have navigated the online technology to schedule your shots, you know how challenging it is. For example, I needed two separate computers to schedule shots for my husband and me, because the program that was supposed to let you add a person wasn’t working. Frequent use of technology isn’t available for those with limited financial resources, and having two separate computers is expensive and beyond the means of many if not most POC. To add to the economic impact, we waited in our car with the motor running for about four and a half hours before we finally received our shots. Not possible for everyone.
It is important that access to vaccines not be dependent on economic status. Recently California State University, Los Angeles, which is just off the 10 freeway, opened a unique vaccine site. It has easy access for those arriving in cars, on buses, and via Metrolink. That single choice of venue allows access to a much greater cross section of our population. KTLA News reported that this site, as well as a site at the Coliseum in Oakland, California, is staffed mostly by federal workers, including officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Health and Human Services. It is a project of President Biden’s task force on COVID-19. It is their plan to open roughly one hundred sites across the country. This move represents progress, but it will not be enough. It is fortunate that new locations for receiving the vaccine are beginning to appear, including standalone and in-grocery pharmacies, which offer easier access to a greater number of people. Still, these options are not within easy walking distance or accessible transportation for many POC.
Currently efforts are under way to send healthcare and other personnel directly to where people are living in order to administer vaccinations. Unfortunately, the logistics of this process are necessarily more time-consuming than the systems that have been established at mass vaccination sites. These efforts should nevertheless be pursued, especially for those who have no other options, including the elderly, infirm, and those who cannot reach a vaccination site—and who, again, are often POC. What we must avoid is the policy of restricting access to those with means—as seems to have taken place in Florida, where on February 18, 2021, Florida TV station WTVT reported that vaccines sites had opened in two ZIP codes with 90 percent white populations with and median incomes of $100,000 per year.
What should happen next?
Government at all levels—federal, state, county, and city—needs to focus on ensuring equitable access for all of our population, not just those with economic privilege. As individuals, we can advocate with elected officials for equitable support during the pandemic.
For the future, it is important that we as individuals and the LWV-PA as a group continue to work to erase “structural violence” and advocate for increased opportunities for education, voting rights, housing opportunities, and access to medical treatment, so that when another pandemic hits, the hardships experienced by POC during the past year will not have the same disproportionately negative impact on non-whites that we are seeing today.
— Marilynne Wilander
