Systemic racism does not stay home during a pandemic
Series | Racialized Pandemics: Stories from OUR Communities
By Janani Umamaheswar and Catherine D. Tan
As COVID-19 rages across the country, early demographic data show alarming racial disparities in diagnosed cases and deaths. Our ongoing research investigates the stories behind these frightening numbers. The interviews we are conducting with college students and their household members in a Northeastern state are revealing a disturbing pattern about how COVID-19 is exacerbating social vulnerabilities among people of color (POCs).
It should come as no surprise that communities of color are being struck the hardest by COVID-19. Research has shown repeatedly that POCs have a harder time accessing medical care and that the relationship between physicians and POC patients is riddled with distrust, often resulting in poorer health outcomes and sometimes even loss of life. COVID-19 represents a particularly pernicious medical crisis with far-reaching implications that have yet to be fully understood. Participants of color in our study describe how this pandemic has presented distinctive barriers to disease prevention and generated new, deep-seated fears surrounding law enforcement.
Around mid-March, public health officials recommended “physical distancing” to slow the spread of COVID-19 and to “flatten the curve,” which would reduce the immense strain on hospitals. In practice, this means staying at home. Our findings illustrate the extent to which these recommendations are founded on assumptions of privilege. Drawing attention to the intersections of race and socioeconomic status (SES), POCs in our sample are repeatedly noting that recommendations to do nothing still require doing something. As one Caribbean-born woman in her 30s observed, a person needs disposable income to stockpile and reduce the number of times he/she goes out for supplies. When the cost of stockpiling is prohibitive, individuals have to go to the store more often, increasing their exposure to COVID-19. Financial precarity that undermines individuals’ ability to stay at home is further exacerbated when lower SES families lose income during the pandemic. For one Latino in his 20s, the loss of income could mean losing his home. He worries that he and his family will be forced to move back to Peru if their unemployment persists.
Rapidly emerging findings from our research also illustrate the stigmatizing and traumatizing legal and medical procedures associated with COVID-19. In one case, an African-American woman in her 60s who tested positive for COVID-19 described first responders’ invasive and dramatic arrival at her house. Dressed in HAZMAT clothes, scores of first responders stood outside her door, asking questions about her health as neighbors curiously watched on. After arriving at the hospital, she was turned away despite experiencing distressing shortness of breath and rapidly deteriorating oxygen levels. Her symptoms worsened at home, however, and she was forced to return to the hospital. Her nine-day hospital stay was so traumatizing that she insisted on an early release and refused to return even when her symptoms reemerged a week later. Now at home, this participant is uncomfortable even going outside to sit on her deck because she feels like she has a “Scarlet Letter” on her back.
In another telling narrative, an African-American woman in her 20s went into the Emergency Room (ER) for COVID-19 symptoms, but the doctors denied her a test at the hospital because they did not believe she had the virus. Later that day, with a referral, she was tested at a drive-through site. The COVID-19 test returned positive. Yet, despite the skepticism she faced in the ER, she still expressed satisfaction with her overall experience. At least the ER doctors did not seem afraid to come near her, unlike the doctor at a recent (unrelated) visit to urgent care who would not get close enough to examine her properly. Taken together, our participants’ narratives begin to identify the unique barriers that POCs face when trying to access healthcare during a global pandemic.
Finally, our initial findings reveal that our participants of color and White participants have radically different concerns, particularly in terms of their views about police enforcement of stay-at-home orders. Indeed, COVID-19 is threatening to inflame existing, and historic, tensions between law enforcement and communities of color. One participant, for instance, worries that police enforcement of stay-at-home orders will result in “the same story” involving lethal encounters between police officers and Black and Brown residents. Another participant expressed concerns about POCs getting shot if officers interpret a cough as a threat. These narratives from POCs stand in stark contrast to those of our White participants. One White man in his 20s, for example, suggested that it might be time to implement martial law to enforce stay-at-home orders. As our participants of color worry anxiously about POCs being killed by police officers, a White woman in her 20s admitted to flouting stay-at-home orders, confidently concluding that “if you leave your house, you won’t die.”
As the world continues to grapple with the calamitous consequences of COVID-19, our research draws attention to the ways in which this pandemic is exacerbating centuries-old racial and economic inequalities in the U.S. Paying attention to the physical, emotional, and psychological wellbeing of POCs is a particularly urgent task if we are to more fully understand and protect the communities that are most harmed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
