We need to talk about Covid-19 and racial inequality

Written on 22nd April 2020

A heads up that this post is focussed on racial inequality, focussing particularly on how this is playing out in the current pandemic. If you don’t identify as white, it will be nothing new to you, and you might want to skip this week; if you do, read on.Last week was Black Maternal Health Week; a US-based campaign founded by the Black Mamma’s Matter Alliance (BMMA) that serves “to amplify the voices of Black mamas and center the values and traditions of the reproductive and birth justice movements”. Across much of the Western world, maternal mortality rates for black women are higher than that of white women; according to the latest reports, in the UK Black women are five times, and in the US, three to four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. In the US, a 2017 report found that middle-class Black women are more likely to die in childbirth than working-class white women. The disparity doesn’t end there; it also impacts the health of Black babies, who are more likely to receive lower-quality levels of care and the highest infant mortality rates of any ethnic group. This is an alarming trend across the western world, but one that health officials have been aware of for many years, yet research and progress is painfully slow.

We are witnessing the same racial disparities happening with COVID-19. Many of us will have seen the newspaper reports by now suggesting that disproportionate numbers of Black people and ethnic minority people* are dying from the Coronavirus compared to white people, and I have witnessed more than one person try to argue that this due to some yet undiscovered biological reason. It’s not. More Black people and ethnic minority people are dying from COVID-19 (and indeed in childbirth), because they are consistently neglected, unfairly treated and marginalised by healthcare, welfare and socioeconomic systems across the Western world.

UK-based writer Afua Hirsch was one of the first people to point out that the disparity goes beyond the most obvious gulf between classes, the difference she describes between “those on full salaries working on laptops from home, fretting about having to cancel Easter holidays, and those living hand to mouth, fretting about how to feed their children and avoid being made homeless.” But Hirsch also argues that, from the outset, we should also have been talking about race.

On Monday, director of the race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust Omar Khan, describes racism as a “matter of life and death” describing how long-standing racial inequalities in health education, housing and employment have “shaped the lives of ethnic minority groups from cradle to grave”, and how they have been exacerbated during the crisis. He writes: “In employment terms, ethnic minorities in Britain are already more likely to work in insecure, low-paid work, and more likely to be unemployed. In housing, they represent more than half of all overcrowded households, are less likely to own their home, and have up to 11 times less green space to access. In other words, their employment and housing circumstances mean they are more likely to be in contact with more people, and so are more at risk of getting Covid-19.” Mortality rates for ethnic minority health and social care workers are also disproportionately high. It’s a story that’s repeated around the world, see, for example France and the USA here and here and here and here.

These are inequalities that have too long been ignored in systems dominated by whiteness. It is beyond urgent that the West’s racist systems and response to COVID-19 are dismantled or redirected and fundamentally redesigned to be reparative and equitable — led by those who have, to-date, have had least agency, but been most negatively impacted by their current design. I’ve read so many seemingly hopeful articles and posts about the opportunity for these times to bring ‘the great reset’ or to be the ‘great leveller’; but, first and foremost, this could not be further from the truth — it is painfully obvious that many of those who have the time and space to consider such transformations are not the same people who are bearing the strain and costs of COVID-19. I also do not take for granted a just recovery, when some of the measures introduced since the start of the pandemic, such as increased state power, and reduction of rights, has, and will continue to worsen inequalities. As it currently stands, the future is arriving at great sacrifice for those who are most marginalised in our communities.

There are so many alternatives to the way things are and we’ve seen governments and business move at great speed during this crisis — now the focus must be justice and equity. The solutions are myriad; at the beginning of the month, US representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez called for a reparative lens; in the UK, campaign Charity So White is hosting a live position paper on the risks and impact of COVID-19 on racial inequalities.

There is also much that we can all do personally to rapidly push these issues onto the agenda, particularly those of us with white privilege. Reading, research and listening is one such way; amplifying and supporting ethnic minorities and communities addressing racial inequality is another. We’ve shared a few different sources below to get started — please share and do what you can.

*I acknowledge that mainstream racial terminology is complicated, problematic and inadequate — it consistently centres whiteness, fails to acknowledge white as a colour and not as default, homogenises experiences that aren’t white and erases Black people. See here, here, here, here and here for some of the discussion.

Commoning around the world

Black Thrive Public Consultation on Impacts of Covid-19

Black Thrive is working to better understand how the current Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic is currently affecting people’s lives. You can find out more about Black Thrive on their website.

This information will be collected via one short survey which focuses on health and employment. Take part here.

Take Back the App!

We need platform co-ops now more than ever. If the 19th and 20th centuries were about storming the factory and taking back the means of production, then the 21st century is about storming the online platforms like Facebook, Google, and Amazon and the apps that increasingly control our economy and our lives. Increasingly, we’re living online, controlled and manipulated by secretive, for-profit companies, but there are alternatives.

If we take the cooperative route, they argue that tomorrow’s online world could distribute rather than concentrate power — but will we? Recorded before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, this conversation with Micky Metts, Ela Kagel and Stacco Troncoso about the companies that mediate our lives is more relevant now than ever.

Watch the video here.

Pirate Care Group

Pirate Care Group is a network of activists, researchers and practitioners against the criminalization of solidarity & for a common care infrastructure.

Find out more on their Facebook page here.

A wiki of Corona Solidarity Initiatives

What is the difference between this and other directories? There are many good directories on Corona solutions and initiatives out there, and they are listed here as well. However these directories are specialized by community of practice, topic or locality. This directory attempts to operate at the global meta-level, offering a fuller picture of what is happening.

This guide focuses on:

1) initiatives from open source communities and open hardware medical devices 2) grassroots-based mutual aid initiatives 3) the wider context of societal effects and policy proposals and reforms, from a p2p/commons point of view.

Access the Wiki here.

Mutual Aid and Survival Resources

Here you’ll find a whole drive of resources to support mutual aid and survival during these times.

Access the drive here.

This week, we are mostly reading…

Here are some of our favourite books, articles and long read articles on the commons. Let us know what you think or send us your own recommendations.

Racial injustice in the COVID-19 response

By Charity So White

This live position paper provides an overview of the risks and impact of COVID-19 on racial inequalities within the UK. It outlines an urgent call to action, including specific recommendations for civil society and its funders, to put BAME communities at the heart of their response to ensure it addresses root issues and maximises impact.

Read more here.

Guest blog: People of Colour must take ownership of the diversity debate in the NHS and beyond

By NHS Frontline Clinician in Primary Care

Having recently qualified, Anonymous works as a frontline clinician in a busy inner city general practice. Before this, he worked extensively in the public and private sector.

Read more here.

Pandemic Priorities: supporting alternatives now is promoting a sustainable economy

By Teju Adisa-Farrar

Especially in these times, honoring our ancestors is investing in and trusting alternatives that are based in dignity, health and livelihoods for all of us.

In the early 1960s, my grandma was a secretary at the Caymanas Sugar Estate in Portmore, Jamaica. She helped the cane cutters who worked on the estate’s land create a credit union. At that time, workers were acknowledging the problematics of who owned the capital and resources on their island. In 1962, Jamaica gained independence from the British, with the hopes of more national equity and securing workers rights. My grandmother understood that helping the cane cutters pool their money to create a credit union was one step closer to liberation from the confines of colonialism and capitalism. At the time she thought of it as a necessity — as the right thing to do — rather than an alternative economy.

Read more here.

Let the Institutional Innovation Begin! (Part I)

by David Bollier

In Covid-19, neoliberal capitalism has met a formidable foe. The pandemic has shown just how fragile and dysfunctional the market/state order — as a production apparatus, ideology, and culture — truly is. Countless market sectors are now more or less collapsing with a highly uncertain future ahead. With a few notable exceptions, government responses to the virus range from ineffectual to self-serving to clownish.

Read more here.

More articles on the Commons and complementary movements

• Intervention — “Small and local are not only beautiful; they can be powerful” — Read here.
• The pandemic as political trial: the case for a global commons — Read here.
• Coronavirus: the need for a progressive internationalist response — Read here.
• The State, Public Responses, and the Day After the Pandemic — Read here.
• Surviving the Virus: An Anarchist Guide — Read here.
• No more business as usual — Rethinking economic value for a post-Covid world — Read here.
• Coronavirus demands radical transformation, not a ‘return to normal’ — Read here.
• Can the coronavirus save the planet? — Read here.
• Organizing under lockdown: online activism, local solidarity — Read here.
• Protecting Lives and Liberty — how contact tracing apps can foil COVID-19 and Big Brother — Read here.