Black Women: Undervalued, Unseen and Unheard

by Zad Chin

Mentor: Suzanne Kite; Student Editor: Allanah Rolph

When COVID-19 hit, it hit our society hard and exposed so many structural inequalities and problems in our society. The impact of COVID-19 — from mortality rate to unemployment — targets different people depending on their socioeconomic status, sex, and race.

“You’re more likely to get and die from COVID-19 if you’re [B]lack and poor.”

According to an analysis done by Yale University and the University of Pittsburgh, Black people are over 3.5 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than white people. The coronavirus death rate among African Americans stands at 50.3 per 100,000 — compared to 20.7 for white people, 22.9 for Latinos and 22.7 for Asian Americans. Research also suggests that coming from a low socioeconomic background increases your chance of contacting and dying from COVID-19, highlighting the disastrous impact of economic inequality in our society.

Even without COVID-19, racial discrimination in healthcare is serious. The COVID-19 pandemic increased visibility, magnifying details that we have neglected regarding healthcare inequality.

COVID-19 : The tip of the iceberg of healthcare disparity.

While COVID-19 has demonstrated a disproportionate death rate among African Americans, it is not new that African American community is more prone to diseases and has higher mortality rates in the United States. Sociologist David R. Williams, who is an experienced scholar regarding the Black-white health disparity, has repeatedly shown that African Americans not only have higher rates of illness than whites, but they also get sick earlier, have more severe diseases, and are more likely to die from their diseases.

A significant group that is vulnerable in the face of healthcare disparity is Black women. Black women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women, although it has been estimated that a significant portion of these deaths could be prevented. The racial bias is not just reflected in maternal mortality — research also shows that Black women are more likely to develop heart disease and stroke. Ironically, CDC reported that Black women are less likely to develop breast cancer but 40% more likely to die from it than their white counterparts.

This brings us to the question of why this happens. It is note a pure coincidence that people are dying because of their race. Is it because of social determinants of health (where we are born, raised, work, play and socialize) or is it because of racial discrimination in healthcare?

The “Black women” disadvantage

Undoubtedly, both implicit bias and structural racism affect how women are cared for in the healthcare system. “Black women, like all women across races, have a very hard time being taken seriously about their own bodies, due to a pervasive sexism,” says Tina Sacks, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Social Welfare and the author of Invisible

Visits: Black Middle-Class Women in the American Healthcare System. “When you compound that with racism, you have a particularly toxic mixture that Black women are facing.”

The toxicity can be clearly seen at each stage of the labor, delivery, and postpartum processes of a Black woman’s pregnancy. Black women reportedly have less access to quality contraceptive care and counseling, which results in higher rates of unintended pregnancies than all other racial groups. When they are pregnant, they are more likely to experience maternal health complications than white women, and 75% of Black women give birth at hospitals that serve predominantly Black populations, which have higher rates of maternal complications than other hospitals.

The high rates of maternal mortality rate and poor health outcomes are not just caused by flaws and racism in the health system, but also by societal factors, such as where patients come from, their socioeconomic status, and their education level. A study by Arline Geronimus, an active researcher of the effects of racism on health, highlighted that poor white individuals actually experienced more weathering (“weathering,” meaning their bodies age faster) than poor minority populations, and Hispanics with more education experienced more weathering than those with less education.

Prior to COVID-19, Black women were already vulnerable. Research done by National partnership for women and family shows that Black women in the United States who work full time, year-round are typically paid just 62 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men, while for non-Black women, the wage gap is smaller, just 82 cents. To put it into perspective, if that pay gap did not exist for Black women, they would be able to pay two and a half years of child care or more than 16 additional months of premiums for employer-based health insurance (per year?).

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and virus-fueled economic recession, it is undeniably concerning that Black women are the hardest hit. They are 32% more likely to be out of work than men, putting them at a high risk of food insecurity, and lack access to quality healthcare, widening the gap and worsening inequality in our society.

COVID-19 : More than a health crisis

This pandemic poses more than just a health crisis to our society, it also raises questions ranging from healthcare to economic inequality, exposing the deep, ugly, neglected truth we normally suppress and overlook.

A chance to live should never be determined by your race, sex or socio-economic background. For those leading a change, one thing is clear: racism is a leading reason behind the disproportionate deaths of Black mothers.

Racism is not just an issue that surrounds the topic of “race”; it involves gender inequality, education inequality and healthcare inequality at the same time. Therefore, solving issues of racism will not just solve racial disparity, it will also help solve all types of inequalities in the world. For example, fighting for a raise in salary for Black women doesn’t just help a Black woman and her family to do well financially, it also ensures that they have sufficient money to get better access to quality healthcare and education — solving one inequality helps bring about the solution for another.

We have a lot of work to do as a society, and being aware of this issue is the first step — so what change will you make next?