Because We’re Essential: Black Americans Hit Hardest by COVID-19

Out of all of the cities where black residents have been hit hardest by the COVID-19 epidemic, Milwaukee jumps out, from Chicago, New York, Detroit, and New Orleans, because it’s not a metropolis. Within a week, Milwaukee, with a population of 39% black, went from one case to almost 40; by week two, the number ballooned to 350, with most of the sick being middle-aged African-American men.

Milwaukee is an outlier by another reason. Both the city and the county passed resolutions last year that declared racism as a public-health issue. By doing so, the city admitted what black folks have always known, felt, and what it took a global pandemic to make so crystal clear that the decimation can be dissected and analyzed with bars, graphs, and percentages, like a science experiment that gets verified from multiple tests.
According to reporting by the Associated Press, published during the first week in April, black Americans have accounted for about 42% of the nation’s COVID-19 deaths, nearly 3,300 out of 13,000. Blacks represent 70% of coronavirus deaths in Chicago, a city that’s 30% black. In Louisiana, blacks also represent 70% of the total deaths, in a city that’s around 33% black populated. Other cities have similar disparities. These are numbers that have been widely reported but should serve as a baseline; surge numbers, if projected accurately, would widen the gap more.

The question that isn’t asked enough in traditional media, like the Associated Press, that is reported in non-traditional outlets like reputable online blogs, is why?

Environmental and institutional racism, pre-existing conditions (diabetes, heart and lung disease), lack of access to healthcare… all impact black communities more. When all of those factors, mixed with a stream of misinformation, this global pandemic, that was not -- by all metrics -- adequately prepared for, couldn’t help but run rampant. And blacks with those said preexisting conditions are more likely to be uninsured, which makes testing and treatment improbable.

The financial strain from the pandemic, accrued by all sectors but especially to the lower and middle class, will make its own article one day in this paper. The mental strain of fending off those factors can be deliberate and unmeasurable.

The analogy of a “perfect storm” (not mine… this writer grabbed it from another writer) is apt.
Essential, we are

In the inventor’s room at the African/African-American Historical Society & Museum, one can lose count at the number of inventions by blacks that are service based. For better or for worse, for vocation or for enslavement, the identity of blacks has, in part, been defined by what we do. But because the odds have always been stacked against us (see: environmental and institutional racism, etc.), blacks have had to work harder. At some point, it was named the hustle.

Taken from a February 2020 Time Magazine article, “a white family of four living at the poverty line has about $18,000 in wealth. A black family at that threshold has negligible wealth… poor blacks are literally hustling from zero.”

To rise above, to pull a George Jefferson -- taken from a recent ProPublica article -- “African-Americans have gravitated to jobs in sectors viewed as reliable paths to the middle class -- health care, transportation, government, food supply.” Those jobs are essential, meaning… they can’t stay at home. Those employees have to be out, present and helping. During a pandemic.

Why is coronavirus hitting black Americans more? Because we’re getting coughed on.
APNews.com, ProPublica.org, and Time.com contributed to the story.