Why are Blacks dying at higher rates from COVID-19?

jakeke

In Michigan, Blacks make up 15% of the state population but represent 35% of people diagnosed with COVID-19. This means that Blacks in Michigan are 133% more likely to contract the novel coronavirus relative to their percentage of the state. With a death rate hovering near 4% in Michigan, Blacks are also over-represented for deaths related to COVID-19, accounting for 40% of all deaths statewide. For comparison, Whites represent 25% of people diagnosed with COVID-19 and 26% of deaths. Whites make-up over 75% of the state population.
In Illinois, Blacks represent about 16% of the state but 30% of people diagnosed with COVID-19. In Chicago, Blacks represent 70% of people who have died from coronavirus. North Carolina, South Carolina, and New York show the same pattern with slightly smaller gaps. Among the four states shown below, Blacks are 74% more likely to contract coronavirus than their percentage of the state. These disparities are likely to continue as the virus spreads to new areas. The coronavirus has not even hit rural America hard yet, where many counties do not even have a single hospital bed.

In Louisiana, Blacks represent about one-third of the state population but 70% of COVID-19 deaths. Most of these deaths are centered in the New Orleans area. Blacks in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, represent roughly 45% of diagnoses and over 70% of deaths related to COVID-19. Black men, such as retired police officer Lenard Wells, are dying at high rates. Wells was part of the first integrated police recruit class in the early 1970s in Milwaukee and then taught criminal justice courses at the University of Memphis (my alma mater). Famed University of Maryland Professor and artist David Driskell also died due to complications related to COVID-19. Driskell’s name stands prominently on an art museum near the center of campus.

Some speculate that pre-existing health conditions are contributing to racial disparities in COVID-19. During a White House coronavirus task force briefing, Dr. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, stated, “Health disparities have always existed for the African American community… [coronavirus is] shining a bright light on how unacceptable that is because, yet again, when you have a situation like the coronavirus, they are suffering disproportionately. We will get over coronavirus, but there will still be health disparities which we really do need to address in the African American community.”

I argue structural conditions that inform pre-existing conditions and health disparities are the main culprit for the epidemic within the pandemic which is ravaging Black communities across the U.S. A decade ago, I worked as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar at the University of California at Berkeley. I conducted research on obesity and physical activity and discovered that health outcomes are as much about place as they are about race—the racial composition of neighborhoods to be more specific.