As the public rhetoric over school reopening decisions heats up, it’s impossible to ignore that the loudest voices calling for schools to open for in-person instruction are those who are suffering least from the impacts of COVID: white people of means with school-age children.
The most recently published county data shows 29.2% of reported COVID cases in Mecklenburg are Hispanic residents–despite the fact that they comprise only 13.8% of the population.
Earlier this month, figures from the Center for Disease Control, obtained only after the New York Times sued for their release, showed those troubling trends extend nationwide. Latino and African American residents are three times as likely as white people to become infected with COVID-19 and twice as likely to die.
As for the why, People of Color are more likely to live in close quarters and to work in service and production jobs that can’t be done remotely. They are also less likely to have health insurance, and while insurance policies can be purchased on the open marketplace by those who don’t qualify for Medicaid, those policies come with huge deductibles and copays that effectively discourage people from seeking treatment when they need it.
Medical facilities that serve mostly low-income patients are less likely to have the resources for effective COVID treatment, because their profit margins are small and they have to write off unpaid bills as charity.
According to statistics on racial health disparities, treatment in hospitals often breaks down along racial lines as well. Emergency rooms assign patients numbers to indicate their level of medical attention urgency. Black patients are 7% less likely than white patients to receive high urgency rankings, and Black and Hispanic patients are 10% less likely to be approved for a transition from emergency room to intensive care.
Mark Jerrell serves as Mecklenburg County Commissioner for District 4, the area of Mecklenburg County that is experiencing some of the most severe impacts of COVID. Jerrell says, “COVID19 speaks to a larger problem in our society, particularly as it relates to People of Color. And that is the legacy of systemic institutional racism that has created barriers of inequity that we already knew existed. So the challenge remains: What are we going to do about it to provide a level playing field for all of our residents and particularly for People of Color?”
As we continue to engage in important conversations about the best way to proceed on K-12 education during a pandemic, let’s be sure to remember who this virus is hitting the hardest and make decisions with those facts in mind.