By Katie Buitrago, Director of Heartland Alliance’s Social IMPACT Research Center
Some have called the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) “the great equalizer.” We’re all susceptible to the disease, they say—viruses don’t discriminate. While viruses may not discriminate, the systems and policies that contribute to the spread of the virus are rooted in racism – policies like a person’s access to health care, whether you need to keep going to a public-facing job, the transportation you use to that job. Each of these directly impacts the likelihood that you contract the coronavirus and whether or not you live.
The Illinois Department of Public Health released data late last week documenting the race and ethnicity of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths in Illinois. The disparities are sobering: Black people are 14.6% of Illinois’s population, but make up 43% of the COVID-19 deaths in the state and 26% of the COVID-19 diagnoses. In Chicago (where the majority of Illinois’s cases exist), 30% of the population consists of Black people, but 64% of COVID-19 deaths and 35% of COVID-19 diagnoses are Black people (of all deaths and cases as of April 13, 2020; some have missing race information).
How does racism affect the coronavirus death rate? A number of factors are at play:
- Racial health inequities result in disparities in chronic health conditions like diabetes and respiratory conditions—conditions that increase the COVID-19 complication rate. In Chicago, the majority of Black people who died of COVID-19 had conditions like diabetes, heart disease, or respiratory problems. Black Illinoisans are 1.7 times as likely as white Illinoisans to have asthma, and are 30% more likely to have diabetes than white Illinoisans. Racial inequities in the social determinants of health—that is, factors in your social and physical environment that affect health outcomes—put people of color at higher risk of chronic health conditions. These include living in food deserts with limited access to fresh foods, living in segregated neighborhoods with poorly-maintained buildings or near environmental pollutants, and working in low-wage jobs often with inadequate benefits that deter people from seeking healthcare. People with chronic health conditions like asthma, diabetes, and heart disease are at higher risk of severe cases of COVID-19 than those without those conditions.
- Black people are over-represented among the low-wage workforce. This includes businesses that are deemed essential, such as grocery stores, caregivers, and gas stations, meaning that a significant number of Black people must continue to go to work every day and put themselves at higher risk of contracting the virus. And low-wage workers often live far from their jobs and may not have their own cars to get there, commuting via long public transit trips that pose another risk of infection. Many low-wage jobs are not set up to allow working from home, with higher-wage workers having more supports for social distancing.
- Racial inequities in the prison system put Black people at risk of infection. Black people face worse outcomes than white people at every step of the criminal legal system. As a result, Black people are overrepresented in Illinois’s prisons—over half of people in prison in Illinois are Black, compared to 14.6% of the state’s population. Settings where people are confined in close spaces are at risk of COVID-19 outbreaks. Indeed, several correctional facilities in Illinois have already had outbreaks and deaths, including the Cook County Jail and Statesville Correctional Center.
Crises lay bare the systemic failures that happen every day. The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic makes it clear that racism is a life or death issue. We must ensure that the resources needed to fight this pandemic are targeted at the people who need it most, and that means extra effort to address preexisting racial health inequities. This includes making sure communities of color have adequate access to healthcare and COVID-19 testing; providing essential workers with hazard pay and paid sick leave; providing cash benefits; suspend evictions and rent and mortgage payments; and advance decarceration as quickly as possible coupled with adequate pre- and post-release reentry supports. In addition to these immediate actions, we need long-term, structural change that reduces the racial wealth and health divides.
