An article by Linda Maria Jaeck
Pandemics and disease have always been part of our history. Starting with leprosy, which was thought to be a punishment from God in the 11th century, and continuing with the Black Death in 1350 killing one-third of the human population, pandemics always raged through the world, discriminating against nobody (Ed, 2008). When we think about the pandemic today, we often optimistically tend to assume that we are all in this together - despite age, social status or skin color, that we are all affected the same way. But is this a fallacy?
The most similar pandemic to COVID-19 in terms of racial inequalities is the so-called ‘Spanish influenza’. It showed that the sense of unity indeed is a misconception, mostly assumed by those who are in privileged positions. When the influenza started its deadly way through the US in 1918 and then later spread around the world, it killed between 50 and 100 million people (Gamble, 2010). At that time, Black communities in the US were haunted already by various difficulties in health, medical and social fields which played a crucial role in how this community would experience the following epidemic (ibid.). Consequently, they suffered higher morbidity and mortality rates than the white population for diseases. As the popular sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois (1906) showed in an analysis of 1900, African-Amercian death rates were two to three times higher than for white people including tuberculosis or pneumonia. He argued that “the Negro death rate is, however, undoubtedly considerably higher than the white”(p. 90). During the first of three waves of the Spanish flu, the Black community was exposed disproportionately due to a lack of health access, housing segregation and unsanitary living environments (Krishnan, 2020). In the following waves, however, some had already conferred immunity against the virus. Nonetheless, those factors made it more likely for black Americans to die than white Americans.
The 1918 influenza is known as the “forgotten pandemic”(John Hopkins Medicine, 2020). The impact of this horrific catastrophe was burdened by poor record-keeping, incomplete media reports and overshadowed by the first world war (ibid.). Part of the missing information is down to the lack of accounting of racial disparities and their effect on the Black community (Barone, 2020). But what can be said is that Black communities were left to fight for themselves to survive the pandemic (Chotiner, 2020).
…epidemic diseases “lay bare and make visible inequalities in
a society” (Evelynn Hammonds interviewed by Chotiner in the New
York Times, 2020).
Today, similar socio-economic structures are visible. The coronavirus pandemic is exacting a disproportionate toll on ethnic minorities and their communities (New York State Department of Health, 2020). Especially in the hardest-hit areas in the US, it was particularly Black, Native, Latino or indigenous communities that were disproportionately impacted (Krishnan et al., 2020). Like Boehme (2020) mentions in her article, a reason for that is the still ongoing systematic oppression and discrimination including a fragmented public-health system allowing access only to the privileged part of society. The inequalities between races are discussed in the concept of “Racial Capitalism” (Robinson, 2001). He highlights in his work how social and economic assets were extracted from people of different ethnic backgrounds and explicitly refers to the Black community and the British colonial past.
To finally answer the overall research question of the blog, how race emerges as a class in a pandemic; clearly, a two-class society has occurred while the privileged part of society has access to healthcare while the others do not necessarily. In regards to the Black community, this phenomenon is nothing new, as Harvard History of Science Professor Evelyn Hammonds tells the New Yorker (Chotiner, 2020). In fact, the pandemic just makes the structural inequalities and implicit and explicit biases more visible (ibid.). Hammonds (2020) has hosted a series of webinars with experts at Harvard on African-American and epidemics in American history raising awareness for minority groups and the fact that poor people are often skipped in media coverage during the current pandemic.
References:
Barone, E. (9.7.2020). COVID-19 isn’t the first pandemic to Affect Minority Populations Differently. Here's What We Can Learn From the 1918 Flu. In: Time Magazine.
https://time.com/5877004/covid-black-americans-1918-flu/ Accessed: 10.11.2020.
Boehme, J. (2020). Covid-19 and racial differences in the United States - which racial groups are hit harder and why? https://raceandthepandemic.wixsite.com/home/post/covid-19-and-racial-differences-in-the-united-states-which-racial-groups-are-hit-harder-and-why
Chotiner, I. How racism is shaping the coronavirus pandemic (7.5.2020). The New Yorker. Accessed at www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-racism-is-shaping-the-coronavirus-pandemic. accessed: 10.11.2020.
Du Bois, W.E.B. (1906). The health and physique of the Negro American. Atlanta: Atlanta University Press. p. 76, 89-90.
Ed, J. (2008). Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics, and Plagues. Greenwood Press.
Gamble, V. N. (2010). “There Wasn’t a Lot of Comforts in Those Days:” African Americans, Public Health, and the 1918 Influenza Epidemic. Public Health Reports, 125(3_suppl), 113–122. https://doi.org/10.1177/00333549101250S314
Hammonds (2020). Epidemic and Health Disparities in African American Communities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC1FTLGS0Zw&feature=youtu.be. Accessed Nov 28, 2020)
John Hopkins Medicine (23.06.2020). COVID-19 Story Tip: Study Ties Racial Disparity’s Impacts on 1918 Pandemic to Similar Effects of COVID-19.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/covid-19-story-tip-study-ties-racial-disparitys-impacts-on-1918-pandemic-to-similar-effects-of-covid-19 accessed: 10.11.2020.
Krishnan, L., Ogunwole, S. M., & Cooper, L. A. (2020) Historical Insights on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, and Racial Disparities: Illuminating a Path Forward. Annals of internal medicine, 173(6), 474–481. https://doi.org/10.7326/M20-2223
New York State Department of Health (08.11.2020). COVID-19 fatalities. https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Tracker/NYSDOHCOVID-19Tracker-Fatalities?%3Aembed=yes&%3Atoolbar=no&%3Atabs=n. Accessed: 10.11.2020.
Robinson, C. J. (2001). The investigations of the Negro. Social identities, 7(3), 329-361. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504630120087208
Time Magazine (9.7.2020). COVID-19 isn’t the first pandemic to Affect Minority Populations Differently. Here’s What We Can Learn From the 1918 Flu. https://time.com/5877004/covid-black-americans-1918flu/ accessed: 10.11.2020.