Always the Forgotten People
14th April 2020 · 0 Comments
Seventy percent of the people dying in Louisiana from COVID-19 are African Americans. This comes as no surprise to the Black community. St. John Parish now holds the distinction of having the most deaths per capita (68%) than anywhere in the U.S. Thirty-four people have died in the small community of 45,924. St. John Parish is 53 percent Black. Even worse, there is not one ventilator in St. John Parish. The parish only started drive-thru testing last week.
New Orleans’ Black population is 60 percent. The Crescent City is fifth in the nation for coronavirus cases, with over 5,000 cases and 185 deaths reported last week.
The disparate coronavirus death rates in the African-American community is a national phenomenon. For example, in Milwaukee County, home to Wisconsin’s largest city, African Americans account for about 70 percent of the dead but just 26 percent of the population and 70 percent of Chicago’s coronavirus deaths are African Americans.
A Washington Post analysis of available data and census demographics shows that counties that are majority-Black have three times the rate of infections and almost six times the rate of deaths as counties where white residents are in the majority.
Black lives have always been more at risk than any other ethnic group in normal times, but when it comes to disasters, we are always the hardest hit.
We were on the roofs begging for help during Hurricane Katrina. Over 2,000 of us died because federal intervention was too little, too late. When AIDS started passing through mostly Black people, the government was slow to come up with a vaccine. When we were dying from the crack epidemic, they threw us in jail, but for the opioid crisis, which affect whites, primarily, billions have been invested for treatment.
As Stevie Wonder sang in “Front Line,” a protest song about the Vietnam War, “They had me standing on the front line…but now I stand at the back of the line when it comes to getting ahead.” And that’s exactly where many of us are, on the front line…in grocery stores, driving buses, cleaning up hospitals, making deliveries, and often without the personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect ourselves.
Black people in America are dead people walking. Many of us may have COVID-19 and are asymptomatic. With the restrictions on testing (you must be knocking on death’s door to receive one; even EMS and front-line medical personnel are having a hard time getting a test) and the lack of widespread testing, ensures that thousands more of us will die.
Trump has no plan, no massive testing and tracing system in place, to stop people from dying from the virus. Trump doesn’t care about us; never did. The proof is in last week’s National Public Radio announcement that “Federal Support Ends for Coronavirus Testing Sites as Pandemic Peak Nears: This as criticism continues that not enough testing is available.”
Doctors and scientists have been sounding the commonsense alarm that massive testing and tracing of people who have the virus or those who have been in contact with affected persons is necessary to contain the viral spread. It’s no different than any other communicable disease. Testing and tracing contacts is necessary to stop this viral pandemic. But what is Trump doing? The WH game show reality star is shunning responsibility, blaming everyone else, abdicating his national security duty, passing his work on to governors and mayors, doing an end run around oversight of the trillions in taxpayer dollars he keeps shoving out of the Treasury to his donors and corporations, denying the need for widespread testing, pushing for the reopening of the economy, and the use of an untested drug, and conspiring with Republicans to suppress the vote in November.
The Trump administration downgraded its projection of 80,000 corona deaths by August 2020 to 60,000. Trump thinks that’s great, compared to the higher number. But who will be in the majority of those projected to die? Us. With this White Supremacist in the White House, is this a conscious motivation to eliminate us?
Cleary, we are susceptible. We are exposed. We’re inconsequential.
President Obama tweeted recently that widespread testing is the only way we will contain the virus. Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx know this, but they are crowing about ventilators, PPE and flattening the curve, instead of demanding massive testing. Meanwhile, all Trump can talk about is “opening up the country with a big bang.” He is also continuing to promote the untested drug hydroxychloroquine.
When the news came out that three of Trump’s companies had investments in the corporation whose primary holding is the maker of the drug, the Profiteer-in-Chief’s response was that he only has a small investment in that company. “What the hell have you got to lose,” Trump said, urging people to take the drug. Where have we heard that before?
Let that sink in. This man wants us to take an untested, unproven drug that is for malaria and lupus. The clinical trials on the effectiveness on hydroxychloroquine have just begun. Never mind that a man took it and died, and his wife landed in the hospital in serious condition.
Meanwhile the federal government is buying hydroxychloroquine and selling it to states that are supposedly requesting it. “We have 29 million doses,” Trump bragged.
Medical experts are saying African Americans are predisposed to getting the coronavirus because of pre-existing conditions: hypertension, diabetes, asthma, cardiac issues and obesity.
But why do we have these conditions?
It’s not like we were born with these conditions. Institutional racism and poverty are primary reasons for our afflictions. We don’t have these pre-existing conditions because of some people’s preconceived notions that we have them because we are lazy, sit down all day, and try to buck the system.
Not only are we relegated to low-wage jobs, we live on toxic waste dumps (Gordon Plaza residents); our schools are built on toxic waste dumps (Booker T. Washington); toxic chemical plants are in our backyards (Cancer Alley); we live in food deserts (when we move in, essential services and stores move out); we have to travel distances to get fresh fruits and vegetables and primary medical care services; (many of us don’t have personal vehicles and bus transportation is slow, e.g., New Orleans East, where bus routes have been cut and riders have to wait lengthy intervals to ride a bus), and if you call your primary care physician (if you’re lucky enough to have one), you might have to wait weeks to see him or her.
Why do we have hypertension? Could it be because we are the last hired and first fired? Could it be a lack of access to well-paying job opportunities, or credit and liquidity? Could it be because of redlining?
We’re inconsequential. We’re the forgotten people.
We can’t eradicate this pandemic in the U.S. until there is a test for everybody; ethnicity be damned. The first tests being given have gone to the haves. Everybody needs one. Until that happens, we are all subject to lose our lives. And for what? Trump and the Republicans’ obsession with wealth and power.
Trump and the Republicans are clear and present dangers to our country and our very lives. We must vote Trump, Mitch McConnell and their minions out of office.
If we must dress up like ninjas, covered from head to foot, let’s go out and vote. Let’s show the Republicans that elections have consequences.
Let’s be inspired by the courage of the Wisconsinites who, when they learned their election would not be postponed in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic (thanks to their Republican legislators and the Republican majority on their state Supreme Court), and when they found out that the Republicans reduced their polling places from 180 down to five, they masked-up and went out and voted, anyway.
This article originally published in the April 13, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
