The Coronavirus Disproportionately Affects Black Americans: Nikole Hannah-Jones On What You Need To Know

There’s an old saying that’s eerily suitable in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic: “If white America sneezes, Black America catches the flu.” And as New York Times investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones tells MTV News, “It's almost never been more literal than it is now.”


The most marginalized groups will usually bear the brunt of a crisis. At the height of the Excellent Recession which began in 2008, the Black unemployment rate peaked near 16 percent, almost double the rate for white Residents of the
U.S.. Black Residents of the United States were also disproportionately affected by the AIDS epidemic: Though they accounted for just 12 percent of the national population in 1986, the CDC reported that the disease rate was three times higher in Black communities than in white communities. And right now, the coronavirus pandemic is the latest emergency to highlight the residual effects of structural and systemic racism in this nation. COVID-19 mortality rates are almost six times higher in counties with predominantly Black residents than in counties with predominantly white residents.


The reason? Well, there’s no short answer. The causes are multi-layered, compounded by centuries-long inequitable policies that marginalized Black communities, often by design. Breaking it down requires a understanding of that traumatic history, which was chronicled in the New York Times’s 1619 Project. In a now-viral Twitter thread, the project’s creator, Hannah-Jones, contextualized the COVID-19 mortality rate disparities into three broad areas: chronic health problems in Black communities caused, in part, by discriminatory housing policies and environmental racism; inequities in the labor force, and disparities in access to health care.


And the issues that Black Residents of the United States must navigate furthermore to COVID-19 often transcend class. As Hannah-Jones points out, even affluent Black Residents of the United States are more likely to stay in areas with fewer grocery stores with healthy food options due to redlining, a system of racial discrimination in mortgage lending which relegated Black homeowners to certain neighborhoods. Researchers at Brown University noticed that “the average affluent black or Hispanic household lives in a poorer neighborhood than the average lower-income white resident.” No matter the revenue level, this often places more minority households in close proximity to toxic sites or heavily trafficked areas, exposing them to air pollution. The Union of Concerned Scientists noticed that minorities survive with 66 percent more air pollution than their white counterparts. Consequently, Black people suffer from preexisting conditions like diabetes, hypertension, high blood pressure, and asthma at far higher rates than their counterparts.


In the labor force, Black Residents of the
U.S. Are more likely to work key service jobs and commute to work on public transportation, making social distancing tough. On top of that, disparities in access to health care for Black Americans create another roadblock to fighting illness, which is why Hannah-Jones believes supporting policies that make health care more available to all Residents of the
U.S. Is a good place to begin in closing the gap.


Throughout a recent Zoom interview, Hannah-Jones spoke with MTV News about the structural downsides plaguing Black communities, the role they’ve played in COVID-19 mortality rates, and why people can lobby their representatives for meaningful action that would help weak people.





MTV News: How is COVID-19 disproportionately affecting Black people in this country?


Nikole Hannah-Jones: So we are just right now beginning to get racial information on the collection of infections, hospitalizations, and fatalities having to do with coronavirus. And what we're seeing is that it is having a particularly devastating effect on Black communities, specifically. They are being infected at much higher rates, they are being hospitalized at higher rates, and so they are dying at much higher rates. And in some places, not just dying disproportionately, however making up most of them of deaths in communities where Black folks are not most of them. We're seeing that in Milwaukee. We're seeing that in Chicago. We're seeing that in New Orleans. St. Louis has just released some preliminary information. And every person who has died of coronavirus in St. Louis Black. Hence it is really having a particularly devastating impact on Black communities.


MTV News: 70 percent of the deaths in my hometown of Chicago are Black Residents of the
U.S., Yet we only make up about 30 percent of population. What are a few of the reasons we're seeing this?


Hannah-Jones: What we're seeing is sort of a tsunami of downsides that are all coming to bear on Black Residents of the United States who are contracting the virus. We know that this virus, as soon as we've seen it overseas, is particularly deadly to people who already have preexisting conditions. They call them comorbidities. So, people who already are diabetic, who have hypertension, who have other kinds of heart or respiratory problems, are much more likely to succumb to the virus. Because of that, we presume that this was an infection that really killed older people.


As soon as it came To America, we began seeing younger Residents of the
U.S. Dying. And that's because Black Residents of the United States not only disproportionately suffer from hypertension, diabetes, asthma, other heart issues, yet we suffer from them at a much younger age. That demonstrates that the virus is deadlier for Black Residents of the
U.S. At a younger age, and that really speaks to the chronic disadvantage and chronic health disparities that Black Residents of the United States face.


There's a reason why Black Residents of the United States get these diseases that normally only hit older Americans: Because Black people stay in a much higher stress environment. We are the most segregated of all racial groups. We reside in areas that have the highest amounts of pollutants and toxins. Living close to highways means we're much more likely to get asthma. It means we're much more likely to have other respiratory illnesses. It also means, once we look at the types of foods that are obtainable in Black communities and the effects of stress on Black communities, that we are usually having more hypertension. Stress is felt in the body and causes some of those health conditions that we're seeing Black people suffering from from much younger ages.


MTV News: The 1619 Project goes into how the history of the transatlantic slave trade created this ripple effect during centuries, and we still feel those reverberations in our communities now. Issues like environmental racism and redlining have led to some of the health disparities we visualize now. Can you talk a little bit about how environmental racism, segregation, and redlining has led to some of the conditions we visualize among Black folks?


Hannah-Jones: I think this is really key because what we're beginning to be able to see as we learn that Black folks are disproportionately dying from this, is this blaming of Black communities. Saying that, “Well, that's just because Black people don't take care of themselves. Black people don't take care of their health.” The truth is that Black folks are living in a constructed environment that is designed to actually produce exactly the disparities that we visualize. It isn't accidental that Black folks are the most likely to live near toxic sites, the most likely to stay in polluted neighborhoods, the most likely to reside in areas where really there is lots of highway and freeway traffic. And thus what that shows is Black people have been intentionally placed in the most susceptible positions.


All of this has the effect of having severe health declines. I mean, the rates of asthma in Black children is, in some communities, 20 to 30 times that of white children. And that's simply due to the communities that Black folks are forced to stay in. As soon as powerful people determine that they hope to put a polluting factory or a waste dump, they put it into the places that are the most susceptible and that have the least power to decline. Those are low revenue Black communities. It should not be surprising that Black folks are suffering from these things. Yet it's key to understand, Black folks are not suffering from these things simply because we are making poor life decisions. We have a nation that was built around not valuing Black communities, and not valuing Black people, and forcing us to stay in conditions that are unhealthy for us.


MTV News: In Michigan, Black people comprise 43 percent of COVID-19 deaths, and only make up 14 percent of the population. I couldn't help however think about Flint once it comes to environmental racism, along with labor force and employment disparities. 


Hannah-Jones: Black folks are the most likely to work in positions of service, and front-facing positions of service more specifically. The cashier, the person at the airport who's taking your categorize, the bus drivers, the postal workers... We are disproportionately represented in those jobs, which means we are disproportionately represented in jobs where you're going to come in contact with plenty of strangers and not have the ability to shelter at residence. In case you are delivering mail, or you're working at Popeyes, or you are driving the transit, you can't shelter at house. You actually have to work. That meant that Black people were getting this disease much more than other people.


We're also the least probable to own our own homes, which means we're much more likely to stay in apartments or in more dense housing. We literally could not isolate in the ways that several white and Asian Residents of the United States could. So we're getting infected at higher rates, yet also have the least access to top quality health care.


MTV News: Yeah, let's talk about that access, and implicit bias in the health care system. Black American girls have higher mortality rates any time it comes to giving birth than their counterparts, largely because of implicit bias. You also tweeted a study about how bias factors into how someone’s care plays out. 


Hannah-Jones: Not only are Black Residents of the United States disadvantaged in terms of revenue, in terms of the types of jobs that we work, in terms of where we live, nevertheless we also face systemic downsides while in the full spectrum of health care. We often reside in places where we have the lowest percentage of doctors serving us, where we don't have hospitals that we can go to. We are the least probable to be insured in the initial place. And then, once we enter those facilities, study soon after study shows that we face bias in those facilities.


Doctors don't believe that Black people feel pain the same. They are far less likely to group follow-up procedures on Black people who are presenting with the exact same issues as white Residents of the
U.S.. And that insinuates our diseases go untreated. That insinuates that we were already going to be more prone to this virus. And right now we don't know what kind of treatment Black folks are experiencing whenever they enter into these hospitals, because we know that that bias exists.


MTV News: What policies would you propose supporting for people who desire to help? How can they weigh in? 


Hannah-Jones: We're dealing with the results of deeply, deeply entrenched societal issues. Although there really is something that would be changed almost overnight that would have a massive impact on that. And that's universal health care.


If we may permit the millions of Residents of the United States who cannot access a test, who cannot go to the hospital any time they're feeling ill, because they don't have insurance, then that would deal a lot with the disparities that we're seeing in the region. There really is no overnight fix for housing segregation and toxic waste sites. However we might very speedily pick to insure all Residents of the
U.S. In this nation and make sure that health care treatment is a generic human right in the United States.


This interview has been edited for length.


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