By S.E. Williams and Chuck Bibbs, Black Voice News, May 20, 2020
The COVID-19 Pandemic shined a brighter spotlight on the unorthodox leadership of this nation and revealed an unprepared healthcare system. In the process, it also exposed a grim, denigrating and devastating reality regarding people of color and the poor, particularly Black people. The health vulnerabilities these communities have lived with for generations, left them dangerously vulnerable to this deadly virus. Now, they are dying in disproportionate numbers.
The novel coronavirus has made it impossible to hide from the world just how vulnerable many Black (and other people of color) in this country truly are, due in part to a healthcare system built on serving profits, not people—an approach institutionalized and perpetuated across generations.
Nothing has done more in recent years to dramatize this point than the COVID-19 Pandemic. This is especially true when you compare and contrast the socio-economic conditions, institutional racism and healthcare environment faced by Black Americans during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic with the socio-economic conditions, institutional racism and healthcare realities of African-Americans in 2020.
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