Why COVID-19 is a “perfect storm of terribleness” for Black Americans
The COVID-19 outbreak has had a devastating impact on Black communities across the U.S., especially in Louisiana, which was the first state to release COVID-19 data by race in April. The numbers show that while comprising just 33 percent of the population, African Americans accounted for 70 percent of people who died from COVID-19 complications. Linda Villarosa, director of the journalism program at City College of New York, says the problem extends back much farther than COVID-19. “We have known for centuries … that Black people and other people of color are treated unfairly in our current medical system,” says Villarosa. “It happens because of mostly unconscious bias.” Villarosa recently wrote a New York Times piece about the Krewe of Zulu, a Black cultural organization central to New Orleans’ Mardi Gras celebrations, which was decimated early on by the coronavirus outbreak. Villarosa also worked with Nikole Hannah-Jones on the New York Times’s 1619 Project. “Black people are living in a constructed environment designed to produce the disparities we see,” Hannah-Jones said in a recent MTV interview.
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