In the United States, blacks are six times more likely to die from coronavirus than whites.
- In the U.S. black majority counties, the coronavirus infection rate is three times higher, and the mortality rate is nearly six times higher than in white majority counties. A report published by the Washington Post newspaper has uncovered these differences.
In Milwaukee County, for example, in the state of Wisconsin, African-Americans account for about 70 percent of coronavirus deaths and account for only 26 percent of the population. In Chicago, the situation is very similar. Black citizens have died six times more than whites. Of the 118 fatalities – data from day 7 – 70% were black and 32% were African-American living in Chicago.
In Michigan, African-Americans account for 33% of coronavirus cases and 40% of deaths, and account for only 14% of the population. More than 25% of the deaths in this state occurred in Detroit, where blacks account for 79% of the population.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday acknowledged that difference based on the skin. "Why is it three or four times worse for the black community than for other people? ", Trump asked. "It doesn't make sense, and I don't like it," he said.
The consequence of radical racism?
British newspaper The Guardian collects the views of a number of people who are very critical of this data.
Some critical voices have recalled that these risks increase significantly as a result of the prevailing “racial inequality” in the field of health care, such as the closure of health centers in eminently African-American areas or the cut in public health care programs for people without resources or older. African-Americans are twice as likely to have no health insurance as white people and are more likely to live in an area that does not have an adequate health service and that has low or too expensive primary care.
"When white communities get sick, we in the black community are threatened with death from the same disease, because the lack of health insurance often leads us to self-diagnose," said Wisconsin lawmaker David Bowen.
The governor of the state of Illinois, Jay Robert Pritzker, has admitted that racist prejudices have influenced the responses of American states to the coronavirus. He believes it is part of a "much more complex problem" that cannot be solved in a few weeks. "The inequality that has occurred for decades, centuries, in the black population in terms of health services is difficult," he said.
"We know that African-Americans are especially vulnerable. It is a social, economic and racist injustice," said the chairman of the Civil Rights Lawyers Committee, Kristen Clarke.
