As the historic campaign to distribute COVID-19 vaccines across the country began this week, many lawmakers, public health experts and newsrooms across the country paid special attention to black Americans’ distrust of a coronavirus vaccine.
This mistrust has been well documented, as has its origins: American medicine has a long history of rejecting black pain, rejecting black patients, and experimenting with black bodies. Calls for a change in African-American attitudes toward the vaccine in recent weeks have acknowledged this history, while also trying to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines currently distributed. Last Friday, Dr. Anthony Fauci pointed out that the Moderna vaccine, soon to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, was developed by a woman of color, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, in an effort to help build trust. in the treatment of African Americans.
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While actions such as public administration of the vaccine certainly help, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) is trying to push Congress to go further – urging lawmakers working on a last-minute incentive package to fund grassroots organizations that will work directly with communities to encourage faith in the vaccine.
“This is the only way it will work,” she said Root on Thursday.
But while the vaccine and the long-delayed stimulus package are at the forefront of many minds, Lee also stressed that restoring African-American trust in medical institutions cannot take place without trying to restore confidence in the government itself. – and therefore requires much more ambitious and much broader policies, in order to undo a long history of racist policies. Black people have gained skepticism about government institutions – and it will take more than a vaccine and a $ 600 check to rebuild what has been broken.
“We need to hit this on all fronts: politics, public education, funding priorities,” Lee said. “Because the health disparities have been with us, especially in the black community, since day one. And we never had a fully funded strategy to address it. “
The first hurdle to be clarified is to ensure that the next stimulus package – which will be only the second Congress since March – is fair and truly represents the disproportionate costs of COVID-19 and the coronavirus recession has had on marginalized communities. For Lee, this means urging his colleagues to introduce the provisions of the Community Cares Act into the latest stimulus package, to ensure that the local community and faith-based organizations are funded so that they can take the necessary action to stop the spread of the virus. This provision would prepare and pay community leaders – from health workers to former incarcerated gang members – to educate their communities about vaccinations, as well as testing and tracking contacts. A particular concern for Lee is to ensure that people who speak languages other than English receive the information they need to be safe.
This community-led effort is a key step in ensuring the health and safety of marginalized communities, says Lee. It also points to the many black-owned companies that have closed in the last year – “a large percentage [of which] he will never return. Any fair incentive package must have not only a substantial exemption check – or “survival checks”, as she and other progressive Democrats have called them, but specific investments in minority-owned enterprises, along with unemployment compensation. increased and rent exemption.
“Another eight million people have fallen among the poor,” Lee said, with poverty rising the most for black Americans.
This precarious position is precisely why convincing Americans across the country to receive a COVID-19 vaccine is so important. Having effective treatment will not matter if people do not get it, and if people do not get the vaccine, it is likely that infection rates will remain high. This is terrible news for all Americans, as hospitals are expanding to capacity, but it is even worse news for African Americans, who have seen both higher infection rates and higher death rates have a tremendous impact. on their communities.
But what can’t be missed in this conversation is that, even before the pandemic, black Americans experienced a very different economy – and a different health care system – than the rest of America. African Americans have long faced higher rates of housing and food insecurity, along with higher unemployment rates. Black Americans are much more likely to incur medical debt, and access to health care has long been a problem in redistricted neighborhoods, from which they have been systematically divested. Any policy that corrects these issues would have a much greater impact on black communities than white ones.
That is part of the call for members of Congress to answer, says Lee.
“I think we now need to use this window of opportunity … to address systemic racism in our public health system,” she explained. “And we need to start repairing past damage.”
This can be done through comprehensive health care bills, such as the Lee’s Community Cares Act and the “Anti-Racism Act in Public Health,” which Lee, along with Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) And Senate Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) Introduced in September. This historic legislation would call systemic racism a public health crisis and would accuse the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of researching how systemic racism impacts health and proposing solutions. Lee also referred to the Health Equity Act, which the Tri-Caucus – comprising the Black Congress, the Hispanic Caucus and the Asian Pacific American Caucus – has been working on since 2018.
Bills like these have seen growing support in Congress, although a majority in the Senate led by the GOP has denied these resolutions a sincere chance to become law. However, if adopted, they would show a massive shift in the way the nation talks about and tries to remedy systemic racism. But the problem of rebuilding trust goes even deeper than healthcare. As a broad-based poll recently found, black Americans who said the government could never or could trust them to take care of their interests are more likely to say that they would be not get a COVID-19 vaccine. This does not surprise Lee, a long-time public servant.
“We see systemic racism in every policy. That is, you can look at the pay gap, the wealth gap, the disparities in education and suspensions, and the mass incarceration and housing, ”Lee said. “Certainly racism is, I always say, in the DNA of this country.”
Addressing racial equity is a tax that the incoming Biden-Harris administration will certainly have to bear, given the role that black voters – especially black voters – have played in securing the ticket victory. But what is clear to Lee – as well as other policy experts and organizers – is that trust in government cannot really be restored until institutional racism is addressed. This includes a serious approach to the issue of repairs.
Lee is one of 169 Democrats who supported HR 40, which would authorize a commission to study and develop repair proposals for African Americans. She also introduced her own racial reparation bill, HR 100, which would take the first step in properly recognizing and memorizing the deliberate harm done to generations of black Americans.
“I have never had this day of reckoning in the United States because it refers to the historical context of systemic racism, following the middle passage,” Lee said, noting that more than 400 countries have made such public calculations in relation to their history. atrocities, including slavery and genocide campaigns. “This country has never done that.”
This recognition, coupled with comprehensive and substantial policies that center African Americans and other marginalized communities, is the path Lee believes will lead America to the inclusiveness it has always professed to strive for, but has never achieved. not in his electoral policy, not in his distribution of wealth, not in his courts and certainly not in his health system.
“We need to put in historical context what we are experiencing today before this country can move forward,” she said. “I think this moment of telling the truth has come now.”