Is Race a Pre-Existing Condition?

By The Underground Railroad Education Center

“When white folks catch a cold, black folks get pneumonia”: an old saying to describe the often unequitable effect of an economic downturn on the Black community. Does it actually bear some truth in the field of public health as well? It appears so. The effects of the novel Coronavirus have been devastating across all spectrums of race, income, gender, and age, but as the weeks wear on, data begins to tell an age-old story of inequality: African Americans are falling ill and dying at much higher rates than any other group in our country, which begs the question: why?

A closer examination of the history of epidemiology in our country tells us this isn’t the first time Black Americans are sicker and more prone to die from infectious disease during epidemics. Before our country was even a nation, inhumanity brought disease to our shores. In the 16th century, European colonization and the African slave trade imported smallpox into the Caribbean and Central and South America. In the 17th century, European colonization imported the disease into North America, decimating indigenous communities.

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Source: Daily Kos