What It Means to Be a Black Health Editor During This Pandemic

The person who delivers my groceries reminds me of my father. If I ever mentioned this to my dad, he’d laugh and say that “black people don’t all look alike.” But my deliveryman has my dad’s height and complexion—he looks 60 but could be 80—with glasses that sit above his face mask. He leaves my bags six feet away, and we wave at each other, apologizing for self-preservation. Whenever I order, I feel something like survivor’s remorse. But there’s a certain level of arrogance in premature guilt. No one knows where they’ll be once this subsides.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that black people are disproportionately affected by the novel coronavirus outbreak. ProPublica reports that smaller surveillance data from places like Detroit, Milwaukee, and New Orleans indicates that we’re dying at higher rates. In my corner of the world, as I worked on a story about coronavirus transmission, I typed and retyped sentences about preexisting conditions impacting the risk of severe complications. Still, I wouldn’t acknowledge what I could see on the horizon: This pandemic was going to hit us hardest.

Writing about how conditions like diabetes and heart disease would ultimately leave people more vulnerable to COVID-19 complications brought a familiar sense of dread. The same dread shows up when I report on black maternal mortality; the same dread stands by when I rework paragraphs about black children and suicide. It’s a dread that most journalists file away for writing coherent articles about barriers that face us all. For some reason, however, this feels different.

Preexisting conditions aside, when I open the door and grab my groceries, I am acknowledging that social distancing depends on privilege and an economy of disenfranchised workers—a workforce that’s disproportionately black and brown. But there’s more. Approximately 26% of black Americans live in multigenerational households, according to census data pulled by the Pew Research Center—this is compared to about 16% of white Americans. Keeping a safe distance from elderly relatives like grandparents, who are also at greater risk of new coronavirus complications, gets trickier when you live in the same house. We have to acknowledge how a lack of affordable health care and an abundance of terrible air quality lay fertile ground for black and brown folks to bear the brunt of this pandemic (and of other bad health outcomes, like severe asthma, which can also leave us at greater risk of COVID-19 complications). And while we acknowledge that giving birth in this new era can be more difficult than ever, we must remember that black pregnant and postpartum people are still at the greatest risk of severe complications and death. Giving birth in the age of the new coronavirus, when health care systems are even more taxed than usual, may have catastrophic effects for us.

As a health editor, I don’t have tips to keep nightmares at bay, to stop you from worrying about loved ones, your livelihood, yourself, or the millions of strangers who look like you. But here’s what I know: Although individual behaviors—social distancing to the best of your ability, washing your hands, and wearing masks—do have an impact on the transmission of the new coronavirus, there are systemic issues at play too. Last week’s suggestion from the U.S. Surgeon General that communities need to “step up” is steeped in racist tropes that place poor outcomes on us. Addressing and accounting for “the steps” that have been removed would do far more to change health outcomes across the board. Affordable and accessible health care (with an emphasis on repairing historic mistrust), adequate paid sick leave for “essential workers,” and more widespread testing are just a few “steps” that would make it easier for black people to “step up” right now.

It’s not our fault that this virus is hitting our communities harder. So I’ll say the following emphatically, over and over again: These outcomes are a new chapter in a long and tiring book. They shed yet another light on a health care system that consistently fails black people while trying to make us believe we’re at fault for the barriers stacked against us. So spare us the blame and the directives to “step up.” No one can pull themselves out of a pandemic by their bootstraps.