Pandemic - Racism - Inequality
Over the weeks, the global effect of Covid-19 migrates from the imminent economic recession as an effect of the great confinement; to the massive social protest, which is literally part of the need that has entailed 'locking up' most human beings to prevent the virus from spreading for several days.
However, the days of confinement slowly end, the reality is faced where Covid-19 is here to stay, while cities across the region try to create an ecosystem, the social phenomenon is presented with two faces throughout of the continent, in the middle of the arrival of the peak to several of its cities in English and Spanish.
On the one hand, the exacerbation of racism with its best example: the United States, where a considerable portion of the sick and deceased from the disease come from African-American and Latino groups. According to the CDC, African Americans make up 12.4% of the United States population, while more than 24.3% of those killed by Covid-19.
In Chicago alone, more than half of the people who have tested positive for Covid-19, and 39% of deaths related to the disease come from the African American community. And in New York, neighborhoods with the highest Covid-19 rates also have the highest levels of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and HIV.
They also happen to be the neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of poor and low-income African-American and Latino families, mostly belonging to the so-called ‘working class.’ In Corona - Queens (the neighborhood with the highest number of deaths from Covid-19 in New York), more than half of its inhabitants are Latino, and at least 63% were not born in the United States, according to The Guardian.
While in states like Ohio, Colorado, Michigan, Kentucky, Minnesota, North Carolina, Utah, and Washington, protests to reopen the economy persist, and the purchase of arms in all corners of the American nation continues to grow. At least 1,726,053 legal weapons were purchased during May 2020 in the United States. An 80% increase compared to 2019, according to the NRA.
Because as always, always, and apparently forever, in the United States EVERYTHING ends up dealing with a subject based on a racial comparison… name, food consumed, place and type of housing, work, political influence, social relations, level salary, and of course, the diseases he suffers…
An example, beyond COVID-: according to the US Census Bureau, for 2018, the average annual income of an African American family in the United States was USD $ 41,361, while whites received USD 70,642. But pandemic detonated the difference, which today is costing social and political stability in all corners of the country, in addition to lives, regardless of race, age, or political preference.
Since George Floyd’s death on May 25, there have been more than 3,000 protests related to racial equality in 1,600 cities in the United States, according to USA Today. And that now contains the symbolic burden of the destruction of statues, taking on an almost civil war tone.
Then, crossing the border, the Covid-19 creates a dangerous connection with the so-called vulnerable class and labor informality. The mixture of the two phenomena in the region means that there is a significant group of the population that needs to go outside to survive daily.
It must always remember that in Latin America 35% of the population belongs to a Vulnerable Class (World Bank), 51% of the workforce belongs to the informal sector (ECLAC), and the concentration of these groups agglutinated in the peripheral areas with high overpopulation, where of course the confinement has been stronger.
Is the case of Kennedy in Bogotá, a neighborhood forced to severe confinements within the same city, from the high level of infections and deaths, with 30% of the cases inside Bogotá and almost 15% of Colombia, according to City’s Mayor’s Office.
While in Mexico City, the disappearance of informal jobs compared to formal jobs shows the economic stagnation in areas like Iztapalapa, which concentrates the cases of Covid-19 in Mexico City. According to Inegi of 1,097,086 formal jobs disappeared by Covid-19, 10.4 million informal jobs have been lost.
All this in a context where a good part of the potential consumers do not leave their homes, formal businesses migrate with digitalization, and everyone who earns an informal salary stagnates. Consequently, the increase in insecurity in the region continues, of course, linked to the massive arrival of the unemployed without access to social benefits.
According to Coparmex, nowadays, there are 1,500 vulnerable areas in CDMX where there is a possibility that the incidence of crime and looting “due to hunger” will increase in the coming months.
Thus, this moment exposes again what the region, its rulers and the social system always leave 'under the rug': The close relationship between the ability to acquire wealth, educational level and the race to which one belongs, only that this time it costs lives, jobs, poverty, and if the American case is followed closely, it may eventually cost tranquility and integrity to many.
Also that everything happens simultaneously manages to question: To what extent are the racial division of the United States and the Latin American economic inequality different or distinctive?
It seems that the pandemic also unifies the continent's social problems. It will be time to think openly that 'all lives matter' and understand that the more equity there is, the greater physical and emotional security there will be for everyone. Hopefully, the sum of the economic and social crisis will accelerate the scientific development of solutions to the disease.