The coronavirus has laid bare the disparities that have been ravaging Black communities for decades. Sure, we’re all in this together, but we’re not all being affected in the same way—nor have we ever been. We’ve seen this movie before. Time and time again, diseases, economic downturns, and the combination of the two have disproportionately hurt Black communities. We are all feeling the impacts of this pandemic in very different ways, as a direct result of deep-rooted inequities based on class, race, and gender.
My organization, Black Futures Lab, has been researching these inequities for years. In 2018, we launched our Black Census Project, polling 30,000 respondents in the largest survey of Black people conducted in the United States since Reconstruction. It was clear from the results that the pain and legacy of slavery and Jim Crow still infect the everyday lives of Black communities. Many of us experience the written and unwritten rules in society that continue to conspire against us—because the rules of the game are, in fact, rigged. Link
