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ESSENCE does an investigation into how COVID-19 disproportionately affects the Black community, especially in the southern states.
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00:00Across the United States, the COVID-19 mortality rate for Black Americans is nearly three times
00:06as high as the rate for whites. Our people are dying at a rate almost two times higher
00:11than their population share. And in some southern states, that already devastating number is even
00:16higher. The reality is that America hadn't gone wrong. The reality is that America's never been
00:22right when we look at those things. One of the easiest ways that we could course correct is
00:28expanding Medicaid in the South. As of February 24, 2020, one in four rural hospitals are at risk
00:34of closure and this crisis is not going away. Before this data became available though,
00:40Black people across the nation beat the drums of awareness. We said that more cash for people will
00:46die. More Black people in the South will die. More Black people who are incarcerated will die.
00:53And here are the reasons why. The same reason why healthcare workers give us
00:57less pain medication in emergency rooms. The same reason why we disproportionately have hypertension
01:03and diabetes. And the same reason why we live in more heavily polluted areas is why we will die.
01:09What we know is true now that's been true for forever is what's good for Black bodies
01:14benefits everybody in this country. But despite making it plain about the structural
01:19white supremacy that would make it inevitable that the novel coronavirus would disproportionately
01:24sicken and kill Black people. The story was already written. Now it's important that we get the language right.
01:32So, the southern states not expanding Medicaid, and when I say the southern states, the governors of those states that chose not to expand Medicaid really set us up to be in a situation where when a global pandemic hit,
01:58we not only didn't have the sort of pandemic hit, we not only didn't have the sort of healthcare resources that we needed in terms of people having access to Medicaid, but we also didn't have this sort of public health infrastructure to be able to make sure that our people were taken care of.
02:10And a nation, and a nation which has all of the tools at its disposal, but because it is not profitable.
02:18They put profits over people, and still fail to give people the access they need. If, as it has been eloquently stated in the past, if voting rights was was the principal battle of the 20th century, then equal access to healthcare has to be the battle for the 21st century.
02:38One in three Americans is based in the US South with the largest geographic region in the country. And it's the highest proportion of Black people in the country. So we know that the lack of expanding Medicaid was actually a political choice that was going to disproportionately impact our communities.
02:56And as we continue to see various areas of exploitation of those that are most underserved, of those who society who this nation has, has deemed to be, you know, having the least value, then what we have seen historically, is people rebel.
03:17If they see that you don't demonstrate value in their lives, then they will attack what they find, what they believe that you do value.
03:26What we know is that the excuse for why we have to reopen is an economic one. That's what the governors keep saying. They keep saying, like, this is to save our economy. This is to loosen up resources that could help support employers and employees.
03:38And what we know is that employers and employees would all be better if they actually had access to Medicaid expansion.
03:43When we look across the South and we see the highest number of cash poor adults, people not having access to wealth, what we really see is not only a circumstance where people have a lack of access to wealth, they have a lack of access to live.
04:02And poverty and poverty is the worst form of violence. You know, we see these conditions based on COVID-19.
04:09Whether we're looking at George Floyd, whether we're looking at COVID-19, neither one of these seminal events and circumstances have created a new circumstance.
04:21What they have done is expose the slip of this nation. Right.
04:25Right. They have demonstrated the conditions that our people have always been in.
04:30COVID-19 didn't choose to go to black communities and say that we're going to we're going to, you know, make certain the spread of this disease is more prevalent here than in other communities.
04:41What it exposed is the fact that that it is our people that lack the ability to to deal with the underlying health conditions that are disproportionately affected by COVID-19.
04:53When we talk about things, even as as a mayor, I deal with the contradiction that as we try to impose policy to keep people safe and say that we need to have social distancing taking place.
05:03Well, the reality is that social distancing in and of itself is a luxury.
05:07What how do you socially distance when you live in a housing unit?
05:11How do you socially distance when when you share so much common space with with other people?
05:18And so this is just once again exposing the slip of the nation.
05:23The reality is that America hadn't gone wrong.
05:26The reality is that America has never been right when we look at those things.
05:30And I think that we should recognize that.
05:32And to say those things are often challenged as not being patriotic.
05:36And it was President Obama who said that the greatest form of patriotism is the notion that America is not yet done.
05:42Why so much pain?
05:52My name is Chelsea Bates.
05:55My husband, Kiwon Bates, he passed from COVID-19 on April 1st, 2020.
06:03Thank you, Lord.
06:04Thank you, Lord.
06:05Thank you, Lord.
06:06Thank you, Lord.
06:07Thank you, Lord.
06:08Thank you, Lord.
06:09I won't complain.
06:16We met in 2009.
06:21Yeah, because it's been 10 years.
06:24We met in 2009, Thanksgiving of 2009.
06:28He proposed to me at his god sister's home.
06:33I remember that day.
06:34It was August 13th.
06:36I never imagined that I would be a widow, somebody that would lose their husband at 31.
06:42He told them that Saturday that, you know, do everything you can to make sure that I come back home because I don't want to die.
06:53And that Sunday before they put him on the ventilator, we FaceTimed each other and told each other that, you know, that we love each other.
07:01And it was just this pause and this facial.
07:07I can't even explain.
07:08It's just how he looked at us that I can't get out of my mind.
07:12Like, I know that he didn't, he wanted to stay here to, you know, to still be in our lives.
07:20But I think that he knew something.
07:23That Thursday when he came out of the room and sat on the sofa waiting for the ambulance to come, if I had known that that was the last time that I was going to see him in the flesh, I wish I could have just given him a hug and a kiss one last time.
07:44And I just wanted more time with him.
07:55I just wanted some more time.
08:00All of us deserve to live.
08:03Right.
08:04And all of us deserve to be protected in this process.
08:07And we've got to force those who are in power and in position to actually do right.
08:12And when they don't do right, they've got to feel the consequences and the repercussions of that.
08:16And we've got to move them out of the way.
08:18If we don't know in this moment of COVID-19 that this is a moment to shift everything, that nothing is working.
08:25There is no reason that a country as wealthy as this one, a country not just wealthy in terms of money, but in terms of intelligence, in terms of access to all sorts of resources.
08:36There is absolutely no reason that this virus should have spread the way that it did.
08:42But a person was elected and put in office who is anti-science, who's a blithering idiot.
08:51Let's just say it.
08:52Donald Trump is a blithering idiot.
08:55You could have followed the science.
08:57And so that if we had had a federal mandate that would have shut down everything from the very beginning and said, this is how we are all going to do things.
09:06You could have controlled the disease that way.
09:09In the states between the races has always been bloody, but it has been one sided.
09:14The Negro has been doing most of the bleeding.
09:18Necrocapitalism is an economy that basically allows for the people with the most wealth to choose who lives and who dies in a crisis.
09:32When disaster strikes, for example, like a Hurricane Katrina.
09:37Right.
09:38There were people that actually had the power to be like, we are going to make sure that the infrastructure exists in such a way that nobody, nobody hurts.
09:46Everybody has what they need.
09:48Everybody gets taken care of.
09:50Everybody has the opportunity to bounce back from this.
09:53And we do everything in our power to make sure that we minimize the harm that happens.
09:57But instead, what happened was like disaster capitalism, necrocapitalism, where some people got to choose what parts of the Gulf South were worth saving and protecting and defending and which parts weren't.
10:09To see the politics of white supremacy and racism, you know, run rampant and people having reinforced with these these false choices that is either your job or your life.
10:24One of my cousins who is who was my closest in terms of growing up is in a hospital fighting for our life.
10:31It's really, really close to home for me right now.
10:34I understand that there are millions of people who are in need and are hurting right now.
10:39In regards to COVID-19, like a contemporary crisis, even before we get to COVID, like the idea that there could be like a Ferguson where a Mike Brown could be murdered with impunity.
10:51Right. But the municipality is literally building its wealth and holding these systems together through the fines and fees of criminalizing people.
11:04They were literally making decisions that were building the economy of a municipality of who should and should not be criminalized.
11:12Right. And then and then to fast forward to COVID-19, it's that we're seeing, you know, I just heard from colleagues in Georgia that they are literally like doing antibody tests in black communities like Tuskegee isn't something that black people remember.
11:30Black resistance, resilience and radical black love have always been the true nexus of black power.
11:36And there is no place where that is more true than the sacred land of our ancestors, the black South and the ways that we've shown up for each other during this pandemic make that plain.
11:45Speaking truth about oppressive systems and working to dismantle them, delivering food to our elders, spearheading mutual aid initiatives, grieving with each other through technology, nurturing joy and darkness and making sure that our most targeted and vulnerable populations are centered in all conversations about the devastating impact of COVID-19.
12:05And that they have equitable access to resources. These things are the best of us. It is how we survive, how we've always survived in that immeasurable commitment to each other is something that no statistician could ever predict and no percentage could ever reflect.
12:22So we know that in a moment where we're trying to figure out how to do shifts that are scalable, that if we don't really think about the disproportionate impact on black communities, indigenous communities, Latinx communities, that we're really putting ourselves at a disadvantage if we're going to build in a way that proves the fact that as goes the South, so goes the nation, right?
12:43Right? If you want to be white supremacy, then look at how black people have been beating back white supremacy in the South for generations.
12:50In Selma, there is a lesson to be learned.
12:53Right? If you want to think about the South in a moment like COVID-19, it's not just to look at us as the victims or the problem. What the South has been doing is over and over and over again creating the impossible.
13:07The impossible. We've been literally doing the impossible for as long as black people have been in the South, right?
13:15That you have, that I can argue that I'm the first black woman executive director of an organization that's almost 90 years old, that's been, you know, a school for like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King that September Clark taught there, right?
13:27Like, this is a place where the camera should be pointed at us because we're the solution, right?
13:31You know, the legacy of the South. When we think about this moment, what do you do when you see a lack of integrity everywhere you look?
13:38What you do is you find it in yourself and you begin to change the world from right where you're standing.
13:43The spirit of rebellion is so strong here. I think when you look deep into communities, you don't find weakness, but strength.
13:51You find that people are powerful. You find that there is a network that people utilize and particularly in the South.
13:59And so I believe in the power of our community. And I believe that we need to use moments like this where where the oppression is so clear.
14:08It is so vivid that we use it as an opportunity to organize and build even stronger.
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