April 24, 2020
COVID-19 death rates among blacks make new fodder for racial politics
By John Eidson
As reported by ABC News, black American coronavirus patients in Michigan died of the disease at more than eight times the rate of white people despite making up only 14% of the state's population. Similar death disparities occurred in other U.S. cities with large black populations, thus creating an opening for racial politics to be injected into the debate over COVID-19 death rates in the black community.
At the Coronavirus Task Force press briefing on April 7, Dr. Anthony Fauci correctly observed that black Americans are disproportionately affected by illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, and asthma, all of which are known to increase the risk of fatal coronavirus complications. The widely respected epidemiologist went on to note that such disparities have "long been prevalent in the African-American community." With higher coronavirus death rates among black Americans an established medical fact, progressive media outlets are raising the specter that racism is to blame.
The suggestion that the medical profession is rife with racist doctors and nurses is an unfortunate extension of the modern Democratic Party's identity politics election strategy, which is predicated on the fallacious narrative that even after all the years of racial progress, the America of today is an incurably oppressive place infested with racists who roam the land, including in hospitals and medical facilities that care for all Americans, regardless of the color of their skin.
No intelligent person can deny that residual racism still exists among some unenlightened people in our society, including some who work at health care facilities. But there's a reason for the health disparities Dr. Fauci talked about that has absolutely nothing to do with racism. I'll get to that in a minute, but first a small slice of America's racial history.
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https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/covid19_death_rates_among_blacks_make_new_fodder_for_racial_politics.html
