Full Contrast: How a Pandemic Exposes, and Amplifies, Systems of Inequity
My mom was once given medical contrast test, which required her to ingest iodine as a dye. Her physician had ordered the test in an effort to diagnose her significant health issues. In the images of her internal systems, we were able to see diseased areas in full contrast. I’ve been reminded of that test as the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across the world. While inequities are imbedded into every system of our country, COVID-19 has been the dye ingested into those systems, exposing inequities in full contrast, with even greater detail. The contrast most evident is in our socioeconomic, healthcare, and education systems.
Sara Taylor, President and Founder of deepSEE Consulting
It’s important to clarify the difference between equality and equity. Equality applies the same rules and advantages to all, in an attempt to treat everyone fairly. While used with the best of intentions, the end results are rarely equal. We are often deceived by our good intentions, misled to believe that the impact on all is equally as good. Equity, on the other hand, concentrates on end results. While equality focuses on inputs into our systems, equity focuses on the systems themselves and the outcomes.
As an example, men and women may have equal access to jobs. Yet, our systems of hiring and promotion, along with individual biases of those involved in the process, give us the results of inequity at levels of leadership, with men represented at significantly higher rates in nearly every organization across all industries.
As a country distracted by a focus on equality for generations, we have—often unknowingly—established systems of inequity, built on biases that grant systemic advantage to some, but not all. As many diseases do, COVID-19 has entered our systems, exposed those already-diseased areas of inequity—particularly for people of color—and amplified them.
“With the likelihood that schools will remain closed until fall, the typical learning loss experienced during the summer—known as the summer slide—is expected to double. While that average loss for students entering fourth grade is 20% in reading and 27% in math, for poor students, the loss is even greater.”
Education
Let’s start with the system that is meant to establish an equal playing field for all of our children: education. 89% of white students graduate from high school, compared with 78% of black students. But of course, that inequity doesn’t just happen during the senior year of high school as students prepare to graduate. By as early as fourth grade, black, brown, and poor kids of all races are already 2 years behind white and wealthier kids. That gap increases to 3 years behind at eighth grade and 4 years behind by twelfth grade.
Enter COVID-19.
Students across the country have seen their brick-and-mortar schools close and now move online. While homework may be given to each student in a class equally, students’ ability to access it online is anything but equal. According to a Pew Research Center study, while 92% of households making $75,000 or more have Internet access, of the households making $30,000 or less, only 56% have access. With libraries and coffee shops closed, poor kids are also left with little to no public access options.
With the likelihood that schools will remain closed until fall, the typical learning loss experienced during the summer—known as the summer slide—is expected to double. While that average loss for students entering fourth grade is 20% in reading and 27% in math, for poor students, the loss is even greater.
Economy
Economically, we see similar disparities. Our systems of inequity have created a wealth gap. The average white family has 41 times more wealth than the average black family and 22 times more than the average Latino family. Black and Latino families are also twice as likely to have no wealth and, on average, twice as likely to receive a poverty-level wage.
With COVID-19, unemployment has risen across the country. Yet, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the highest unemployment rate in March was for black people at 6.7% and the lowest was for whites at 4%. Yet, the additional inequity is that for those who are able to work, white people are twice as likely to be able to safely social distance by working from home. This creates what Brian Lehrer, host of a New York Public Radio show, has termed the “racial justice paradox” where "black and brown people are more likely to lose their jobs in the crisis…but they're also more likely to be the ones asked to keep their jobs (as essential workers) and have risky contact with other people."
Health
Health inequities are no different. Black people have the highest rates of heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension. According to Dr. David R. Williams, a specialist in health equity, “265 black people die pre-maturely every day (in America) who would not die if there were no racial inequities in health.” Life itself may be the most significant privilege we are granted, yet that privilege is not granted equitably as the life expectancy for white people is 3.5 years longer than for black people.
We’re now seeing a virus introduced into this already-sick system. As Steven Brown of the Urban Institute said recently, “When white America catches a cold, black America catches pneumonia." Across the country, more people of color, particularly black people, are not only getting infected but also dying from COVID-19. According to a CDC study of 580 hospitals, 33% of coronavirus patients were black even though they represent only 18% of the population. The inequity related to death is even more devastating. Here’s a sampling of some of the most startling data:
African Americans Percentage of Population and Coronavirus Deaths
Source: Johns Hopkins University, state health departments and American Community Survey
Each of these systems is made up of hardworking individuals who are doing their best, with the best of intentions. Educators and schools are scrambling to find broadband devices for students in need. Employers are readjusting salaries at all levels to keep more employed, and healthcare practitioners are caring and fighting for their patients. Good people with good intent in each system is a given.
Yet, if we focus only on these well-intentioned inputs of equality, we miss the bigger picture of the systems of inequity exposed now in full contrast.