The pandemic’s not over in lower-income communities, and neither are the income and health disparities that it laid bare
Last year, our society seemed to have had a series of revelations: We learned that many hourly workers were essential, as they risked their lives to stock grocery shelves or supported our homebound neighbors at low wages. We discovered that people with underlying conditions like diabetes were more likely to get sick and die from COVID-19. We have realized that women are more likely to leave the workforce to care for children and support homeschooling. And we faced the idea that each of these conditions is more likely to impact the families and communities of Black, LatinX, and Native Americans. Finally, the murder of George Floyd shocked us, as it revealed so much about the systems that theoretically exist to protect and support us all. Simply put, the events of 2020 allowed our broad race and class-based disparities to register (finally) in the American psyche.
2021: “Opening up” and reinforcing disparities?
But what did we really learn, and what actions are we taking? Change doesn’t happen by itself, so as people of privilege—as individuals who manage workflows and people, and earn enough to not worry about next month’s rent—it’s important that we remember those lessons and not just move on.
As we go back to work and the economy “opens up”, so many of us are trying to put COVID-19 in our rear view mirror. Last week, however, the ShedLight team took a sobering field trip to Paterson, NJ as part of a research project. In Paterson, and lower-income communities like it, COVID-19 is still omnipresent: Health inequities persist and people in these communities are still at higher risk of COVID-19. The neighborhood economy is still closed and no one has transportation to work further afield—or to drive to a healthcare clinic or vaccination center. In communities like Paterson, the health and economic disparities that were “discovered” during the initial shock of the pandemic continue to drive COVID-19 today. Nationally, lower income and working class Americans of all political parties and races are less likely to be insured or vaccinated than their higher income counterparts.
As a result, the proliferation of the Delta variant is doing more than increasing COVID risk, it is intensifying our existing health and income disparities. But in 2021, we no longer see that impact…In our drive for “normalcy”, we just see vaccine avoidance.
We need to focus on both vaccine avoidance and the impact of disparity.
But as a society, we cannot just walk away from COVID-19 as quickly as we’d like. It’s true that the pandemic will persist without high vaccination rates. But if we don’t address underlying health and income inequities, our recovery will exacerbate the American divide. Someone close to me proudly stated that New York’s vaccination rate was “so much higher” than some other states—so I suggested that he look at our NYC vaccination rates by zip code, where some neighborhoods have vaccination rates lower than Mississippi. Or another friend’s misplaced concern that ShedLight’s work related to the ‘middle-class slide’ might not be so relevant in the future, given the strength of the economic recovery. In fact, class and race are determining who is more likely to be successful in the post-COVID economy, reinforcing and widening the same disparities that Americans bemoaned just last summer: For example, the current unemployment rate in zip codes located in Harlem and The South Bronx is currently as much as four times higher than the rate found in my white, highly educated zip code in waterfront Brooklyn. And according to the New York Times, those without a college education and those working low income, hourly jobs were almost ten times as likely to be unemployed by the pandemic. As of May 2021, the number of people working low-wage jobs in the US had declined by eight million jobs. In contrast, the number of highest-earning jobs actually increased, indicating that the COVID-19 recovery may only reinforce race and class disparities, despite our “awakening” last year.
The new normal: Embracing imperfection as a starting point for action.
We have to hold two ideas in our heads at the same time: it’s crucial to vaccinate as many people as possible. And we must right some of the wrongs that we finally acknowledged as a culture in 2020. For example: We do need to protect ourselves from the Delta variant. That said, one unintended consequence of NYC’s plan to bar unvaccinated people from restaurants could be the closure of the last food outlets in low-income, low vaccination areas that are already food deserts.
Last Spring we seemed on the verge of recognizing something important about ourselves, our city, and our region (and maybe even our country?): We are all interconnected. Remember when healthcare workers from around the country came to NYC to help us weather last year’s storm? We discovered that my health is influenced by your health; and that your ability to get a job done is directly influenced by the ability of others to work and send their children to school or daycare. That a system capable of killing one of its citizens is capable of ending or limiting the lives of others without notice. The biggest lesson of 2020 is that our well-tended bubbles are imaginary, of our own creation—and that eventually, what impacts one impacts us all. Yes, we all live independent lives, but a rich life involves many personal connections. And by avoiding certain conversations with those who don’t look, think or live like us, we do ourselves a disservice—because we fill in the blank spaces with assumptions. And you know what they say about assumptions, right?
We are all changed in large or small ways as a result of our experience of the past 18 months, and we’re all looking for the “new normal”. It’s my hope that part of our new normal is making good on the biggest thing I promised myself last year: That we’d learn from 2020. That even though we didn’t like what we saw or experienced last year, we’d emerge better, stronger, and with 20/20 vision—able to see things that were previously out of our view. While the things that made last year ugly are all still there, that’s part of the point: Admitting that there is a problem is the first step towards recovery.
Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed unless it is faced.
James Baldwin
