Consider This from NPR - The Coronavirus In America: One More Racial Inequity

Episode Date: June 2, 2020

The more we learn about the coronavirus, the clearer it becomes that it's disproportionately affecting communities of color. And as protests continue across the country, some health experts worry that the hardest hit areas could be in for another wave of cases. By almost every economic measure, black Americans have a harder time getting a leg up. As the pandemic has sent the country's economy into the worst downturn in generations, it's only gotten worse. More from NPR's Scott Horsley and the team at NPR's Planet Money. Despite all of this, there is a bit of good news. Some communities across the country are reporting a decrease in COVID-19 cases. NPR's Rob Stein breaks down the national outlook.Plus, advice on how to combat anxiety, avoid insomnia and get some rest. Sign up for 'The New Normal' newsletter.You can find more sleep tips on NPR's Life Kit on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and NPR One. Find and support your local public radio station This episode was recorded and published as part of this podcast's former 'Coronavirus Daily' format.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org The protests continue, and the virus hasn't gone anywhere. I worry that the virus is going to spread back exactly to the communities where a lot of this police violence already happens. And so this will only make things worse. Ashish Jha of Harvard's Global Health Institute. We're in the middle of

a pandemic. The country's opening up and then civil unrest from longstanding racial injustices put it all together. And it's a very perilous moment for our nation. Coming up, by almost every economic measure, Black Americans have a harder time getting ahead. And that is in a healthy economy. The pandemic is only making things worse. This is Coronavirus Daily from NPR. I'm Kelly McEvers. It's Tuesday, June 2nd. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

Download the WISE app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. The more we learn about this virus, the clearer it is that it is disproportionately affecting communities of color. Of course, so many things in American life already do that. Black folk live in communities where a single economic shock can really send the entire economic hopes astray. Andre Perry studies race and inequality at the Brookings Institution. And he says Black Americans who are more likely to work quote-unquote essential jobs are more vulnerable to any economic downturn.

Take, for instance, Minnesota. The median Black family in the Twin Cities makes $38,000 a year. The median white family, $84,000. Nationwide, you can only find worse income inequality in one city, Milwaukee. In 2019, the state of Minnesota ranked 50th when it comes to racial disparities in high school graduation rates. And one of the largest gaps between Black and white homeownership in the country is in the city of Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed. That action really symbolized the knee on the neck of Black homeowners and renters. It represents the employers who don't

provide the kind of benefits and wages that will lift African-American communities. So decades of inequality now have a global pandemic sitting on top of them. Chicago is one part of the country where the number of coronavirus cases is trending in the wrong direction. So the mayor has set up a racial equity rapid response team to reach people in black and brown neighborhoods. Here's NPR's Cheryl Corley on the problems they're trying to solve. Auburn Gresham is a predominantly African-American working class bungalow belt neighborhood on Chicago's south side. It's seen its share of troubles, high unemployment, gang warfare, and then came the wrath of COVID-19. In March,

Illinois officials announced a retired nurse who lived in the neighborhood was the first in the state to die from coronavirus. Patricia Friesen was 61. Her older sister, Wanda Bailey, died from the virus days later. Here on 79th Street, a drive-in test site opened up recently. Well, this is critical. You know, we've been screaming for weeks to get testing here in Auburn Gresham. Carlos Nelson is the head of a community group, the Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corporation, he says it's been dire here with more than 1,000 confirmed coronavirus cases. Black communities, whether on the west side or south side, we are dying. We are dying because, you know, we don't have the same resources, the same

access to information. And African Americans in Chicago have died from COVID-19 at a rate two to three times higher than the city's white residents. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot says the racial gap is unacceptable. This is about health care accessibility, life expectancy, jobless. And the result of a racist system that for generations left black neighborhoods with little access to health care, jobs, education, and healthy food, conditions, she adds, that aren't unique to Chicago. We're seeing this manifest in large urban areas with large black populations all over the United States. Milwaukee, Cleveland, Detroit, and other places are experiencing the same thing, but we are going to step up and do

something about it. Distributing free masks, hundreds of door hangers, and thousands of postcards about COVID-19 are part of the effort by the Racial Equity Rapid Response Team. There's also a push to address long-standing issues like food insecurity, especially in places like Auburn-Gresham, where unemployment is nearly 30%. Anyone without a ticket, I'm going to send them to the lab. Recently, hundreds of people on foot and in cars lined the blocks for a pop-up food pantry run by Carlos Nelson's group

and the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Volunteers helped Carolyn Bowers load boxes of canned goods, meat, and produce into a cart. Bowers works part-time caring for seniors and says COVID-19 has caused lots of financial havoc. I'm not able to service as many clients as I have been because a lot of the seniors, they're afraid to let the workers come into their homes. She's been working eight hours a week instead of her typical 30 to 35, but Bowers considers herself lucky since she and her adult children live with her mother and everyone chips in. COVID-19 is now most prevalent in Chicago's Latinx neighborhoods. There's the same push to educate people about the pandemic with

bilingual messaging and also a focus on workplaces where there's been a cluster of coronavirus cases. Unions are part of the outreach effort. Efren Elias is the vice president of SEIU Local 1. It represents janitors, security officers, and others. These are workers who are heading to the front lines of this crisis to keep the public clean, safe, and healthy every day. And our workers are not able to stay at home, so these are considered essential workers. The vacuum cleaner dies down as Javier Flores goes over the day's cleaning schedule with his maintenance crew at a nearly 200-unit residential building.

Thank God we haven't had any type of cases here or any type of incidents whatsoever. Flores says both he and his wife are essential employees. She's a cook for the Chicago Public Schools and prepares free breakfast and lunch for students that families pick up. The couple live with their two young daughters in Chicago's Belmont-Craigan area. With nearly 3,000 confirmed cases, it's one of the Latinx communities with the most coronavirus cases in the state. And that makes Flores anxious. To give you an example, yesterday my youngest daughter started coughing

and telling me that her throat hurts. I can't avoid just thinking about, man, you know, so COVID-19, you know, then you start worrying, you know. His daughter was fine, and Flores says he thinks the city is working to address concerns of communities of color that are so hard hit by the pandemic. NPR's Cheryl Corley. In some places, cases are going down, but it's not just in Chicago where they're going up. NPR's Rob Stein talked to All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly about how things are going around the country. Despite those rising case numbers overall, Rob, are there corners of the country where things are looking up? Yeah, you know, the situation does

look better in maybe, let's say, a third of the country, places that got hit hard early and locked down hard, like the Northeast, you know, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts. Another maybe third looks okay, at least for now. But the other third looks a little worrying. Places like Chicago, Minnesota in the Midwest, California, especially L.A., is starting to look like a problem again. But also the southeast, the Carolinas, Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi. Caitlin Rivers at Johns Hopkins worries about places that don't have a lot of things like hospitals. I'm starting to worry more now about rural areas.

I think we will see flare-ups beginning in institutions like correctional facilities, nursing homes, maybe also around family gatherings or religious services. The outbreaks may start there and then spread into the community and gain a foothold. It'll probably take a week or two to see any signs of surges from the Memorial Day reopenings and now these protests. And through the spring and summer, as things open up more, the virus could flare up in different places, sort of like, you know, wildfires breaking out in one place after another. And the fear is the U.S. could lose another 100,000 lives by the end of the summer and maybe hundreds of thousands by the end of the year if the pandemic intensifies in the fall and winter. Is there anything you can point us to that should give us hope?

You know, none of the public health experts I talk to are very optimistic. Here's Dr. Richard Besser. He also used to run the CDC and now heads the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which does support NPR. We're seeing public health and public health recommendations put up as the enemy of restarting the economy, getting people back to work. A lot of people saying, you know what, I don't think this is such a big deal. And no, I don't want to wear a mask.

I don't want to social distance. I just want to get back to the way things were. That's a very dangerous course. Now, you know, it doesn't mean all hope is lost. If the country does get serious about things we've been hearing a lot about, like finally getting enough testing, aggressively isolating sick people and quarantining people who might have caught the virus, there is still some hope. NPR's Rob Stein.

A lot of us are having trouble sleeping these days for a lot of reasons. Stephen Amira, a psychologist at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston says, while it might sound paradoxical, try spending less time in bed. That's exactly right. We want you to associate your being in bed with sleeping, not with anxiety and worrying about your insomnia. And once you do make it to bed, Christina McRae at the University of Missouri suggests doing something called a body scan. It's kind of a stripped-down approach to meditation. Now I want you to move and focus on your right leg.

Focusing on each part of your body. Your right leg is feeling heavy. And trying to let it relax. And more and more relaxed. Our colleagues at NPR's Life Kit have an episode with more advice to help you sleep at the link in our episode notes.

For more on the coronavirus, you can stay up to date with all the news on your local public radio station and on NPR.org. Reporting in this episode came from NPR correspondents Rob Stein and Scott Horsley

and the team at NPR's Planet Money. I'm Kelly McEvers. We'll be back with more tomorrow. It feels like nothing in the news these days makes any sense. So Hassan Minhaj turned to his father and his faith for answers. He said, don't worry about the number of questions. Just worry about which questions become more clear and solidified. Comedian Hassan Minhaj on how his spirituality is getting him through. Listen and subscribe to It's Been a Minute from NPR.