What A Day - Minding The Race Gap

Episode Date: April 13, 2020

States are trying different approaches to address coronavirus racial disparities, from forming a task force in Louisiana to opening new testing centers in New York City. We speak to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed about what he’s seen in Detroit, and how structural racism leaves minority communities vulnerable.A new investigation in The New York Times says Trump was told about what this pandemic might look like in January and February and that he didn’t heed the warning. And in headlines: OPEC countries reach a deal to cut oil production, Trump hates the postal service, and Dutch tulips against coronavirus.

It's Monday, April 13th. I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Resnick, and this is What A Day, hoping you had a very exciting indoor Easter egg hunt. Yeah, if you think I'm going to buy Easter eggs right now, you are out of your mind. I hid eggs for myself, and I'm using all my mental energy to forget them so they will surprise me later. Stark. Stark is that? I'm a Passover guy, what can I say? On today's show, the impact of the coronavirus on communities of color and what is being done, then some headlines, but first...

Hey, California, you know what? We gotta do this. Stay home. You know, I'm in my garage, and that's what we gotta do. Nobody can beat us, especially some little virus. Wow. All right, well, that was actor and entrepreneur Danny Trejo with a friendly reminder. We love that guy. Great donuts, great acting. All right. Well, in news, the Easter weekend brought a grim update with the U.S. becoming the country with the

highest number of coronavirus deaths worldwide. And the crisis is continuing to unveil deeper inequities within American society. Yeah, there is a great deal of concern about COVID-19's disproportionate impact on people of color as opposed to white Americans. And that's a story that we're going to zero in on today. Last week, we talked about early data we were getting from states like New York, Louisiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin that made this problem terribly clear. And now we've got some early efforts in multiple states to combat the issue, which is often attributed to underlying racial health gaps, healthcare access disparities, housing disparities,

and in this particular situation, fewer job opportunities that allow working from home. Yeah. So what do these efforts actually look like? Well, in the past few days, Louisiana's Governor John Bel Edwards announced the formation of a task force to address COVID-19 racial disparities in the state, where African-Americans make up a third of the population but represent more than 70% of the deaths. According to the governor, the task force is going to start with two things. First, they're talking about targeted outreach to minority communities about the risks of the virus. And second, research how to address underlying health gaps between black and white residents and how that is manifesting more during this pandemic. New York City is going to open new

testing centers in specific areas throughout the boroughs to address their own disparities following an early set of data that indicated that African American and Latino New Yorkers were dying at twice the rate of their white counterparts. And Michigan has also created a task force of its own to examine the dire problems there. In Michigan, black people make up 15% of the state population, but represent 35% of those diagnosed with COVID-19. Within that, Detroit has been especially hard hit by coronavirus. On Thursday, I spoke with our friend and regular guest, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. He's an epidemiologist and the former head of Detroit's health department.

You know, this is what structural racism looks like in real time. This is how it manifests itself. You know, you look at the city Detroit and the history of the city, you have a city that was hollowed out in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s. And who was left were the people who didn't have the means to be able to move away. And those tended to be low-income folks and Black folks. Detroit is 85% Black. And then when the city had lost most of its tax base, it was unable to continue to support the bureaucracy

that had built out over a long period of time when Detroit was a much larger city. In 2013, following years of population decline and job losses, the city of Detroit had to file for bankruptcy. Michigan's Republican governor, Rick Snyder, appointed an emergency manager, and there were budget cuts and city services were cut back. In the lead up to emergency management, they shut down the health department, which I had been hired to rebuild in 2015. Over time, right, all of these decisions had to do with policy that happened far earlier.

You look at the great migration and the kinds of jobs that black folks migrating up to industrial heartland cities like Detroit got shunted into. You look at the housing that they could buy because of the discrimination in the Federal Housing Administration and the New Deal. All of this compounds on itself, creates a system that has left Detroiters and people of color more broadly across this country without the resources to protect themselves. And what does that look like now? Well, we know that we're socially distancing, but people forget that social distancing is actually a privilege. Not everybody can do it. If you're working in an $1 an hour job, and you're choosing between going out to save your livelihood or staying in to save your life,

that is an impossible choice. And the probability that you're going to be exposed to COVID-19 goes way up, and the intended risk of having a bad outcome goes up too. And so probability that you're going to be exposed to COVID-19 goes way up, and the intended risk of having a bad outcome goes up too. And so we have to understand that this racial disparity in COVID-19 is, it's not surprising. It is a function of a set of policy choices that we have made to pattern access to basic resources to folks by the color of their skin. Abdul was emphasizing that the reason we're seeing so much suffering in Detroit is because the city was vulnerable in many ways leading into the pandemic. It's a result of public policy decisions that have been made over decades. And he's hoping that people will

start to see those vulnerabilities differently now and actually start to address them. Yeah, me too. Well, it's good to see some states and cities are reporting this data and acknowledging the issue. You know, as Abdul was noting, these issues are years and years of structural racism and disinvestment in the making. You know, it's going to take a lot to address that kind of situation. But are the feds saying anything about this at all? In the last couple of days, yes. The CDC has promised to issue specific guidance to minority communities that have seen disproportionate case numbers and deaths. We'll have to actually see what they come up with, of course. There are efforts from the Congressional Black Caucus and others to get more complete demographic data from the federal

government. That's an important piece, too. So we'll continue to follow all of that. But Akilah, what else did we learn over the weekend on the domestic front? All right. So here in America, there's been discussion about what reopening the country is going to look like after these flattening the curve efforts. Not that there's been any federal mandated shutdown. You know, it's obviously been on the governors. Dr. Fauci said yesterday during a CNN interview that we have to stop considering this, you know, an all or nothing proposition. More likely governors are going to need to manage a rolling reentry guided by testing results and, you know, local risk levels. So he also went on to say he thinks reopening could start, quote, maybe next month. But then he added, don't hold me to it. I'm not going to hold him to it.

There's a really excellent article on Vox from Ezra Klein that calls plans to reopen the economy scary based on a variety of think tank proposals. One of them seems really unimaginable in America. It's basically expecting all Americans to download an app that tracks where we go. So if we do come into contact with COVID-19, our phone will tell us, then we'll be quarantined. I mean, it's fascinating at least, but way far away from where we are today. Yeah. And there's more earned criticism of Trump, obviously. You know, according to a new investigation in the New York Times, he was warned about what this pandemic may look like

in January and February, but internal divisions, lack of planning, and Trump's faith in his own consistently shoddy instincts led to this worse outcome. You know, too long didn't read, Donald Trump's inane belief in deep state conspiracies are why he delayed listening to the sound advice of government officials.

Shock, surprise. Yeah, we should delayed listening to the sound advice of government officials. Shock, surprise. Yeah, we should delay listening to his sound advice now. And what else is happening on the international front? All right. So British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was released from the ICU. And in an address, he thanked two immigrant nurses who worked tirelessly to keep him alive. You know, immigrants, they get the job done. But the UK also hit a devastating

milestone. They passed 10,000 coronavirus deaths. In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration has expanded on anti-Muslim rhetoric with their health minister blaming Muslims for the spread of coronavirus within that country. And just like here in America, bigoted rhetoric has led to unimaginable violence. The New York Times detailed Muslim men passing out food, being attacked with cricket bats, and attacked in mosques. It's just all absolutely appalling. And I guess that's the latest. Happy Monday, WOD Squad. Welcome to another week. We're all at home.

We're all in this. So giddy. Let's chat. What do you do as soon as you wake up in the morning? I go make coffee. And it's a fairly intensive process in that there's an annoying like 15 to 20 minute gap between when the desire strikes for the coffee and when I actually have it ready. And that's all on me. I could be I could make it easier on myself, but I don't because of the way that I make it. Yeah. And that's that's what happens right away. That's, I mean, I think that coffee first thing is good.

I have the opposite problem where I just end up, I end up forgetting to drink coffee until it's too late and then I stay up all night. Listen, if I forgot it, the problem, honestly, with the way that like my system is set up now, and by that I mean like my biological system, is like I would feel bad by like noon. So it's pretty dark. But anyway, same cue to you.

What's your morning routine? So mostly it's just feeling bad. I'm really into Animal Crossing at this point. I think the listeners know that has been my escapism of choice. And so I fall asleep with my switch, you know, on the bedside table. I wake up, I check in, see what the hot items of the day are. And then if I remember, I'll make coffee, but I usually just have like a sad pop tight. Just wait for us to get together and do our show. You got to have coffee pre-Animal Crossing. Like, I think you'll attend the villagers better.

I think... They'll annoy me less. Yeah, yeah. They'll stop getting on your nerves. That's just my little suggestion. That is a good one. And just like that, we have done our temperature check. So check in on your homies, stay safe, and we will check in again tomorrow. And now for some ads.

Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. The New York Times published a new report following an allegation of sexual assault against former vice president and presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden. The allegations come from Tara Reid, who accused Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993 when she was a staff assistant in his Senate office. The Times reported that Reid's former co-workers did not recall an incident between her and Biden, but found that two friends and her brother did recall her talking about a traumatic experience while working as a Senate aide. The article claims it quote, found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, end quote. Though the Times does note that just last year, several women came forward to accuse Biden of inappropriately touching and kissing them. Biden's campaign maintains that Reid's allegation is false. The U.S., Russia, Saudi Arabia, and 19 other OPEC countries have reached a major deal to cut the

production of oil starting next month. It's an attempt to stabilize falling oil prices following a drop in global demand because of the pandemic and a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia. The countries raced to reach a deal yesterday after investors predicted that oil prices would crash if they didn't. The White House played a more active role in calling for an agreement than it normally would, probably because a crash would have led to a wave of energy company bankruptcies in the U.S. Well, it was exciting to have $2 gas for a while, even if almost no one got to use it. Driving around empty streets with cheap gas.

President Trump threatened to veto Congress's recent coronavirus aid bill if the U.S. Postal Service got too much aid from it, according to a report this weekend from The Washington Post. The Postal Service has been hit hard by the pandemic, and some lawmakers have predicted that without help, they might not make it past September without missing payrolls or service interruptions. Like many scary neighborhood dogs, Trump doesn't like the Postal Service. In fact, he once called it Amazon's, quote, delivery boy and thinks online retailers are to blame for its problems.

When lawmakers tried to write a $13 billion Postal Service grant into the coronavirus relief package earlier this month, Trump's Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin rejected it, and they settled on a $10 billion loan. The increasing importance of vote-by-mail makes the Postal Service a key part of our democracy in the upcoming elections, which is another reason why Trump might not want to fund them. Guys, we tried everything we could, but we just couldn't protect the Dutch tulip industry from the pandemic. The Netherlands is famous for their tulips, but thanks to a decline in demand for things that are beautiful, you know, they haven't been selling recently, leading growers to destroy an estimated 400 million flowers and 140 million tulips in the month of March. The period of March through May is the hot season for the Dutch flower

industry since it contains International Women's Day, Easter, and Mother's Day. This year, depending on the market they serve, producers are facing losses ranging from 10% to 85%. Holland's famous flower parks remain in bloom but closed to visitors. Hope those bulbs are using this rare, unsupervised moment to talk out loud and have Toy Story-style flower adventures. Uh-uh, that's how Little Shop of Horror starts. I don't like it. Yeah, well, maybe we need a little more horror. All right. Well, those are the headlines. According to the CDC, we all need to be wearing masks whenever we leave our homes for essential activities, but not the medical ones. Those are for the people on the front lines. So we made three packs of reusable non-medical masks on the Crooked store. 100% of the proceeds go to our coronavirus relief fund.

So find them on crooked.com slash store. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, help us find our eggs, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just stylish brands on tote bags like me, what a day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick.

And look out for Talking Flowers. They talk too much. They want blood, Seymour. What a Day is a product of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tunn is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein and our senior producer is Katie Long.

Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.