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I asked how many whites would have to die of COVID, through all direct and indirect pathways, for white mortality in 2020 to rise to the best level that Black mortality has ever been.
The answer: 400,000.
1/8 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/08/20/2014750117
The answer: 400,000.
1/8 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/08/20/2014750117
For white life expectancy to fall to the best-ever Black life expectancy would take at least 700,000 excess white deaths this year.
2/8
2/8
This pattern is not historically new. My earlier research with @jamesfeigenbaum and Chris Muller showed that the same was true of the 1918 pandemic: white mortality in 1918 was less than what Blacks experienced in every prior year.
3/8 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-019-00789-z?shared-article-renderer
3/8 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-019-00789-z?shared-article-renderer
When it comes to fighting Covid, we've changed virtually every aspect of how we live. And most of these changes are overwhelmingly popular. We understand that major disruption is worth it to prevent deaths at this scale.
4/8
4/8
This research shows that racism produces pandemic-scale deaths every single year.
So why aren't we just as willing to embrace disruption and reorganization to fight racism?
5/8
So why aren't we just as willing to embrace disruption and reorganization to fight racism?
5/8
My article concludes: "These results should reframe these debates away from which transformations are politically tenable to, simply, which transformations will be effective in preventing harms associated with racism." ...
7/8
7/8
"If Black disadvantage operates every year on the scale of Whites’ experience of COVID-19, then so too should the tools we deploy to fight it. Our imagination and social ambition should not be limited by how accustomed the United States is to profound racial inequality."
8/8
8/8
