What’s Behind the COVID-19 Racial Disparity?

Earlier this month, The New England Journal of Medicine published a short article on America’s COVID-19 racial death gap by Merlin Chowkwanyun, a medical historian at Columbia University, and Adolph L. Reed Jr., a political scientist and venerable voice of the labor left at the University of Pennsylvania. They suggested that highlighting the existence of racial disparities without explaining their cause could itself encourage racist beliefs. “Disparity figures without explanatory context can perpetuate harmful myths and misunderstandings that actually undermine the goal of eliminating health inequities,” they wrote. If all we know is that disparities exist, then prepare for racist explanations to rush in to fill the gap.