Black Lives Have Been Lost Unnecessarily To COVID-19 Because Of America's Failure To Reckon With Systemic Racism, Former Harvard Researcher Says

Virus Outbreak One Year AP Poll Racial Injustice — FILE - In this April 18, 2020, file photo, people wait for a distribution of masks and food from the Rev. Al Sharpton in the Harlem neighborhood of New York. A new poll from the The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that Black and Hispanic Americans are more likely than white Americans to have experienced job and other income losses due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Zoe Mathews is a producer for Boston Public Radio and the producer of The Scrum podcast.

March 19, 2021

Updated August 07, 2023

Black lives have been lost unnecessarily — and at higher rates than their white peers — during the COVID-19 pandemic because of America's failure to reckon with its systemic racism, Dr. Michelle Morse told Boston Public Radio on Friday.

Morse, along with a team of researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice, published a peer-reviewed study in February which found that the risk of severe illness or death to Black Americans could have been dramatically reduced if reparations to slavery were enacted before the pandemic hit. In turn, greater mitigation across communities could have been achieved.

Researchers compared how COVID-19 transmissions played out in South Korea, which is considered one of the most equitable countries in the world, and Louisiana, which is considered one of the least equitable states, said Morse.

"If we had enacted federal reparations — cash payments to Black American descendents of enslaved persons — in Louisiana the rate of COVID spread would have been lower by 31 to 68 percent," said Morse. "This study to us was such an important contribution to understanding the mechanisms by which exclusion, segregation, structural racism and other social forces of oppression actually act in the day to day."

Black Americans are more likely to live in poverty, said Morse. And when looking at COVID-19 infection rates, researchers found that people of color are at higher risk for infection and serious illness because they are more likely to live in crowded residential buildings, and work public-facing or frontline jobs. Combined, these factors put Black Americans at higher risk for negative public health outcomes, said Morse.

Advocates have been pushing for reparations for decades, if not longer, and even President Joe Biden has signaled he may support it. Morse said she believes it may take much more work to convince people reparations are necessary for the good of American society, but the Harvard study makes the case for reparations much clearer.

It may take something known as interest convergence: the idea that civil rights victories are only won when white people believe it to be in their best — or shared — interest, she added.

"I'm not sure it's a reality yet, at the same time I will say in our study of reparations ... what we saw was yes that COVID transmissions was reduced by 31 to 68 percent if we had implemented reparations prior to the pandemic," she said, "but what we saw was, that positive impact of decreased COVID spread helped everybody, not just Black people, it helped the whole entire community to have lower rates of COVID. In a way, I suppose that is interest convergence."

Dr. Morse serves as deputy commissioner for the Center of Health Equity and Community Wellness and as chief medical officer at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. While at Harvard Medical School, she was one of a team of researchers involved in the study regarding reparations and COVID-19 impact on Black Americans.