As the novel coronavirus tightens its grip across the U.S.,
it is cutting a particularly devastating swath through an already vulnerable
population — Black Americans.
Democratic lawmakers and community leaders in cities
hard-hit by the pandemic have been sounding the alarm over what they see as a
disturbing trend of the virus killing African-Americans at a higher rate, along
with a lack of overall information about the race of victims as the nation’s
death toll mounts.
Among the cities where Black residents have been hard-hit:
New York, Detroit, New Orleans, Chicago and Milwaukee.
“Everywhere we look, the coronavirus is devastating our
communities,” said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP.
Of the victims whose demographic data was publicly shared by
officials — nearly 3,300 of the nation’s 13,000 deaths thus far — about 42 per
cent were Black, according to an Associated Press analysis. African-Americans
account for roughly 21 per cent of the total population in the areas covered by
the analysis.
The AP’s analysis is one of the first attempts to examine
the racial disparities of COVID-19 cases and deaths nationwide. It involved
examining more than 4,450 deaths and 52,000 COVID-19 cases from across the
country, relying on the handful of state and local governments that have released
victims’ race.
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