![]() To make this argument, we use the CDC's Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) to analyze the ways in which Black bodies occupy the most vulnerable communities, making them bear the brunt of COVID‐19's impact. Consequently, these vulnerabilities have interacted with the effects of COVID‐19 in such a way that has led to disproportionate infection and death rates of Black people in the United States. In this essay, we argue that racism exposes structures, policies, and practices that have created social vulnerability. Socially vulnerable communities (and those living within them) may not be able to respond to COVID‐19 in ways that limit the spread and deathly impact of the virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines social vulnerability as “the resilience of communities when confronted by external stresses on human health, stresses such as natural or human‐caused disasters, or disease outbreaks” (CDC 2018). ![]() Socially vulnerable communities were created through political decisions such as redlining, gentrification, and industrialization and are less resilient in their ability to respond to and recover from natural and human‐made disasters compared with higher‐resourced communities (Pulido 2000). COVID‐19, for some, further exposes and reiterates, for others, half a millennium of structural racism and repression targeted with administrative precision on the Black body.Īs the architect of racial disparity, racism also shapes the vulnerability of communities. 2006 Gupta, Carrión‐Carire, and Weiss 2006 Hoberman 2012 Mehta et al. Outcomes associated with the daily conditions of Black life in the most vulnerable communities predispose Black people to a host of disparities, health and otherwise (Budoff et al. The symptoms of COVID‐19 are, in many ways, like the symptoms of American racism-pressure and pain that stifles one's ability to breathe and move freely. While much about COVID‐19 remains a mystery, symptomatically, the virus manifests as troubled breathing, a cough, persistent muscle pain or pressure in the chest, and confusion (CDC 2020). As of this writing, the virus had killed 382,867 people globally and 110,562 people in the United States, infected 6.4 million, and touched everyone (Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center 2020). The virus had reached pandemic levels by March 2020, with countries around the world implementing various forms of public health measures designed to reduce the rate of infection (Adhanom Ghebreyesus 2020). COVID‐19 emerged of unknown origin in the last quarter of 2019, first gaining global attention from an outbreak of respiratory illness in Wuhan, China (Hui et al.
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