In the eyes of many media outlets, the largest amount of COVID-19 in minority and immigrant communities is the product of American systemic racism and an economic regime that prioritizes gains over the well-being of non-whites. Business as a cause of other effects will have to take into account this problematic truth: the racial disparities of COVID-19 were the rule in the Western world.
This is not to forget the wonderful benefits that the rich have had in terms of social estating, measured not in feet yet in miles. In New York, for example, largely white citizens of Manhattan’s luxury zip codes fled to their summer apartments in New York. the Hamptons or Westport.
Meanwhile, black citizens and immigrants from the poorest neighborhoods of Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx took the subway to paint through the supply shelves at Whole Foods, cleaning hospital floors or delivering FedEx packages to the Zoom convention before returning home.
So it’s no surprise that Manhattan’s wealthiest neighborhoods have the lowest rates of per capita infection in New York City, while sandy neighborhoods in the same region have had the highest rates. have been disproportionately non-white.
Such disparities were also the rule in Michigan, where blacks account for 15% of the general population, but 31% of cases and 41% of deaths. Chicago, compared to only 30% of the population. Nationally, black Americans died of the virus twice the rate predicted through their component of the population. In regions of the country with fewer blacks, Latinos rank first among the victims. Illinois, Latinos account for 17% of the population, but account for 43% of cases.
What about trends in other countries? In the end, the pandemic revealed inequalities in rich countries, from cowboy capitalists to neighboring socialists. Sometimes inequality seemed racial and it wasn’t. Some of these countries have welcomed immigrants, providing them with all the extensive facilities of their welfare state; have been more restrictive. However, in each of them, the disadvantaged have suffered more than average elegance and the rich. COVID-19 did not denounce So much American “savagery of elegance,” but revealed inequality as a tenacious fact of human social diversity that not even the highest welfare welfare state can solve.
In the UK, for example, COVID-19 mortality rates were at most 6 times higher for black Africans than for whites, four times higher for Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, 2. 6 times higher for Indians, and 3. 7 times higher for Caribbean blacks. Say, “Of course, England is hostile to minorities. “The challenge with this explanation is that these gaps also enlarge their most admired nations.
In the Finnish capital, Helsinki, for example, Somalis accounted for 17% of positive cases of the disease, 10 times its percentage of the city’s population, according to Reuters. Also in Norway, Somali refugees had more than 10 times higher infection rates. than the national average.
The COVID-19 racial hole in Sweden is a silent rebuttal of the country’s proudly egalitarian self-image. As in France, other people born abroad in Sweden tend to live in segregated suburbs where incomes are part of the richest areas. One of the most affected, the Rinkeby-Kista neighborhood in northern Stockholm, is home to Somalis, Iraqis, Syrians and Turks. It had 238 cases shown until April 6, the equivalent of 47 cases consisting of 10,000 residents, more than 3 times. more than the regional average of thirteen instances consisting of 10,000 inhabitants.
So why the obvious racial animosity of COVID-19 in countries without Jim Crow history or redlining, countries committed to multiculturalism and beneficiary protection networks?Experts from all countries, adding to the United States, point to the same factors. First, density. The largest epidemics have all occurred in metropolitan spaces with more than 10 million inhabitants: Wuhan, Milan, Madrid, Paris, London and New York. Minorities are more likely to live in urban spaces. In general, urban counties in the United States are 54% non-white.
But, as was the case in New York and the United States, the maximum productive predictor of COVID-19 rates is the average number of other people living together. Overcrowded houses help explain why Navajo Indians, living in remote reserves, had some of the country’s alarming COVID-19s in line with capita figures consistent with cápita. As reported by the Wall Street Journal in June, about 18% of Navajo homes have five or more people, and 14% are classified as overcrowded, among the highest rates in the country. The challenge is not the density of the population but the density of the dwellings.
In fact, minorities in Europe, as in the United States, live more in multigenerational families. In the UK, whether for economic or cultural reasons, trending families are much more common among minority populations. In the 2019 British census, only 2% of whites described their family type as “another, with dependent children,” compared to 11% of Asians and 7% of blacks. In France, Arab and African families have a tendency to come with members of the exhausted family. Family.
As in the United States, low-skilled service jobs in Canada and most of Europe are disproportionately occupied by new immigrants and minorities. In Canada, up to a third of the most affected “key staff”: cleaners, delivery men and chefs – were born abroad. Through Ryerson University and the Canadian Community Care Research Network, they found that 42% of non-public care personnel in Ontario were known as a “visible minority,” at most double their percentage of the Canadian population. 20% of key staff in Italy, Belgium, Germany, Sweden and Austria are non-European immigrants.
To say that COVID-19 has highlighted inequality in put options where few expected to see them is not to deny that inequality is greater in the United States than in other relatively wealthy countries. However, the hard fact is that until robots take over, the advanced economy countries will continue to want staff to pick grapes, clean airport toilets, empty toilets in retirement homes, and drive trucks. We will have to do everything possible to protect these ‘essential personnel’, which in fact it is. Whatever their color, such staff deserve to be treated decently, earn enough to help their families, and be a part of a life not unusual. 19 is not an accurate investigation of the facts.
Kay S. Hymowitz is editor of the City Journal. This article is from the NYC Reborn series of the City Journal.