Social Determinants of Health: The Psychological impact of COVID-19 on Black America
Introduction
In 2020, the world experienced a pandemic that killed millions. America has now lost over 600,000 lives. The Atlantic has created a Covid Tracker that has counted at least 15% of deaths are from African Americans (The Atlantic, 2021). However, are all the deaths accounted for? 15% is a significant number, but it is well under half of the population, but does this mean that the African American population feels comfortable with these numbers? This paper will examine conversations and interviews with two people who identify as African American and their experiences as people of color during COVID-19. The events in their lives during this time,, including any inner turmoil they experienced and dealt with, will be reviewed and examined along with their understanding of race relations in America and how that affects their perception of the significance of 15% of the COVID-19 deaths.
Research Approach and Participants
Research Method
A brief review of the history of systemic racism will be used understand the context of the participants concerns. Conversations were had with the participants where race and the struggles of COVID-19 were discussed at length. In these conversations the participants were invited to go through a more formal interview. This paper will review these conversations and interviews.
Participants
This research includes to participants whose names will be changed for privacy purposes. Both are from the African diaspora here in America and have experienced their share of racial hardships before COVID-19.
The first person interviewed is an African American woman in her mid forties, she will be known as Participant A. She is mixed with Native and Japanese ancestry. She is a doctor who graduated from Yale University in Anthropology and completed a PhD at Caltech. She is married and has one child.
The second person interviewed is an African American man in his mid forties, who will be referred to as Participant B. He is a single man who identifies as homosexual. He graduated from Yale University and has had extensive travels around the world for work and pleasure. He has most recently done work in the world of media in radio and film.
Interviews and Analysis
History
In order to understand the full context of these interviews an examination of negative race relations in America, as it pertains to African Americans, should be examined at length. In the article To Protect and Serve Whiteness, by Orisanmi Burton, the author informs the reader that during the time of slavery it was made legal to kill slaves marked as runaways (Burton, 2015).
This action paved the way for groups called “slave patrols” who would literally hunt down suspected escaped slaves and would kill them at their discretion. This disturbing militia would sometimes capture freed slaves or innocent people and would make accusations against them in order to have their way. Burton explains that these groups later evolved Klansman and later the police (Burton, 2015). The introduction and Black codes paved a way to continue slavery, so to speak, in a more systemic way that would not disrupt the nee amendments to the constitution, which okayed slavery in the form of labor by those incarcerated. These facts are important as they lay a foundation of understanding of relations that the participants are well aware of. Black criminality became a common teaching that would follow through the history of policing, according to Avram Bornstein in his article “Institutional Racism, Numbers Management, and Zero-Tolerance Policing in New York City” (Bornstein, 2015). This racial bias even seeped into the ways that people of African descent would be kept from owning property through activities like redlining and covenants (Film Race, 2012). Both participants were effected by these long standing biases before and during COVID-19.
Participant Data through Conversation and Interviews
Participant A had experienced deep racial injustices during her residency as a doctor. She was singled out for her race and gender, put into a probation while pregnant, and dismissed from her program from the use of false and derogatory feedback from mostly white residents. She had already struggled to by her family a home having been denied regular mortgages despite being a doctor. Her sister faced the same problems even though she is a tenured professor, but was able to obtain a mortgage through black owned businesses. Participant A’s racial hardships hit a head during COVID-19 when her father died of complications related to the virus and all her place of living was threatened after George Floyd’s murder, since she owned property 2 miles from the scene. First, the death of her father was devastating as his complications matched the symptoms associated with the coronavirus. However, the county he died in would not test his body. She and her family members scrambled to get him tested but were unsuccessful. As a doctor, she was familiar with viruses and could assess that coronavirus is what took her father’s life. The funeral expenses were rough. She was not working as a doctor and could not get high paying emergency positions, which had opened up in the wake of the deadly pandemic, because of the effects of the discrimination she still lived under after losing her job. She decided to start her own company and struggled to get funding, despite the cries that came from people to fund Black businesses after George Floyd’s murder. The one things she still had was her home and her family. However, her home was constantly under attack by neighbors who target blacks families in the neighborhood to get their homes condemned. Participant A pointed out that this practice was long standing as the neighborhood was subject to covenants back when it was opened, where black and Asian families were not allowed to buy in the area. She felt that this had led to the type of atmosphere that eventually got Mr. Floyd murdered just two miles from her house. She felt it was no mystery that type of event would eventually happen.
Participant B’s stress was just as severe but not as involved. Participant B lived in New York during the time when the city was hit hard. He saw neighbors die and their apartments closed and taped off so that the airborne virus wouldn’t spread. He personally had many people around him who died from the virus and expressed his fear of the response he would get knowing the history of the United States and their lack of attention to Black patients. When the participant got the coronavirus he expressed that his mental stress was “through the roof.” He expressed concern that doctors historically would not treat Black people’s pain they would White people, because they believed that Black people could withstand pain do to an “animalistic” nature. This frightened him. In his apartment he went through deep psychological trauma, not from the virus, but from what he imagined would happen to him by his fellow white Americans because he had the virus. He expressed distrust in getting the vaccine due to the history of scientific experimentation on African Americans where many died. A company offered him the opportunity to try hydroxychloroquine, which was never proven to have an effect on the virus.
He had no immediate negative side effects and eventually did not have any more symptoms However, he took comfort in his work, experienced few physical complications from the virus, and found solace from a scene in Harry Potter. In the second film a Phoenix arrives to help Harry Potter in his darkest hour of fighting an enemy. As Participant B saw this scene he cried, and felt hope that a good vaccine would be made that would be his personal phoenix to save him from the psychological and emotional trauma he faced. He was later vaccinated, but still ever frightful for the future.
Data Analysis
Participant A experienced extreme racial bias. The fact that her father would not be tested for COVID-19 is troubling and is a result of systemic racism. His numbers were not added to the nation wide numbers, which in turn would increase the overall death rate and the rate among African Americans. This shows us that there may not be an accurate account had. Her father died in a hotel room in a county known for racial problems. Had he died in his home county, where there is a higher percentage of Black Americans, he would have been tested. This led to the participant not receiving relief money from the government that would pay for funeral expenses. This was devastating to the participant and led to deep psychological pain. She has to work harder to pay those debts and could not find relief in her home because a woman, identified as a
“Karen,” tried to harm her peace and enjoyment of her property. The “Karen” would report the home as abandoned, put sticks on the lawn and complain to the city that she had sticks on her lawn, make fake phone calls to the participants places of employment to get her fired, and much more. Diane Negra, in the article “Querying ‘Karen’: The Rise of the Angry White Woman,” explains that the “Karen” figure is a growing phenomenon and points out that they exacerbate negative relations with already exploited people of color (Negra, 2021). This is important as the grieving participant could not find peace to deal with her father’s death, even in her own home.
The neighbors around the participant who are white experience no harm from the said “Karen” despite chipped paint on their houses, long uncut grass, and many more property issues. Dealing with this racist woman on her own would have been one issue, but it was just one of many because of the novel virus. COVID-19 led to the death of Participant A’s father, which was not recognized as such, which led to great financial hardship , this led to a need for new work, work taken away by intersectional racial problems, and exacerbated by the murder of George Floyd and a harassing “Karen” neighbor. Ryon Cobb points out, in the article “Perceived Covid-19 Health Threat Increases Psychological Distress among Black Americans,” that psychological distress is “a risk factor for increased morbidity and mortality” (Cobb, et al., 2021). This is troubling as Participant A didn’t need the virus to experience such great distress, but now her health could be affected as her stress has increased due to COVID-19, making it a possibility that the effects of COVID are a killer among Black people even if they never get the virus.
Participant B faced the same mental hardship, but it mostly stemmed from psychological pain and suffering. He did not experience a job loss or burned down stores or financial hardship but he did experience the virus. However, the virus alone did not cause him distress, it was the negative race relations he experience d in the past that threatened his mental health when he was alone and isolated in his apartment while other people of color died around him.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that the coronavirus devastated the world. Many died and other had severe to minor physical complications. Some experienced headaches and the virus left. However, for people of color in America the virus has had a powerfully negative effect on the mind. George Floyd’s murder reminded America, and the world, that the United States still had deep racial issues. Floyd reminded Black Americans that they still were not able to trust white
America even during a dark hour in the pandemic. Knowing that those who “serve and protect” and their health care system could fail them when it was their last hope certainly had a deep, and possibly lasting, impression. People of color felt the sting of death during COVID, and even if they did not test positive or experience death the effects of the virus may continue to haunt them for the foreseeable future.
Works cited:
The Atlantic. “The COVID Racial Data Tracker.” The COVID Tracking Project, covidtracking.com/race/.
Negra, Diane, and Julia Leyda. “Querying ‘Karen’: The Rise of the Angry White Woman.” European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 24, no. 1, 2021.
Bornstein, Avram. “Institutional Racism, Numbers Management, and Zero-Tolerance Policing in New York City.” North American Dialogue, vol. 18, no. 2, 2015, pp. 51–62., doi:10.1111/nad.12031.
Burton, Orisanmi. “To Protect and Serve Whiteness.” North American Dialogue, vol. 18, no. 2,
2015, pp. 38–50., doi:10.1111/nad.12032.
Cobb RJ, et al. “Perceived Covid-19 Health Threat Increases Psychological Distress among Black Americans.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 44, no. 5, 2021, pp. 806–818., doi:10.1080/01419870.2021.1867216.
Films for the Humanities & Sciences (Firm) and Films Media Group, directors. The House We
Live in : Race– the Power of an Illusion. Films Media Group, 2012. Ucla.kanopy.com.
