Herd Racialization and the Inequalities of Immunity

Abstract

At the same time, they each point to the ways that COVID-19 has been unequal not only in its direct costs for people of color in the United States but also in the immunological burdens it places on them to move the infection dynamics from pandemic to endemic. 11 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Risk for COVID-19 Infection, Hospitalization, and Death by Race/Ethnicity", March 10, 2022, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-race-ethnicity.html. The COVID-19 pandemic has been the context for public health institutions, epidemiologists, and a range of social scientists to make a public case for an idea concisely stated by the American Medical Association in November 2020: "Racism is a threat to public health."[1] While activists and medical historians have long noted inequalities of access and outcomes for patients as well as exploitative conditions for research subjects based on race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, and disability, such a statement by the AMA reflects a shift in public discourse at an organization that has historically worked to entrench such inequalities through its advocacy against universal health care and an elitist approach to medical training.[2] At the moment of this public statement on racism, the intersection of the global pandemic with public activism against police violence created conditions for a reckoning with medical and health institutions' complicity in racially unequal life outcomes, which Ruth Wilson Gilmore centers as racism's production of "group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.". [Extracted from the article] Copyright of American Quarterly is the property of Johns Hopkins University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)