America has already experienced this kind of racism

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Riot Sweeps Chicago should sound and feel intuitively familiar. However, this headline made headlines over a hundred years ago. Named the Red Summer of 1919, a wave of violence and bloodshed occurred from April to November 1919 with riots, lynchings and mobs across the country. Hundreds of African American lives have been claimed and hundreds more have been maimed and homeless. The most violent episodes occurred in Chicago, IL, Washington, DC and Elaine, AR and were the forerunners of what many are now learning to be the Black Wall Street Massacre in Tulsa.

Meaning the red summer, Eugene Williams, an African-American teenager, violated the unofficial segregation of a Chicago beach, then was stoned by a man, who was part of a white mob, and then drowned. The terrorizing racism that followed sparked one of the longest and bloodiest race riots ever in the country. As today, these racist incidents that have attracted national and international attention occurred in the wake of a flu pandemic of 1918.

Fast forward to a century later, the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd and the protest demonstrations witnessed by millions of people, as well as the insurgency of 2021, all reflect a place we have already seen in this country. It appears that syndemics, or rather the aggregation of multiple epidemics (e.g., coronavirus, police brutality), followed by racial violence are the strands that make up the DNA of the Americas.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd has drawn global attention to police brutality and systemic racism in the United States. Despite social distancing recommendations, protesters wearing Black Lives Matter masks flooded streets around the world in a 2020 racial calculation summer. From late May to late June 2020, an estimated 20 million people in the United States have participated in protests over the death of George Floyd, as well as Breonna Taylor, another black body, among many others, perceived to be targeted and killed in a discriminatory manner by the police.

Following the murder of George Floyd, systemic racism has finally been labeled by many a public health crisis. It was for a good reason. Structural racism also reinforces and informs policies in the United States that perpetuate racial disparities in health outcomes, inequalities in determinants of health, such as housing, education, and health care, as well as through through police discriminatory against African Americans. Beyond death from police violence, research has shown that this type of violence also contributes to negative health effects, such as psychological stress leading to stroke or accelerated aging.

In order to fundamentally address the race-based health disparities of COVID-19 and so many other conditions that disproportionately worsen the health of African Americans, we must move beyond the person-centered approach and stop pushing policies that blame the sick and reward the healthy. . Health policies must, now more than ever, reflect the role of social determinants, or rather the conditions (e.g. access to health care, affordable housing, employment) that influence and shape disease risks. for individuals and populations, as well as the racism that saturates politics with these determinants. Once the magnitude of these determinants is fully appreciated, health policy strategies and solutions imbued with an ecological model that aims to understand the multiple and interactive determinants of health behaviors at multiple levels. [(interpersonal (e.g., family), organizational (e.g., workplace), community (e.g., neighborhood), public policy (e.g., state laws)] Beyond the individual can then begin to address issues of health inequity that were present long before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But social change must extend beyond health care. To transform and reorient this country into an anti-racist society, or one that ensures equity and justice for all by consciously combating racism at the individual and institutional levels, the question, of Dr Ibram X. Kendi, is what does not go with the policies? must be requested and followed up with action. From U.S. businesses and small businesses to institutions and nonprofits, executives and stakeholders at all levels should aim to address the following issues:

Confront racist ideologies, including one’s own, with the highest level of intolerance Create programs, measures and accountability systems for anti-racist policies Develop a systematic approach to assess and monitor the cultural climate Promote education and dialogue on racism, its causes and effects Apply intersectionality to understand interrelated systems of discrimination Commit to identifying and dismantling racial inequalities and disparities Use your position of power to advocate for anti-racist practices and policies

Today many people think pandemics and protests have never come together uniquely in this country, but they would be wrong. We have been here before. The question is, what will happen now to prevent history from repeating itself in the decades to come. For this moment not to be just fleeting, recognizing the impacts of historical and contemporary racism and doing little to change policies, the above recommendations must be strongly taken into account to achieve an anti-racist society and undo the damage of discrimination. racial.

Jennifer D. Roberts is Assistant Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at the School of Public Health at the University of Maryland College Park (UMD) and Founder and Director of the Public Health Outcomes and Effects of the Built Environment (PHOEBE) laboratory. Her fellowship focuses on the impact of built, social and natural environments, including institutional and structural inequalities of these environments, on the public health outcomes of marginalized communities.

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