WASHINGTON: Former US president Barack Obama has highlighted how Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, has had a disproportionate impact on America’s black communities.

Obama raised the issue in virtual commencement addresses to students of historically black colleges and universities on Saturday evening. The students in the US are under lockdown because of the Covid-19 pandemic which has killed more than 90,000 people across the country.

“Let’s be honest, a disease like this just spotlights the underlying inequalities and extra burdens that black communities have historically had to deal with in this country,” he said.

“We see it in the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on our communities, just as we see it when a black man goes for a jog, and some folks feel like they can stop and question and shoot him if he doesn’t submit to their questioning,” he added.

This was a reference to the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old African-American, who was shot and killed in Georgia on Feb 23 while out on a jog.

Statistics released by a US think tank, APM Research Lab, this week show that Covid-19 mortality rate for Black Americans is indeed 2.2 times higher than the rate for Latinos, 2.3 times higher than the rate for Asians and 2.6 times higher than the rate for Whites.

The data show that for each 100,000 Americans, 42.8 Blacks have died, along with about 18.4 Asians, 19.1 Latinos and 16.6 Whites. The report pointed out that Black Americans’ Covid-19 mortality across the US had never fallen below twice that of all other groups, “revealing a durable and undeniable pattern of disproportionality”.

As early as April 1, The Atlantic magazine urged Americans to “stop looking away from the race of Covid-19 victims”, noting that in Illinois, African Americans make up 14.6 per cent of the state population, but 28 per cent of confirmed cases of Covid-19.

Published in Dawn, May 18th, 2020