Excerpt
September 24, 2020, Paper: "In the wake of the brutal police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May 2020, cities and counties across the USA came out to declare that racism is a ‘public health emergency’. Needless to point out, systemic racism has existed for over 400 years in America. The crisis sparked by George Floyd’s murder illustrates the point that it takes a shock to the system to bring about broader acknowledgment of the daily realities lived by a whole segment of the population. Indeed, ignorance of the existence of systemic racism (a.k.a. White privilege) is what enables stark inequalities to fester. Likewise, health inequalities have been evident since the beginning of public record keeping—q.v. Villermé’s tabulations of mortality rates by income (1782–1863).1 The Covid-19 pandemic just happens to be latest crisis that has brought renewed attention to the existence of health inequalities."
Non-HKS Harvard Author Website - Ichiro Kawachi