By Edward Luce

May 29, 2020 "Information Clearing House" -   Imagine a group of black men in paramilitary gear with semi-automatic rifles moving towards a US state capitol building. Their chances of reaching the steps without a police stand-off — or worse — would be tiny. Yet every few days white protesters do just that. They often enter the building armed but unchallenged. Nothing brings into sharper relief America’s colour disparities than life and death in the great lockdown.

The coronavirus outbreak is exacerbating them. There are two sides to the Jim Crow-like reality of America’s pandemic. The first is your chance of dying. In Michigan, where armed protesters gather weekly in the state capital Lansing, African Americans account for 40 per cent of coronavirus deaths but only 13.6 per cent of its population. There is no disaggregation of national race statistics. But the states worst-hit by the virus — New York, Georgia, Louisiana and New Jersey — have similar disparities.

Much of it reflects divisions of labour. Black and Hispanic Americans are far likelier to work in essential jobs than whites. Every day a trickle of service people pass my door in Washington DC — trash collectors, delivery people and postal workers. Eight out of 10 are black. The others are Hispanic. They are also more likely to live in cities. Majority white Louisiana’s deaths largely come from mostly black New Orleans. The same for Michigan and Detroit. Or Georgia and Atlanta. It also reflects poverty, because African-Americans and Hispanics are likelier to be poor, and they are more prone to “comorbidities” such as diabetes and hypertension, which makes them more susceptible to the virus. 

The other concentrated sites of US outbreaks are meat processing plants in states such as Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. The large majority of their workers are Hispanic. Polls show that about two-thirds of Americans do not want the lockdown to end before scientists say it is safe. Of the remaining third who want to reopen now, 5 per cent are black Americans who have lost their jobs. Seventy per cent are white Americans who are still employed. That division tells a thousand tales. The headline is that non-whites feel the pathogen’s threat far more viscerally than whites.