The vulnerability of African Americans to the coronavirus is a national emergency

“THE MOST difficult social problem in the matter of Negro health”, wrote the sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois in 1899, was to understand why so few white Americans were bothered by it. The poor black lives Du Bois described in his pioneering study, “The Philadelphia Negro”, were spent “in the most unhealthy parts of the city and in the worst houses”, with minimal medical attention. They tended to be sickly and short. Yet he could think of “few other cases in the history of civilised peoples where human suffering has been viewed with such peculiar indifference.”

Modern medicine has since transformed the life expectancy of all Americans. But many of the disparities Du Bois observed remain. African-Americans are still the country’s poorest, poorest- housed and unhealthiest large group, with high incidences of asthma, diabetes, hypertension, cancer and obesity. In 1899 infant mortality was almost twice as high among blacks as among whites; now it is 2.2 times higher. If anything, African-American diets are unhealthier now than the rations of milk, bread and fried pork Du Bois described. So-called “food deserts” are a modern phenomenon. The 160,000 people who live in the District of Columbia’s two poorest and overwhelmingly black wards, 7 and 8, east of the polluted Anacostia river, have only three supermarkets. They also have the sparsest health care in the city, with no major hospital.