Rally for representation in science and research: COVID-19 and CDC.
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Happy Sunday, and welcome to another conversation on race and COVID-19. This week we look at how representation internally can influence how companies respond to external challenges.
Two weeks ago, we highlighted the impact of COVID-19 on the Navajo nation and linked to a mutual aid fundraiser to support in the Bodaway / Gap area. Within 48 hours of that email, the fundraiser raised $15,000 thanks to 462 donors, helping the community reach its initial goal! Thank you to all that support – and remember, your contributions to anti-racism efforts may feel small, but ladder up to comprehensive change when we all do it together.
We're looking for voices interested in supporting upcoming stories: racism against Asian Americans during COVID-19, racism on college campuses, and perspectives from those that identify as white-passing and/or mixed race. Share your story on our submissions page.
If you haven't already, consider supporting this work with a one-time or monthly contribution. You can give via our website, PayPal or Venmo (@nicoleacardoza), or give $5/month on Patreon.
Nicole
TAKE ACTION
1. Explore the racial disparities of COVID-19 using the data from the NYTimes. U.S. residents only.
2. Reflect on your workplace and consider the following:
How would your work change if you had a more diverse staff?
What voices are missing from the team you're a part of?
What implicit biases might you harbor in your work? How would representation on your team help to counter them?
GET EDUCATED
We've already discussed how few insights on the racial disparities of COVID-19 prevented local government officials and communities from taking equitable action to protect people of color. But the conversation on representation by the CDC is also happening internally at their offices. Last week, over 1,200 employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signed a letter calling for the federal agency to address "ongoing and recurring acts of racism and discrimination" (NPR).
The letter outlines how employees perceive the CDC's lackluster efforts to hire, retain, and elevate Black and other people of color at the organization. At the time, Black employees represent only 10% of senior leadership. Hundreds of Equal Employment Opportunity complaints have been filed by Black employees over the years, many are still unresolved, and other qualitative stories demonstrate an "old boy/girl network" of racial microaggressions and discouraging Black staff to move up the ranks (NPR).
Demands for action within major companies are happening everywhere these days, spurred by the momentum of the protests. And the conversations are trending in the fields of science and research. The #BlackintheIvory hashtag on Twitter, sparked by Shardé Davis and Joy Melody Woods, documents the experiences of Black people being discriminated against in academia (Twitter). By early June, more than 5,750 accounts on Twitter had used the hashtag to discuss their experiences working in the ‘ivory tower,' a metaphor used to describe academia’s disproportionately white elite institutions. Others were sparked to #Strike4BlackLives and #ShutDownSTEM on June 10th by taking a day off to honor the contributions Black academics (Nature).
These actions are important as we analyze the role major institutions play in upholding systemic racism, the same inquiry that prompted our Sunday series on COVID-19 (so meta). As we watch our country struggle with another wave of COVID-19, many officials are quick to blame the actions of individuals. And certainly, we need to hold all of us more accountable for wearing masks and practicing safe social distancing habits. But the narrow focus on people may distract from the institutional harm that perpetuates the disproportionate impact of COVID-19, articulated brilliantly over at The Verge.
But the calls for equity at the CDC are particularly timely because of its influence on the narrative of the disproportionate impact of COVID-19. The CDC was slow to capture and report data on COVID-19 across racial groups. Congress required the organization to send its first report on the subject in May, but it was only four pages long, much of it copied and pasted from existing resources on the CDC website (read the full criticism from U.S. Senator Patty Murray). A follow-up report from June was also considered woefully inadequate for the issues at hand (NPR).
Two weeks ago, conversations about the racial disparities of COVID-19 surged again when the NYTimes published the most comprehensive set of federal data on the pandemic. These insights, which represent data from 1.5 million COVID-19 patients, paint a more dire picture than we knew previously: that Latino and African American residents of the United States are 3x as likely to become infected as their white neighbors, and nearly twice as likely to die (NYTimes). It offers breakdowns in cities and states, urban v. rural living, and other identifying data to further illustrate disparities locally. It's important to note that this NYTimes report does not cover conversations on all racial identities equitably.
It would be one thing if the CDC published this data, but that's not the case. In fact, the NYTimes sued the CDC to release this data (NYTimes). Specifically, the NYTimes filed a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA lawsuit, a complicated legal process of going to court to challenge the government’s refusal to release materials that the public should see. (You can read more about the process on the NYTimes, and the history of the FOIA law itself on Yale Law).
It's unclear to me why this data, which only represents cases through the end of May, wasn't released in full sooner. But even the data set itself is incomplete; hundreds of thousands of cases – 48% of cases and 9% of deaths – are still missing racial, ethnic, and geographical details (NYTimes). Although this data can be used to more accurately inform local leaders and guide a more equitable form of response, it's still missing more accuracy that can help prepare us as we descend into a second wave of outbreaks.
The authors of the CDC letter put it simply: the lack of acknowledgment about the racial disparities internally at the CDC affect how the agency has responded to health issues externally. By stifling voices of Black leaders, it's minimized their calls to address racism as a public health crisis. And by failing to hire diverse staff, it misses the perspectives they can bring on health crises in their own communities (NPR). It's a pressing and urgent example of how important it is for institutions and workplaces – whether in health, science, academic, journalism, or elsewhere – to truly reflect the diversity of the communities they aim to serve.
“Failing to address racism as a fundamental cause of health disparities is a key reason why we have witnessed little progress in reducing many of these disparities in the United States over the past 50 years”.
CDC Employee Letter to Address Workplace Racism and Discrimination, via NPR
The letter, which you can read in full here, calls for the CDC to make sweeping changes internally, including actions like diversifying senior leadership, addressing racism in the CDC's culture, expand internship and fellowship opportunities to students at historically Black colleges and universities, and adopt mandatory implicit bias training. In addition, it urges the CDC to publicly declare racism as a public health crisis in the U.S., a stance that dozens of cities and at least three states (Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin) have taken to fuel political and social changes to close the wellbeing gap (Pew Trust).
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The CDC has been challenged for how it's reported on the racial disparities of COVID-19
The CDC has also been challenged for racial aggressions and discrimination internally in a open letter signed by over 1,200 employees
The NYTimes sued the CDC to release a comprehensive dataset on the racial disparities of COVID-19
Lack of representation internally can affect how institutions operate externally
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