motherjones--2020-07-09--Black Activists Warn that Facebook Hasn’t Done Enough to Stop Racist Harassment

The short video shows more than a dozen California Highway Patrol officers surrounding a single protester , who is already on the ground .
They are shouting instructions .
While it ’ s hard to make out what they are saying , the person on the ground doesn ’ t appear to resisting .
Then , amidst the throng of cops , at least one officer appears to drop his knees on to the protestor ’ s body .
On June 7 , Khanstoshea Zingapan posted the video , sent to her by someone who witnessed it , on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Black Zebra Productions .
“ This is Sacramento , CA .
This is a CHP officer with a knee on a neck !
Why is this still happening ?
” she wrote .
Zingapan released the video at the height of protests over the death of George Floyd after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes .
Over the course of next day , Zingapan says the video continued to garner views and comments .
But when she woke up on June 9 , Black Zebra Productions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ An email from the company indicated it had been removed for “ posting fraudulent or misleading content.
” Four years ago , Zingapan began releasing documentary footage of her community in Sacramento on Facebook and other social media channels under her artist name , Black Zebra , “ showing my world through the eyes of a black woman in America.
” In one series last year she documented local police ’ s evacuation of a long-standing homeless encampment .
When Floyd ’ s killing sparked protests , Black Zebra Productions became a resource @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Facebook serving as the platform and warehouse for its livestreams .
Zingapan worked out a freelance arrangement with the Sacramento Bee that she hoped would prevent police harassment as she and a crew of volunteers live-streamed protests , were hit by rubber bullets , and choked on tear gas .
Then , in a flash , all their work disappeared .
Despite Facebook ’ s recent proclamations and donations designed to indicate backing for America ’ s swelling anti-racist movement , the company and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg have been targeted by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s appeasement of President Donald Trump , even as he posts misinformation about voting and exhortations to violence .
Meanwhile Facebook is also home to a chorus of Black people who use the site to fight racism but whose own posts and pages are often penalized for calling out bigotry , even as vitriol against them remains on the platform .
What happened to Zingapan , where a Black person ’ s Facebook page is taken down for mysterious reasons , is actually common .
In Zingapan ’ s case , her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the page disappearing , reaching out to local politicians , the Northern California chapter of the ACLU , and Facebook itself .
That afternoon , the company restored the page and all its footage .
Zingapan later met with the heads of multiple Facebook departments , accompanied by a lawyer from the ACLU .
“ I did feel as though they did give me the time to hear my story , ” she said last week .
“ But at the same time , I don ’ t know where that goes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reassurance that this won ’ t happen again .
I don ’ t even know what happened.
” While Zingapan ’ s own interactions with the company left her in the dark for weeks about what triggered the takedown , Facebook told Mother Jones this week that the page had been incorrectly flagged for intellectual property violations .
“ We mistakenly unpublished the Black Zebra page for violating IP policies , ” a Facebook spokesperson said .
“ Once we realized there was no violation , the page was immediately restored .
We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our teams to minimize the chance of it happening again.
” While Facebook uses artificial intelligence to detect intellectual property issues like a video including copyrighted music , users can also report intellectual property violations to Facebook .
To prevent Black Zebra ’ s page from any future unjustified sanctions , Facebook said some of its content will receive more review it if is flagged for IP violations in the future .
This explanation is unsatisfactory to Zingapan ’ s attorney , Abre ’ Conner of the ACLU of Northern California .
Copyright @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outlet like Black Zebra , which live-streams newsworthy events and produces its own documentary footage .
Facebook ’ s own processes suggest that only content presenting potential intellectual property violations should be taken down , warning that broader removals of entire pages should be reserved for repeat offenders .
“ Although Facebook has recently given us that [ intellectual property ] response , it ’ s unclear whether we have all of the information , ” Conner said .
“ We asked basic questions to get a better sense of what that meant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but for now , we are left with more questions than answers.
” After learning of Facebook ’ s explanation , Zingapan stressed that she still is not sure the company offers a “ safe place and platform ” for Black users like herself .
“ We ’ ve outlined the problem .
And now it ’ s time for Facebook to actually state some solutions.
” Zingapan isn ’ t the first activist or Facebook user granted a meeting with the company after feeling abused and underserved by the platform .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Jewish community and women ’ s groups complained to Facebook about harassment on the platform and the spread of hate , making the first of many journeys to Menlo Park to warn Facebook about the growing problem of hate speech on its platform .
And in February 2016 , company representatives met with five activists representing the Black Lives Matter movement and racial justice organizations .
While Facebook had become a valuable organizing and messaging tool for the movement , the organizers complained about constant hate on the platform—violent threats and images @ @ @ @ @ @ @ activists have warned that hate speech leads to doxxing , stalking , and other real life harms .
Making matters worse , Facebook sometimes blocked BLM activists ’ and groups ’ pages for no apparent reason or for minor infractions of the company ’ s then-opaque content policies .
( Facebook did not release its community standards enforcement policies until 2018 . )
“ It felt like an obligatory meeting where Facebook told us , in very nice words , that they really couldn ’ t do anything to help us , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then-communications director for the Black Lives Matter Global Network , told Mother Jones last year .
Despite the intervening years , what Zingapan shared with Facebook last month sounds familiar .
“ You ’ re blocking us but on our posts , ” she recalled explaining , “ whites supremacists…are coming after us , like physically coming after us , trying to find out where our locations are.
” Zingapan and supporters who follow her page constantly flag racist comments on Black Zebra ’ s videos and livestreams .
“ I ’ m @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I do things because the platform that I ’ m on is not providing me the safety that I need , ” she says .
Racial justice groups have spent years and countless meetings with Facebook trying to get it to take Black Lives Matter and the rights of minority groups seriously .
They pushed for a civil rights audit that has led to some new policies , including on voter suppression , but that have so far proven insufficient in curbing disinformation and hate .
The final audit report , released Wednesday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made policy improvements around hate , its enforcement is uneven and over-reliant on predictive technology—even as the company has struggled to fully understand the biases in its own algorithms .
After 2017 ’ s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville , Virginia , Facebook removed many hate groups and racist accounts , though others remain .
The white nationalist “ boogaloo ” movement that found a home on Facebook is only now , after two members allegedly murdered at least one law enforcement officer in an attempt to start a race war , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the best way to get Facebook to take action against discrimination has been to take the company to court .
Now , as the Black Lives Matter movement gains momentum , activists want more from Facebook than donations to racial justice groups and words of support .
While Facebook says its myriad meetings on hate speech have persuaded the company to do more on the issue , including piloting programs to improve hate speech moderation , the initiatives have come too slow for activists who , given the amount of hate on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and more dramatic action .
In June , several civil rights groups formed the Stop Hate for Profit Coalition , urging advertisers to cease spending money on Facebook for the month of July to pressure the platform to take further steps to address hate and misinformation .
More than 1,000 brands have signed on , including Verizon , Coca-Cola , Hershey ’ s , and Unilever .
While Zuckerberg announced modest changes to Facebook ’ s content policies on Friday shortly after the boycott began , the advocates were not placated .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than real steps to address white supremacy on their platform , ” tweeted Rashad Robinson , the president of Color of Change , a racial justice group involved in the effort , after Pepsi signed on .
Among the coalition ’ s 10 demands for Facebook : “ Enable individuals facing severe hate and harassment to connect with a live Facebook employee .
In no other sector does a company not have a way for victims of their product to seek help.
” Despite this sustained pressure from racial justice groups , activists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a battlefield .
As many Black people on Facebook are all too aware , the company ’ s algorithms are very good at taking down content that may discriminate against white people .
In one example , the sentence “ White men are so fragile ” was immediately taken down as hate speech , according to one woman who told her story to USA Today in 2019 .
In fact , saying “ white ” exposes posts or whole pages to the threat of a takedown , which has led to people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The situation means that people of color struggle to discuss racism on a platform whose owner touts it as a haven for free speech and a marketplace of ideas .
Instead , the ideals of free speech mostly serve to protect hatred against people of color .
Tanya Faison , the founder of Black Lives Matter Sacramento , attended the 2016 meeting with Facebook .
“ It ’ s been years now and nothing has happened , ” she told Mother Jones in 2019 .
“ It seems that white folks and men @ @ @ @ @ @ @ women…A lot of racist posts say whatever they want to us.
” “ Their algorithms are off , ” says Conner of the ACLU .
“ People are risking their lives in order to ensure that there is equality for Black people .
And Facebook can really be a part of ensuring that people see that .
But with the algorithms , the way that it is now with proactive tech…it has not been in favor of Black activists and organizers.
” “ People get blocked all the time for just saying the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recently reiterated .
“ It ’ s all still the same.
” Meanwhile , Facebook has allowed threats against Faison and BLM activists to remain up .
In early June , one man whose page appears dedicated to harassing BLM activists , posted a video of Faison with an all-caps message : “ I WOULD LOVE TO WAKE UP TO THE NEWS THAT SOMEONE OFFED THIS EVIL BITCH.
” As one commenter on the BLM Sacramento Facebook page wrote , “ Facebook is so ridiculous .
I reported his page and profile and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ came back as meeting community standards .
HOW ?
What he said about Tanya is basically a death threat.
” It ’ s not clear if Facebook ultimately took any action , but at some point the harasser changed “ offed ” to “ offended.
” The post remains up , and in context , the threat remains clear .
Another post last month by the same harasser read that “ I ’ d like to give a shout out to all the good people that have been making looters disappear and never @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which was followed by an emoji of two beers clinking together , was set against a skull-theme backdrop .
It is still up .
Such threats , coupled with activists ’ own pages and posts coming down or being deleted , “ hinders the work ” of racial justice organizers , Faison says .
“ If they ’ re not able to go on social media , they can ’ t go live when something ’ s happening .
It impacts what we ’ re doing .
It impacts it in a huge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to inform people.
” The number of videos of police brutality that went viral during the first weeks of the protests make it clear that access to social media is , indeed , crucial to such activists .
“ As black folks are continuing to demand justice , and transparency and accountability , Facebook also has a responsibility to not perpetuate a system that has already been really harmful towards black activists , organizers , journalists and media , ” says Conner .
She is helping to lead “ conversations with Facebook , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get to more to the bottom of this and hopefully there will be some positive changes.
” But given the company ’ s track record it ’ s no mystery why some thought a boycott would be a good idea .
After the action ’ s leaders met with Zuckerberg on Tuesday , they came away sounding much like Zingapan .
“ # StopHateForProfit didn ’ t hear anything today to convince us that Zuckerberg and his colleagues are taking action , ” attendee Jessica J. González , co-CEO of the advocacy group @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Instead of committing to a timeline to root out hate and disinformation on Facebook , the company ’ s leaders delivered the same old talking points to try to placate us without meeting our demands.
” The boycott continues .
“ What would this moment look like right now for Black communities in which they ’ re not having to deal with white supremacists ” on social media , asks Steven Renderos , executive director at the group MediaJustice , which has spent years engaging with Facebook over protecting Black users @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the country was dealing with the aftermath of Zuckerberg ’ s decision to leave up a post from Trump glorifying violence against protesters .
“ We would be in a different place in terms of being able to protect and value Black lives in this moment if Facebook took those concerns seriously .
But I think we ’ re at this moment now where we ’ re yet again realizing that they don ’ t care .
”

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The short video shows more than a dozen California Highway Patrol officers surrounding a single protester, who is already on the ground. They are shouting instructions. While it’s hard to make out what they are saying, the person on the ground doesn’t appear to resisting. Then, amidst the throng of cops, at least one officer appears to drop his knees on to the protester’s body.
On June 7, Khanstoshea Zingapan posted the video, sent to her by someone who witnessed the confrontation, on the Facebook page of her documentary video charity, Black Zebra Productions. “This is Sacramento, CA. This is a CHP officer with a knee on a neck! Why is this still happening?” she wrote. Zingapan released the video at the height of protests over the death of George Floyd after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Over the course of next day, Zingapan says the video continued to garner views and comments. But when she woke up on June 9, Black Zebra Productions’ Facebook page been taken down. An email from the company indicated it had been removed for “posting fraudulent or misleading content.”
“They don’t care.”
Four years ago, Zingapan began releasing documentary footage of her community in Sacramento on Facebook and other social media channels under her artist name, Black Zebra, “showing my world through the eyes of a black woman in America.” In one series last year she documented local police’s evacuation of a long-standing homeless encampment. When Floyd’s killing sparked protests, Black Zebra Productions became a resource for the Sacramento activists and residents, with Facebook serving as the platform and warehouse for its livestreams. Zingapan worked out a freelance arrangement with the Sacramento Bee that she hoped would prevent police harassment as she and a crew of volunteers live-streamed protests, were hit by rubber bullets, and choked on tear gas. Then, in a flash, all their work disappeared.
Despite Facebook’s recent proclamations and donations designed to indicate backing for America’s swelling anti-racist movement, the company and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg have been targeted by such activists largely because of the platform’s appeasement of President Donald Trump, even as he posts misinformation about voting and exhortations to violence. Meanwhile Facebook is also home to a chorus of Black people who use the site to fight racism but whose own posts and pages are often penalized for calling out bigotry, even as vitriol against them remains on the platform.
What happened to Zingapan, where a Black person’s Facebook page is taken down for mysterious reasons, is actually common. In Zingapan’s case, her followers had sprung into action within moments of the page disappearing, reaching out to local politicians, the Northern California chapter of the ACLU, and Facebook itself. That afternoon, the company restored the page and all its footage. Zingapan later met with the heads of multiple Facebook departments, accompanied by a lawyer from the ACLU. “I did feel as though they did give me the time to hear my story,” she said last week. “But at the same time, I don’t know where that goes. I don’t have the reassurance that this won’t happen again. I don’t even know what happened.”
While Zingapan’s own interactions with the company left her in the dark for weeks about what triggered the takedown, Facebook told Mother Jones this week that the page had been incorrectly flagged for intellectual property violations. “We mistakenly unpublished the Black Zebra page for violating IP policies,” a Facebook spokesperson said. “Once we realized there was no violation, the page was immediately restored. We take these mistakes seriously and work with our teams to minimize the chance of it happening again.” While Facebook uses artificial intelligence to detect intellectual property issues like a video including copyrighted music, users can also report intellectual property violations to Facebook. To prevent Black Zebra’s page from any future unjustified sanctions, Facebook said some of its content will receive more review it if is flagged for IP violations in the future.
This explanation is unsatisfactory to Zingapan’s attorney, Abre’ Conner of the ACLU of Northern California. Copyright violations are an unlikely problem for an outlet like Black Zebra, which live-streams newsworthy events and produces its own documentary footage. Facebook’s own processes suggest that only content presenting potential intellectual property violations should be taken down, warning that broader removals of entire pages should be reserved for repeat offenders.
“Although Facebook has recently given us that [intellectual property] response, it’s unclear whether we have all of the information,” Conner said. “We asked basic questions to get a better sense of what that meant. We are continuing to have conversations, but for now, we are left with more questions than answers.” After learning of Facebook’s explanation, Zingapan stressed that she still is not sure the company offers a “safe place and platform” for Black users like herself. “We’ve outlined the problem. And now it’s time for Facebook to actually state some solutions.”
Zingapan isn’t the first activist or Facebook user granted a meeting with the company after feeling abused and underserved by the platform. Nearly a decade ago, representatives of the Jewish community and women’s groups complained to Facebook about harassment on the platform and the spread of hate, making the first of many journeys to Menlo Park to warn Facebook about the growing problem of hate speech on its platform. And in February 2016, company representatives met with five activists representing the Black Lives Matter movement and racial justice organizations. While Facebook had become a valuable organizing and messaging tool for the movement, the organizers complained about constant hate on the platform—violent threats and images and racial epithets. For years, activists have warned that hate speech leads to doxxing, stalking, and other real life harms. Making matters worse, Facebook sometimes blocked BLM activists’ and groups’ pages for no apparent reason or for minor infractions of the company’s then-opaque content policies. (Facebook did not release its community standards enforcement policies until 2018.)
“Facebook also has a responsibility to not perpetuate a system that has already been really harmful towards Black activists.”
“It felt like an obligatory meeting where Facebook told us, in very nice words, that they really couldn’t do anything to help us,” Shanelle Matthews, who attended toe 2016 meeting as the then-communications director for the Black Lives Matter Global Network, told Mother Jones last year.
Despite the intervening years, what Zingapan shared with Facebook last month sounds familiar. “You’re blocking us but on our posts,” she recalled explaining, “whites supremacists…are coming after us, like physically coming after us, trying to find out where our locations are.” Zingapan and supporters who follow her page constantly flag racist comments on Black Zebra’s videos and livestreams. “I’m having to reimagine my work and how I do things because the platform that I’m on is not providing me the safety that I need,” she says.
Racial justice groups have spent years and countless meetings with Facebook trying to get it to take Black Lives Matter and the rights of minority groups seriously. They pushed for a civil rights audit that has led to some new policies, including on voter suppression, but that have so far proven insufficient in curbing disinformation and hate. The final audit report, released Wednesday, made clear that while Facebook has made policy improvements around hate, its enforcement is uneven and over-reliant on predictive technology—even as the company has struggled to fully understand the biases in its own algorithms.
After 2017’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Facebook removed many hate groups and racist accounts, though others remain. The white nationalist “boogaloo” movement that found a home on Facebook is only now, after two members allegedly murdered at least one law enforcement officer in an attempt to start a race war, being scrutinized by the platform. Historically, the best way to get Facebook to take action against discrimination has been to take the company to court. Now, as the Black Lives Matter movement gains momentum, activists want more from Facebook than donations to racial justice groups and words of support. While Facebook says its myriad meetings on hate speech have persuaded the company to do more on the issue, including piloting programs to improve hate speech moderation, the initiatives have come too slow for activists who, given the amount of hate on the platform, want to see faster and more dramatic action.
In June, several civil rights groups formed the Stop Hate for Profit Coalition, urging advertisers to cease spending money on Facebook for the month of July to pressure the platform to take further steps to address hate and misinformation. More than 1,000 brands have signed on, including Verizon, Coca-Cola, Hershey’s, and Unilever. While Zuckerberg announced modest changes to Facebook’s content policies on Friday shortly after the boycott began, the advocates were not placated. “We won’t settle for less than real steps to address white supremacy on their platform,” tweeted Rashad Robinson, the president of Color of Change, a racial justice group involved in the effort, after Pepsi signed on. Among the coalition’s 10 demands for Facebook: “Enable individuals facing severe hate and harassment to connect with a live Facebook employee. In no other sector does a company not have a way for victims of their product to seek help.”
People of color struggle to discuss racism on a platform whose owner touts it as a haven for free speech.
Despite this sustained pressure from racial justice groups, activists on the ground still experience the platform as a battlefield. As many Black people on Facebook are all too aware, the company’s algorithms are very good at taking down content that may discriminate against white people. In one example, the sentence “White men are so fragile” was immediately taken down as hate speech, according to one woman who told her story to USA Today in 2019. In fact, saying “white” exposes posts or whole pages to the threat of a takedown, which has led to people misspelling the word to avoid detection. The situation means that people of color struggle to discuss racism on a platform whose owner touts it as a haven for free speech and a marketplace of ideas.
Instead, the ideals of free speech mostly serve to protect hatred against people of color. Tanya Faison, the founder of Black Lives Matter Sacramento, attended the 2016 meeting with Facebook. “It’s been years now and nothing has happened,” she told Mother Jones in 2019. “It seems that white folks and men are protected more than black people and women…A lot of racist posts say whatever they want to us.”
“Their algorithms are off,” says Conner of the ACLU. “People are risking their lives in order to ensure that there is equality for Black people. And Facebook can really be a part of ensuring that people see that. But with the algorithms, the way that it is now with proactive tech…it has not been in favor of Black activists and organizers.”
“People get blocked all the time for just saying the word ‘white,'” Faison recently reiterated. “It’s all still the same.” Meanwhile, Facebook has allowed threats against Faison and other BLM activists to remain up. In early June, one man whose page appears dedicated to harassing BLM activists posted a video of Faison with an all-caps message: “I WOULD LOVE TO WAKE UP TO THE NEWS THAT SOMEONE OFFED THIS EVIL BITCH.” As one commenter on the BLM Sacramento Facebook page wrote, “Facebook is so ridiculous. I reported his page and profile and the crazy posts hes made and everything came back as meeting community standards. HOW? What he said about Tanya is basically a death threat.” It’s not clear if Facebook ultimately took any action, but at some point the harasser changed “offed” to “offended.” The post remains up, and in context, the threat remains clear. Another post last month by the same harasser read that “I’d like to give a shout out to all the good people that have been making looters disappear and never be seen again.” The message, which was followed by an emoji of two beers clinking together, was set against a skull-theme backdrop. It is still up.
Such threats, coupled with activists’ own pages and posts coming down or being deleted, “hinders the work” of racial justice organizers, Faison says. “If they’re not able to go on social media, they can’t go live when something’s happening. It impacts what we’re doing. It impacts it in a huge way because we use social media platforms to inform people.” The number of videos of police brutality that went viral during the first weeks of the protests make it clear that access to social media is, indeed, crucial to such activists.
“The algorithms [have] not been in favor of black activists and organizers.”
“As black folks are continuing to demand justice, and transparency and accountability, Facebook also has a responsibility to not perpetuate a system that has already been really harmful towards black activists, organizers, journalists and media,” says Conner. She is helping to lead “conversations with Facebook,” she says, “trying to get to more to the bottom of this and hopefully there will be some positive changes.”
But given the company’s track record it’s no mystery why some thought a boycott would be a good idea. After the action’s leaders met with Zuckerberg on Tuesday, they came away sounding much like Zingapan. “#StopHateForProfit didn’t hear anything today to convince us that Zuckerberg and his colleagues are taking action,” attendee Jessica J. González, co-CEO of the advocacy group Free Press, said in a statement. “Instead of committing to a timeline to root out hate and disinformation on Facebook, the company’s leaders delivered the same old talking points to try to placate us without meeting our demands.” The boycott continues.
“What would this moment look like right now for Black communities in which they’re not having to deal with white supremacists” on social media, asks Steven Renderos, executive director at the group MediaJustice, which has spent years engaging with Facebook over protecting Black users. Instead, as Renderos spoke, the country was dealing with the aftermath of Zuckerberg’s decision to leave up a post from Trump glorifying violence against protesters. “We would be in a different place in terms of being able to protect and value Black lives in this moment if Facebook took those concerns seriously. But I think we’re at this moment now where we’re yet again realizing that they don’t care.”


motherjones--2020-07-09--By Investing in Pre-K, We Can Create a Generation of Pandemic-Resistant Adults

As the world grapples with the devastation of the coronavirus , one thing is clear : The United States simply wasn ’ t prepared .
Despite repeated warnings from infectious disease experts over the years , we lacked essential beds , equipment , and medication ; public health advice was confusing , and our leadership offered no clear direction while sidelining credible health professionals and institutions .
Infectious disease experts agree that it ’ s only a matter of time before the next pandemic hits , and that could be even more deadly .
So how do we fix what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this Mother Jones series , we ’ re asking experts from a wide range of disciplines one question : What are the most important steps we can take to make sure we ’ re better prepared next time around ?
David R. Williams has dedicated his career to studying how racial and economic inequality makes societies sicker .
The chair of the department of social and behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H .
Chan School of Public Health , he was among the first to study how the stress that Black people experience @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to chronic conditions such as heart disease , diabetes , and high blood pressure—all of which are thought to be part of the reason that COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted communities of color .
In addition to his academic work , Williams has served as a director for Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ’ s Commission to Build a Healthier America , which aims to eliminate racial and socioeconomic gaps in health .
On why COVID-19 is ravaging Black communities : COVID-19 has not created racial disparities in health .
It has just been a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have existed for 100 years .
The pattern we observe for COVID-19 exists for most of the leading causes of death in the United States .
The same pattern is true for heart disease , for cancer , for stroke , for diabetes , for obesity .
So for those of us who work in the field , we don ’ t see anything surprising about COVID-19 .
The question becomes why : Why has COVID-19 hurt African American communities so badly ?
The first point I will make is that the African @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the African American community is markedly disadvantaged economically .
Most Americans think that we have achieved greater equality in economic status in the United States by race than we actually have .
If I look at a 2019 report from the US Census Bureau , which provides median household income by race in the United States for the year 2018 , for every dollar of household income white households receive , Black households received 59 cents .
What says a ton about that 59 cents figure is that is identical to the Black-white @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was the peak year of the narrowing of the Black-white gap in income as a result of the civil rights movement and policies against the war and poverty of the 60s and 70s .
I ’ m saying in 2018 , we are exactly where we were in 1978 .
Most of my students think we have made much more economic progress in the United States than that .
But the income gap understates the real gap in economic circumstances and economic resources for the African American community .
The latest Federal Reserve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that for every dollar of wealth that white households have , Black households have 10 pennies and Latino households have 12 pennies .
That means that many people of color are one paycheck away from being homeless .
When you have no wealth , you have no economic reserves , and you can not cushion shortfalls of income .
Because many people of color are working low-income , non-salaried jobs with unpredictable , unstable hours , they have higher levels of exposure .
Many communities of color are overrepresented in what we ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ building maintenance staff , grocery store employees—they have to keep working .
They can ’ t take the preventive actions that have been recommended to us by the state and others .
On how segregated neighborhoods make people sicker : So where do these large racial , ethnic gaps in income and wealth come from ?
Is it that African Americans are just lazy ?
Is it that they they ’ re not working hard enough ?
Is it that they ’ re not saving hard enough ?
That ’ s where residential @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and think about it for a second , for the average American , the way you live determines where you go to school .
It determines the quality of education you receive and your preparation for higher education .
It determines your access to employment opportunities .
It determines the quality of housing and neighborhood environments .
It determines whether it ’ s easy or difficult to exercise in your neighborhood , and whether it ’ s safe to exercise in your neighborhood .
It determines whether you have access to affordable , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ determines the quality of city services .
It determines access to medical care .
So across the board , place is a powerful predictor of health and a powerful predictor of economic status .
Harvard economist Raj Chetty looked at the intergenerational transfer of socioeconomic mobility in the United States .
In different cities across the United States , he ’ s compared Blacks and whites who start out at the same level of family income , and looks at what happens to those children who start out with their families at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that in 99 % of census tracts in the United States , Black boys who start out at the same level of income as their white counterparts are doing worse , with markedly lower incomes in the next generation .
Dolores Acevedo-Garcia is a public health colleague at Brandeis who has created a child neighborhood opportunity index for the United States .
She ’ s looking at the degree of opportunity , the quality of schools , the quality of early childhood centers , the percent of residents with high skilled jobs or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ homeownership level , of public assistance , air quality , water quality , hazardous waste sites .
Then she looks at other resources like green space , healthy food outlets , and walkability .
She found that two-thirds of all Black kids and about 60 percent of all Latino kids are growing up in low-opportunity neighborhoods , compared to about one in five white and Asian kids .
If you look at the flip side , two-thirds of white and Asian kids reside in high opportunity neighborhoods .
The stark economic differences we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not random events that didn ’ t just happen .
They reflect the successful implementation of social policy .
On why Black people need herd immunity against chronic conditions : The most vulnerable are people who have what we call co-morbidities .
People who have high blood pressure .
People who are obese .
People who have diabetes .
For all of these conditions , African Americans get them at markedly younger ages .
And the question is why ?
My colleague Lisa Cooper and I published an editorial in the Journal of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about creating a new kind of herd immunity .
We have to look at disadvantaged populations and change the social and economic conditions that put them at high risk for disease—so when the next infectious disease comes , they are stronger because they are no longer exposed to the conditions that drive illness in the first place .
We know that people who live under bad economic conditions in highly segregated areas and in poor neighborhoods in the United States experience higher levels of stress .
They experience higher levels of economic stress—difficulty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the month—but they also experience higher levels of psychosocial stressors , like the death of a loved one or unemployment .
They also experience higher levels of physiochemical stressors .
It hasn ’ t gotten a lot of attention , but at least one study by colleagues at Harvard found that people who live in areas have high air pollution in the United States at higher risk of getting COVID-19 .
And if they get COVID-19 , it ’ s more severe .
Then , there is the added layer of stress from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have developed something called the everyday discrimination scale .
It doesn ’ t capture the big things , like being stopped , physically threatened , and abused by the police—I have another measure that captures that—but the everyday discrimination scale just captures little indignities .
You receive poor service at restaurants and stores .
People act as if they think you are not smart .
They are afraid of you , or they think you are dishonest .
Little indignities .
People who score high on that scale have higher rates of heart @ @ @ @ @ @ @ higher blood pressure .
They have higher rates of mental disorders , early onset of breast cancer , higher levels of obesity .
Some researchers argue because of all of this cumulative level of stress , African Americans are literally aging physiologically , biologically , more rapidly than whites .
So you can look at a Black and white person , both age 50 .
Physiologically , the African American in some studies is seven and a half to 10 years older than his white counterpart .
Why ?
Because your age not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
When you live in bad environmental conditions , your age is also capturing how long you ’ ve been exposed to those conditions , and how physiologically compromised and dysregulated the biological systems of your body have become as a result of those exposures .
And that ’ s why Blacks have high blood pressure and heart disease and diabetes and kidney disease at younger ages .
You go across the major chronic conditions , they have them all at younger ages .
On why we need a Marshall Plan for disadvantaged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need for a Marshall Plan for disadvantaged communities in the United States .
We can make investments to create healthier homes and healthier neighborhoods .
We can provide ladders of opportunity in terms of high quality , preschool education , high quality education , access to job skills that can make you competitive in the labor market so you can take care of your family .
Public Health people use the fancy language of the social determinants of health .
If we change the underlying conditions , we will , in fact , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ give you one example , the Abecedarian Project in Chapel Hill , North Carolina , took poor children , 80 percent African American , and randomized them in an early childhood program .
They went to this program birth through age five , and they received high quality , nutrition , medical care , intellectual stimulation .
They ’ ve now been followed to their mid 30s .
Those who got the program compared to the control group had markedly lower cardiometabolic risk .
Looking at their blood pressure looking at the obesity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heart disease , they ’ re doing a whole lot better .
An earlier study like this in Ypsilanti , Michigan , looked at an African American public housing project .
Teachers intervened with them at age three and four , before they went to school .
They ’ ve now been followed for 40 years .
Those who got the intervention controls compared to a control group had higher education , higher income , higher savings in their 40s .
Higher rates of marriage , less involvement with the criminal justice system @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the social service system over the lifetime .
For every dollar invested is a $ 17 return to society .
We have randomized controlled trials , the gold standard of scientific research that tells us these kinds of initiatives work to produce greater economic productivity .
They work to produce better health , they are good for the economy , they save society money .
Why aren ’ t we doing more of it ?
Public health researchers Thomas LaVeist and Darrell Gaskin at Hopkins calculated that racial inequalities and health cost the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year .
Part of that is the extra cost of the higher rates of illness .
But the biggest part of that is a loss of productivity .
We are wasting the productive capacity of the United States by allowing these disparities to persist and leaving these communities without access to economic opportunity .
This interview has been edited for length and clarity .

As the world grapples with the devastation of the coronavirus, one thing is clear: The United States simply wasn’t prepared. Despite repeated warnings from infectious disease experts over the years, we lacked essential beds, equipment, and medication; public health advice was confusing, and our leadership offered no clear direction while sidelining credible health professionals and institutions. Infectious disease experts agree that it’s only a matter of time before the next pandemic hits, and that could be even more deadly. So how do we fix what COVID has shown was broken? In this Mother Jones series, we’re asking experts from a wide range of disciplines one question: What are the most important steps we can take to make sure we’re better prepared next time around?
David R. Williams has dedicated his career to studying how racial and economic inequality makes societies sicker. The chair of the department of social and behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, he was among the first to study how the stress that Black people experience from racial discrimination makes them more vulnerable to chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure—all of which are thought to be part of the reason that COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted communities of color. In addition to his academic work, Williams has served as a director for Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Commission to Build a Healthier America, which aims to eliminate racial and socioeconomic gaps in health.
On why COVID-19 is ravaging Black communities: COVID-19 has not created racial disparities in health. It has just been a magnifying glass, highlighting racial disparities that have existed for 100 years. The pattern we observe for COVID-19 exists for most of the leading causes of death in the United States. The same pattern is true for heart disease, for cancer, for stroke, for diabetes, for obesity. So for those of us who work in the field, we don’t see anything surprising about COVID-19. The question becomes why: Why has COVID-19 hurt African American communities so badly?
The first point I will make is that the African American community is being hurt badly because the African American community is markedly disadvantaged economically. Most Americans think that we have achieved greater equality in economic status in the United States by race than we actually have. If I look at a 2019 report from the US Census Bureau, which provides median household income by race in the United States for the year 2018, for every dollar of household income white households receive, Black households received 59 cents. What says a ton about that 59 cents figure is that is identical to the Black-white gap in income in 1978, which was the peak year of the narrowing of the Black-white gap in income as a result of the civil rights movement and policies against the war and poverty of the 60s and 70s. I’m saying in 2018, we are exactly where we were in 1978. Most of my students think we have made much more economic progress in the United States than that.
But the income gap understates the real gap in economic circumstances and economic resources for the African American community. The latest Federal Reserve Board data on race and wealth says that for every dollar of wealth that white households have, Black households have 10 pennies and Latino households have 12 pennies. That means that many people of color are one paycheck away from being homeless. When you have no wealth, you have no economic reserves, and you cannot cushion shortfalls of income.
Because many people of color are working low-income, non-salaried jobs with unpredictable, unstable hours, they have higher levels of exposure. Many communities of color are overrepresented in what we’re calling the essential workers—transit workers, building maintenance staff, grocery store employees—they have to keep working. They can’t take the preventive actions that have been recommended to us by the state and others.
On how segregated neighborhoods make people sicker: So where do these large racial, ethnic gaps in income and wealth come from? Is it that African Americans are just lazy? Is it that they they’re not working hard enough? Is it that they’re not saving hard enough? That’s where residential segregation comes in. If you stop and think about it for a second, for the average American, the way you live determines where you go to school. It determines the quality of education you receive and your preparation for higher education. It determines your access to employment opportunities. It determines the quality of housing and neighborhood environments. It determines whether it’s easy or difficult to exercise in your neighborhood, and whether it’s safe to exercise in your neighborhood. It determines whether you have access to affordable, high quality, nutritious food. It determines the quality of city services. It determines access to medical care. So across the board, place is a powerful predictor of health and a powerful predictor of economic status.
Harvard economist Raj Chetty looked at the intergenerational transfer of socioeconomic mobility in the United States. In different cities across the United States, he’s compared Blacks and whites who start out at the same level of family income, and looks at what happens to those children who start out with their families at the same level of income. He finds that in 99% of census tracts in the United States, Black boys who start out at the same level of income as their white counterparts are doing worse, with markedly lower incomes in the next generation.
Dolores Acevedo-Garcia is a public health colleague at Brandeis who has created a child neighborhood opportunity index for the United States. She’s looking at the degree of opportunity, the quality of schools, the quality of early childhood centers, the percent of residents with high skilled jobs or high school education, the level of homeownership level, of public assistance, air quality, water quality, hazardous waste sites. Then she looks at other resources like green space, healthy food outlets, and walkability. She found that two-thirds of all Black kids and about 60 percent of all Latino kids are growing up in low-opportunity neighborhoods, compared to about one in five white and Asian kids. If you look at the flip side, two-thirds of white and Asian kids reside in high opportunity neighborhoods. The stark economic differences we see are not acts of God are not random events that didn’t just happen. They reflect the successful implementation of social policy.
The stark economic differences we see are not acts of God are not random events that didn’t just happen. They reflect the successful implementation of social policy.
On why Black people need herd immunity against chronic conditions: The most vulnerable are people who have what we call co-morbidities. People who have high blood pressure. People who are obese. People who have diabetes. For all of these conditions, African Americans get them at markedly younger ages. And the question is why? My colleague Lisa Cooper and I published an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association where we talked about creating a new kind of herd immunity. We have to look at disadvantaged populations and change the social and economic conditions that put them at high risk for disease—so when the next infectious disease comes, they are stronger because they are no longer exposed to the conditions that drive illness in the first place.
We know that people who live under bad economic conditions in highly segregated areas and in poor neighborhoods in the United States experience higher levels of stress. They experience higher levels of economic stress—difficulty making ends meet at the end of the month—but they also experience higher levels of psychosocial stressors, like the death of a loved one or unemployment.
They also experience higher levels of physiochemical stressors. It hasn’t gotten a lot of attention, but at least one study by colleagues at Harvard found that people who live in areas have high air pollution in the United States at higher risk of getting COVID-19. And if they get COVID-19, it’s more severe.
Then, there is the added layer of stress from discrimination. Over the years, I have developed something called the everyday discrimination scale. It doesn’t capture the big things, like being stopped, physically threatened, and abused by the police—I have another measure that captures that—but the everyday discrimination scale just captures little indignities. You receive poor service at restaurants and stores. People act as if they think you are not smart. They are afraid of you, or they think you are dishonest. Little indignities. People who score high on that scale have higher rates of heart disease, early onset of diabetes, higher blood pressure. They have higher rates of mental disorders, early onset of breast cancer, higher levels of obesity.
Some researchers argue because of all of this cumulative level of stress, African Americans are literally aging physiologically biologically more rapidly than whites.
Some researchers argue because of all of this cumulative level of stress, African Americans are literally aging physiologically, biologically, more rapidly than whites. So you can look at a Black and white person, both age 50. Physiologically, the African American in some studies is seven and a half to 10 years older than his white counterpart. Why? Because your age not only captures how long you have lived. When you live in bad environmental conditions, your age is also capturing how long you’ve been exposed to those conditions, and how physiologically compromised and dysregulated the biological systems of your body have become as a result of those exposures. And that’s why Blacks have high blood pressure and heart disease and diabetes and kidney disease at younger ages. You go across the major chronic conditions, they have them all at younger ages.
On why we need a Marshall Plan for disadvantaged communities. I sometimes talk about the need for a Marshall Plan for disadvantaged communities in the United States. We can make investments to create healthier homes and healthier neighborhoods. We can provide ladders of opportunity in terms of high quality, preschool education, high quality education, access to job skills that can make you competitive in the labor market so you can take care of your family. Public Health people use the fancy language of the social determinants of health. If we change the underlying conditions, we will, in fact, dramatically improve health. I’ll give you one example, the Abecedarian Project in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, took poor children, 80 percent African American, and randomized them in an early childhood program. They went to this program birth through age five, and they received high quality, nutrition, medical care, intellectual stimulation. They’ve now been followed to their mid 30s. Those who got the program compared to the control group had markedly lower cardiometabolic risk. Looking at their blood pressure looking at the obesity levels, looking at other markers of heart disease, they’re doing a whole lot better.
An earlier study like this in Ypsilanti, Michigan, looked at an African American public housing project. Teachers intervened with them at age three and four, before they went to school. They’ve now been followed for 40 years. Those who got the intervention controls compared to a control group had higher education, higher income, higher savings in their 40s. Higher rates of marriage, less involvement with the criminal justice system over the lifetime, less involvement in the social service system over the lifetime. For every dollar invested is a $17 return to society. We have randomized controlled trials, the gold standard of scientific research that tells us these kinds of initiatives work to produce greater economic productivity. They work to produce better health, they are good for the economy, they save society money. Why aren’t we doing more of it?
Public health researchers Thomas LaVeist and Darrell Gaskin at Hopkins calculated that racial inequalities and health cost the US economy over $300 million a year. Part of that is the extra cost of the higher rates of illness. But the biggest part of that is a loss of productivity. We are wasting the productive capacity of the United States by allowing these disparities to persist and leaving these communities without access to economic opportunity.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.