Open Letter from the Campaign Against Racism on Racial Capitalism in a Pandemic
Across diverse contexts, COVID-19 is a disease whose impact is predictable and patterned by racial capitalism resulting in medical apartheid. The global impact of COVID-19 reveals differences in opportunity, exposure, and resources.(1),(2) Racial capitalism is a system of structuring economic power based on racism. Racism is a system of structuring opportunity and assigning value based on how one looks which unfairly disadvantages some and advantages others while sapping the strength of society as a whole. (3) The capitalist emphasis on labour and productivity creates a corrupt necropolitical system that determines who lives and who dies. For those living under racial capitalism and working to dismantle it, COVID-19 is elevating the truth: our present is rooted in a history of economic exploitation and continuous and historical genocide.(4),(5)
Global societal structures disadvantage Black, indigenous, and people of colour (BIPOC) communities through inadequate housing, racist medicine, a high likelihood of being a frontline low-paid worker, and more.(6) It is predictable that BIPOC communities would be more exposed and less protected from COVID-19 globally. Prior to the current pandemic and understanding the need to protect BIPOC communities, Equal Health launched the Campaign Against Racism (CAR) in 2018 in partnership with Dr. Camara Jones as part of the Anti-Racism Collaborative. This global movement is founded on the belief that the power and positionality that comes with being a health worker must be used to document, organize, and radically reimagine what the health of BIPOC communities could be without the daily suffocation of racial capitalism.
In addition to building consciousness of racial capitalism throughout CAR’s 24 chapters across ten countries, we have moved to strengthen our visionary organizing. Chapters push organizing frameworks to pinpoint the history of the construction of racial capitalism, to change hegemonic narratives, while believing that another world rooted in collective liberation is possible.
CAR’s Haiti chapter organizes around the origins of racial capitalism through understanding colonization. The Haiti chapter recognizes centuries of exploitation from recent American occupation and Europeans falsely claiming the discovery of the island — both of which ensured that Black Haitians would become a labouring underclass. Haiti has been divided, drowned in a sphere of dependence, and deprived of their resources.(7),(8) Our Uganda Chapter’s political education is rooted(9) in learning about how centuries of slavery and colonialization robbed Africa of its resources, culture, values, and wealth, to sustain white supremacy and to continue economic exploitation into the post-colonial era.
Our Brazil chapter’s analysis is embedded in its history of slavery and current colonial policies causing underrepresentation of Black people in Brazil’s leadership positions.(10) Brazil applies decolonized and intersectional organizing frameworks(11) to emphasize how race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and geographical origin serve as social determinants of health and equity. Through this strategy, our Brazil Chapter recognizes that the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on the poorer rural and urban Black neighbourhoods(12) is inextricably linked to the country’s inability to deliver on the dream of a “racial democracy”.(13)
Our Las Cruces, New Mexico Chapter explores the privilege that comes with being a health worker and organizes to dismantle racial capitalism. They have been using narrative medicine to document(14) the medical negligence and structural violence of the Las Cruces-El Paso-Ciudad Juárez Borderplex (an ICE detention centre) to advocate for the abolition of immigrant detention.(15),(16)
CAR has recently shifted to focus more on the injustices of the COVID-19 pandemic and how racial capitalism ensured the disproportionate impact on BIPOC communities. In Los Angeles, COVID-19 led to premature deaths in communities of colour through disinvestment and privatization of essential health services and social support.(17) They seek to provide quality healthcare through envisioning medical education that centres racial capitalism as a root cause of structural inequities.(18) Our Atlanta chapter is made up of healthcare workers and grassroots organizers who have come together during the pandemic to advocate for the release of prisoners in all city jails.(19) Unjust poor ventilation, crowded living quarters, and lack of basic supplies in jails accelerate the spread of infections. The disproportionate incarceration of BIPOC people has strengthened the CAR’s visionary organizing around abolition of the carceral state and investment in BIPOC communities.(20)
The Minnesota chapter is working to dismantle the effects of racial covenants and redlining that have led to racial health inequities. A Minnesota without racism and capitalism in the context of housing would mean that there would not be concentrated areas of poverty(21) that drive the high rates of COVID-19 in BIPOC communities.(22)
The Palestine chapter is linking Palestinians’ condition as a colonized people to their lack of access to adequate healthcare by working with local communities to pursue health sovereignty as a means of resisting settler colonization.(23) Without racial capitalism’s resultant precarity, Palestinians wouldn’t confront the false choice between exploitative labour and health safety.(24),(25) Any dismantling of racial capitalism requires eliminating Zionist exclusivity, and the establishment of a system that guarantees equal rights — including the right of return — to all inhabitants of the land.(26)
Under the weight of COVID-19 pandemic, it is more urgent now than ever to uplift the vision of these chapters and their communities for a healthy world without racial capitalism. Health workers must work in coalition with local community organizers to achieve the visionary goal of health equity, which is only possible with transformative social change. It has never been clearer that the biggest barrier to health equity and global solidarity is racial capitalism. With a once in a century pandemic happening alongside a once-in-a-fifty-year social movement, the Campaign Against Racism is progressing beyond historical contextualization to create action through visionary organizing.
References
1 APM Research Lab Staff. The color of Coronavirus: COVID-19 deaths by race and ethnicity in the U.S.. Available from: https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race
2 Office for National Statistics. Coronavirus (COVID-19) related deaths by ethnic group, England and Wales: 2 March 2020 to 10 April 2020. Available from: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/coronavirusrelateddeathsbyethnic groupenglandandwales/2march2020to10april2020
3 Jones C. Levels of racism: A Theoretic Framework and a Gardener’s Tale. American Journal of Public Health 2000, 90, 1212–15.
4 Pilkington E. As 100,000 die, the virus lays bare America’s brutal fault lines– race, gender, poverty and broken politics. The Guardian 2020. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/28/us-coronavirus-death-toll-racial-disparity-inequality
5 Robinson C. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, NC; 1983.
6 Ford T, Reber S, Reeves R. Race gaps in COVID-19 deaths are even bigger than they appear. Brookings 2020. Available from: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/06/16/race-gaps-in-covid-19-deaths-are-even-bigger-than-they-appear/
7 Ramachandran V, Walz J. Haiti’s earthquake generated a $9 bn response– where did the money go? The Guardian 2013. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/jan/14/haiti-earthquake-where-did-money-go
8 Kushner J. Haiti and the failed promise of US aid. The Guardian 2019. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/11/haiti-and-the-failed-promise-of-us-aid
9 Okoth PG. The creation of a dependent culture: The imperial school curriculum in Uganda. In: Mangam JA. (ed.). The imperial curriculum: Racial images and education in the British colonial experience. New York: Routledge, 1993.
10 Werneck J. Institutional racism and black population health. Saúde Soc. Sao Paulo 2016, 25, 535–49.
11 Akotirene C. O que é interseccionalidade? Belo Horizonte: Letramento; 2018
12 Polidoro M, Canavese D. Porto Alegre’s sociopolitical urbanism and neoliberal economic dynamics: Perspectives from a local community in the Afro-Brazilian periphery. Local Economy 2017, 32, 727–43.
13 Schwarcz LKM. Commentary: Brazil as a Continuous Laboratory of Races. American Anthropologist 2014, 116, 1–2.
14 Freedom for Immigrants. Detention by the numbers. Freedom for Immigrants 2018. Available from: https://www.freedomforimmigrants.org/detention-statistics/
15 Ryo E, Peacock I. The landscape of immigration detention in the United States. American Immigration Council 2018. Available from: https://perma.cc/FN64-SZE2
16 Meissner D, Kerwin D, Chishti M, Bergeron C. Immigration Enforcement in the United States: The Rise of a Formidable Machinery. Migration Policy Institute 2013. Available from: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/immigration-enforcement-united-states-rise- formidable-machinery
17 Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Report on LA County COVID-19 Data Disaggregated by Race/Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Status. COVID-19 Racial, Ethnic & Socioeconomic Data & Strategies Report 2020. Available from: http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/docs/RacialEthnicSocioeconomicDataCOVID19.pdf
18 Gaines R. Health Disparities by Race and Ethnicity: The California Landscape. CHCF 2019. Available from: https://www.chcf.org/publication/2019-edition-health-disparities-by-race/
19 Binswanger IA, Krueger PM, Steiner JF. Prevalence of chronic medical conditions among jail and prison inmates in the USA compared with the general population. J Epidemiol Community Health 2009, 63, 912–19.
20 Critical Resistance. What is the PIC? What is abolition? Critical Resistance 2020. Available from: http://criticalresistance.org/about/not-so-common-language/
21 Minnesota Department of Health. People in poverty in Minnesota. MN Department of Health 2017. Available from: https://data.web.health.state.mn.us/poverty_basic
22 Myers S. Relative Income of Blacks in Minnesota. Minnesota Economic Trends 2015. Available from: https://mn.gov/deed/assets/dec-2015-TRENDS-Myers_tcm1045-202492.pdf
23 Garbett L. Palestinian Workers in Israel Caught Between Indispensable and Disposable. Middle East Report Online 2020. Available from: https://merip.org/2020/05/palestinian-workers-in-israel-caught-between-indispensable-and-disposable/
24 Hever S. Exploitation of Palestinian Labour in Contemporary Zionist Colonialism. Settler Colonial Studies 2012, 2, 124–32.
25 Who Profits: The Israeli Occupation Industry. Exploitation of Labor. Available from: https://www.whoprofits.org/involvement/exploitation-of-labor/
26 The Palestinian Institute for Public Diplomacy et al. Ref: Joint Open Letter– Protection of Palestinian Workers During and After COVID-19. The Palestinian Institute for Public Diplomacy 2020. Available from: http://www.alhaq.org/cached_uploads/download/2020/05/05/joint-open-letter-to-the-ilo-protection-of-palestinian-workers-during-and- after-covid-19–4-may-2020–1588653865.pdf
