The coronavirus is a rapidly developing news story, so some of the content in this article might be out of date. Check out our most recent coverage of the coronavirus crisis, and subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate, but the havoc wrought by the virus—the deaths, economic devastation, and intergenerational trauma—has disproportionately affected Black, Latino, and Native American communities. The Trump administration’s feckless response didn’t help, yet even proactive steps have reinforced preexisting inequities: Stay-at-home orders protected people with the privilege to work remotely while frontline workers, disproportionately Black and Latino, took on greater risk of exposure. People of color have also experienced more unemployment and financial insecurity. As Mary Bassett, director of Harvard’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, explains, none of this is caused by the virus itself: “It’s because of the social consequences of race in our society, which has been reinforced by decades, centuries of bad practices and policies.”

Illustrations by Louise Pomeroy

The COVID death rate for Black Americans ages 30 to 49 is four times that of white Americans.
Black Americans make up 12% of all 50- to 64-year-olds yet 22% of all COVID deaths in this age group.

The COVID death rate for Native Americans ages 18 to 29 is 12 times that of white Americans.

White Americans make up 68% of all 50- to 64-year-olds yet only 39% of all COVID deaths in this age group.

Latinos make up 20% of all 30- to 49-year-olds yet 45% of all COVID deaths in this age group.
After California reopened last summer, the rate of excess deaths among Latinos in the state tripled.

Asian Americans make up 6% of the population and 4% of all COVID deaths.

The jobless rate for Latinas in December was nearly three times higher than it was a year earlier.
Due to COVID, Americans’ life expectancy has dropped 1.2 years. For Black Americans, it’s down 2.1 years; for Latinos, 3 years.

More than 40% of the 12 million jobs lost by women last spring have not come back.

Black men had the nation’s highest unemployment rate in December—10.4%—their highest level since 2015.
As of mid-January, the vaccination rate for Black Americans in 11 states was less than half that for white Americans.

Sources: Death rates: Calculations based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (data as of February 3, 2021) and Census Bureau; household surveys: Census Bureau (data as of January 6, 2021); California excess deaths: JAMA Internal Medicine; Latina unemployment rates: Bureau of Labor Statistics; life expectancy drops: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; women’s job losses: National Women’s Law Center; vaccination rates: Kaiser Health News (data as of January 14, 2021); Black men’s unemployment rates: Bureau of Labor Statistics, St. Louis Fed; concern about local outbreak: Civiqs

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate