36 year old woman dies of coronavirus after being deprioritized by emergency services: is race a factor?

[WombOfOnesOwn]

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/25/london-woman-36-dies-of-suspected-covid-19-after-being-told-she-is-not-priority

When I saw this story I couldn't help but wonder. I live in the US, where black women are at far higher risk during pregnancy, birth, and with illnesses and injuries because hospitals simply do not take their pain and suffering seriously.

Do you believe black women in the UK are potentially at greater risk in a pandemic situation where prioritization must occur? I think this will certainly occur in the US, and that younger black women will be ignored in favor of older white people, but I wanted to hear the British opinion -- maybe it is less dire there?

I had always hoped so, but this story made me so terribly sad. A mother of three -- I'm about to be a mother of three myself, and this story has made me think deeply about how much more terrifying this time must be for black women, who already know they are seen as lesser by many healthcare providers and must navigate without even their family to advocate for them in the hospital.

so are you saying if outcomes based on race (or sex even) aren’t racist (or sexist) if they are endemic to that society/community? I think they’re harder to talk about but definitely there.

No, I don't think endemic is the word I'd use, though I guess I'm not sure what you mean by it here.

What I would say is that outcomes that are different between sexes, or races, may or may not be sexist or racist.

A really obvious example would be something biological, you can see real differences between groups because of biological differences. Or you can see that some cultures have a very strong entrepreneurial tradition, and even when they immigrate they carry that on, or there are other cultural groups that have associations with different types of work that may be carried on in their families. Not because of some sort of bias but because they have a sort of tradition of that and it shapes their up-bringing, it may reflect the values they teach their kids, they may even pass down businesses, and so on. That can affect class as well, and yet people may see it as positive, not negative at all.

Another example I know personally is the community down the road from mine is mainly black. The reason is that is the way lands during a certain period were granted to incoming groups, so they would all tend to settle near each other. As a result, many of them have continues to be coherent communities as people want to stay near their families or properties are passed down. (You can see the same thing among the German community, as it happens.)

These things aren't caused by racism. They are however things that can cause different outcomes in some areas along the lines of race, cultural groups, men and women.

Yes Milton Keynes Hospital’s maternity unit systemically discriminated against black and Indian women killing both mothers and babies. As it turned out the mostly black and Indian midwives took their suffering less seriously than white women and were less likely to offer or refer interventions that could have saved them. Maternity units across the UK were overhauled as a result.

I am afraid it will take a post-Covid investigation and many lawsuits to fix any potential race discrimination caused by the Covid crisis, but I have already seen this happen with elderly female relatives who have been denied life saving treatment (or discouraged from it) until an English speaking friend or relative turns up and asks why. Then all of a sudden nothing is too much trouble.

So if there IS evidence that race does influence access to treatment, and if people who have experienced it are expressing their impressions, and neither of those things would make you even question if this was an issue, what would?

But you also have to look at whether the explanation is even necessary.

In this case it's a pandemic where we'd expect just this kind of thing to happen - people will get ill and die, and triage will not be perfect. We would expect that large numbers will be non-white people, since that is the city profile. It's about as likely, purely based on numbers, that the first person in the city to die would be no-white.

There is no evidence that there are larger than expected numbers of non-white people being affected or ill at this point, or that there was anything inappropriate in this particular instance, even after the journalist looked at the case.

Could it have been racist? Sure, but there is at this point zero evidence to point to that. The Guardian positing it at this point is just trolling, if they had some integrity they'd just keep their journalists watching it until there was something to say.

Could it have been racist? Sure, but there is at this point zero evidence to point to that. Well except the enormous amount of evidence that this has, does, and will continue to happen to people in all sorts of situations.

The question posed by the thread was “is race a factor?” The answer is it could be, and yes the question IS necessary.