According to data from the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, “In Bexar County, just 39 percent of the Black population has been vaccinated, in comparison, 75 percent of the white, 66 percent of the Asian and 55 percent of the Hispanic populations have been immunized.” Why are so many Black folk not taking the shot? History is the answer but it is also the problem. Black Americans are somewhat reluctant to get vaccinated, but this hesitancy is based in the unethical practice of medicine in the past and somewhat even now.
There is a horrible history of medical practices and experimentation by physicians and medical staff which was aimed at the Black population both during slavery and in the days of legalized Jim Crow and beyond. This medical abuse, involved torture, unethical experimentation (The Tuskegee Experiment) , forced sterilization of black women (Fannie Lou Hamer’s Mississippi Appendectomy), stealing blood tissue and cells (The Case of Henrietta Lacks), injecting germs into patients, bodysnatching from graveyards for dissections, and to more recently “race norming” in pro-football. “Race Norming” assumes that black football players have inferior cognitive capacity when compared with white players. As a result, and after an injury, “the black player is presumed to have suffered less impairment, and he is therefore less likely to qualify for compensation.” The NFL was sued over this.
The “Tuskegee Study” was a racist experiment that the U.S. government performed on African Americans all the way from the 1930s util the 1970s. It stands to reason that when trying to understand present-day Black hesitancy to the COVID-19 vaccination this history is well remembered. However, all is reversed. The vaccine was weaponized by racists to do just the opposite of what took place in the past. Now, it is used to prevent Blacks from getting the vaccination.
What many folks don’t know is that as a result of these abuses regulations were put into effect through a process under FDA regulations called medical Institutional Review Boards (IRB), which are groups of experts that evaluate and screen biomedical research and practices involving human beings. According to the FDA, “In accordance with FDA regulations, an IRB has the authority to approve, require modifications in (to secure approval), or disapprove research. This group review serves an important role in the protection of the rights, safety and welfare of human research subjects.”
Furthermore, “The purpose of IRB review is to assure, both in advance and by periodic review, that appropriate steps are taken to protect the rights, safety and welfare of humans participating as subjects in the research. To accomplish this purpose, IRBs uses a group process to review research protocols and related materials (e.g., informed consent documents). The IRB must monitor and review an investigation throughout the clinical study.”
White supremacy in America is still a real problem. Some parts of town have pharmacies everywhere while in communities of color they are like deserts. We know that when millions of whites are taking the vaccine they are not going to kill themselves. Not taking the shot is simply unwise and a case were not knowing improvements in medicine is a problem. Additionally, crazed wet snowmen of the Cult of Trump crowd are constantly spreading lies about the vaccine. We know that vaccines work and only knowing the ugly history of racism in this country, and not the struggle against bigotry, to organize review boards of experts against racist medical practices, is what we are missing. “Get the Shot or Buy a Burial Plot.”
