How are people reimagining what is needed and possible in the wake of COVID-19, protests against police brutality and anti-blackness, and other, compounding developments?

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James Adams's picture
June 10, 2020

While it is certain that black communities in the US are being disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, the extent to which this is the case is still unknown. In Texas, there is only an 18% gap in the demographic data on the races of positive COVID-19 cases, which is much smaller than the 65% gap nation-wide. Still, this gap means the true prevalence of COVID-19 among black communities could range from being roughly equal to their population share to nearly three times worse (Martinez and Keller 2020). Furthermore, while Texas testing sites are recording the race/ethnicity of people who test positive for COVID-19, these articles in the Austin Statesmen and Austin's local NPR attest to the need to record similar data for rates of hospitalizations and death. Austin-Travis County does not record this data, which is why the City is unable to report any race-related differences in the distribution of COVID-19 fatalities (Platoff 2020). Across the state of Texas, only 1/3 of confirmed COVID-19 fatalities have data of the race or ethnicity of the deceased.