Ibram X. Kendi writes in The Atlantic on the lack of racial data in the coronavirus epidemic, racial data not provided either by the media or the press. After some of what Steve Sailer calls "obsessive antiquarianism" about how blacks were "hardest hit" in the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, Kendi, who is black himself, talks about the "not reporting race" that's going on during the epidemic:
Today, America faces a new disaster—but it’s not clear who the victims of the coronavirus actually are. We have little publicly available data about the racial makeup of those Americans who have been tested, those who have tested positive for the coronavirus, those who have been hospitalized, those who have become critically ill, those who have recovered, or those who have died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s information site does not offer racial data. Neither does the Johns Hopkins University database used by CNN, The New York Times’ count, nor the COVID Tracking Project. Few states, municipalities, or private labs are releasing their data by race.
On Friday, the Illinois Department of Public Health became one of the few state offices to release some racial data. And the data showed a pandemic within the pandemic: African Americans are significantly overrepresented in infection rates in Illinois, while whites and Latinos are significantly underrepresented. African Americans make up 14.6 percent of the state population, but 28 percent of confirmed cases of the coronavirus. White people comprise 76.9 percent of the Illinois population, and 39 percent of the confirmed cases. Latinos comprise 17.4 percent of the state population, and 7 percent of the cases. In Illinois, Asian Americans were the only racial group without a significant disparity between their state population, at 5.9 percent, and confirmed cases, at 4 percent. (Nearly a third of cases were recorded as “other” or left blank. Illinois did not release racial data on Native Americans, or on testing, hospitalization, and death rates by race.)
What we are seeing in Illinois could be happening nationwide—we just don’t know.
Why Don’t We Know Who the Coronavirus Victims Are?
The coronavirus is infecting and killing Americans of all races. But there’s little public data on whether the virus is having a disproportionate impact on some communities.
April 1, 2020
Of course, the imaginary NYT headline “World Ends: Women and Minorities Hardest Hit” is a cliche dating back to at least 1988.
Kendi speculates on why we don't know the race of the victims:
What we are seeing in Illinois could be happening nationwide—we just don’t know.... And Americans don’t seem to care to know. I suspect that some Americans believe that racial data will worsen racism.... Maybe I need to stop making everything about race, as my critics say.... Maybe some people fear that if racial data were to show that COVID-19 is disproportionately harming people of color, then white people will stop caring... Maybe there is only a class issue here...."
Blogger Ann Athouse suggests that
I'm guessing it's either because it's difficult at this point to report them accurately or — more likely — because the officials believe that we're better off not thinking in these terms. People already feel bad about the virus, so why exacerbate the pain by making us feel that there's some evil human-made unfairness going on? And why give some people and not others a reason to think that this force of nature is picking favorites based on their race? Isn't it better to keep people feeling that we're all in this together, sharing a great human interest with the entire world?
Better off not thinking in those terms? That's not going to happen. The media has years of not reporting on who's committing crimes, no matter who's hardest hit, because they don't want you know who's doing the hitting.
Women of color, for example, are disproportionately affected by rape and domestic violence, which according to the National Organization for Women, are "incredibly pervasive issues that routinely go unreported and under-addressed."
That's because this is done by "men of color," and there is media policy of keeping minorities committing rape and beating their wives an issue that remains "unreported and under-addressed."
In the case of the Chinese Virus, the first thing we need to know is how many of the deaths are actually Chinese, affecting people who live in Chinatown, or who have travelling relatives.
We also need to know whether outbreaks like the one in a King County, WA, old people's home were brought by Asian staff members.
That's not the community Ibram X. Kendi is really worried about. His Atlantic piece mentions that labelling it the “Chinese virus,” led to "attacks on those of Asian descent (and not on the virus)." Of course, he doesn't say who's doing the attacking, which in the case of physical attacks, rather than snarky remarks, means almost always blacks.
In the case of blacks, they have for years had bad health, and bad public health behavior, for reasons unconnected with racism.
What needs to be reported there is if blacks are not only unable to social distance (because poverty, racism, blah, blah, blah) but refusing to social distance.
See
Here's an example, from the last link:
In general, however, the reason we're not getting good reporting on race is because for years we've been firing people from media jobs if they said anything useful or interesting about race.
And a crisis like this shows why that's dangerous.
