African Americans and the vaccine: Start with an apology
With African Americans dying at more than twice the rate of white Americans who contract COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is hard to square the polling that shows that Africans Americans are less than half as likely to say they will take the vaccine. The discrepancy for African Americans in regards to the vaccine is based on a completely different set of historic and political considerations that motivate antivaxxer whites. The latter is driven by the libertarian view that government does not have the right to determine what goes into their bodies and the antiscientific view that vaccines are harmful.
African Americans’ views on the vaccine are the result of a history that includes multiple examples where health care policies have targeted Black bodies for experimentation, exploitation and discrimination. Without an understanding of this history, not only is it difficult to understand the African Americans’ response to the vaccine, it is also impossible to have the type of public intervention that will change these longheld views.
Three examples of this painful history start with the Tuskegee Experiment. The TE started in 1932 and ended in 1972. The experiment involved 600 African American Alabama sharecroppers. Black sharecroppers were already one of the most exploited group of workers in the United States. Sharecropping was the South’s response to the end of slavery. White landowners who could not own the person could own the land, and by owning the land, they could control the people who lived on the land. Both my grandfathers and their families were sharecroppers in the Arkansas delta. This is important to understand because sharecroppers were vulnerable to further exploitation, this time by health researchers.
Four hundred of the 600 sharecroppers had syphilis. They were told they were being given treatment for their disease. In fact, they were given placebos in order for researchers to document how the disease impacted the human body. This abusive experiment went on until the CDC discontinued it in 1972.
A second case centers on the brilliant African American physician, Dr. Charles Drew. Dr. Drew developed the technique of separating blood into plasma and red blood cells. This technique and technological advancement continues to save countless lives. Dr. Drew’s work was used during the Second World War to save thousands of American soldiers lives. Dr. Drew resigned his position during the war because he was ordered to segregate the blood of Black soldiers from the blood of white soldiers. Dr. Drew knew from his research that this was unnecessary and had the impact of limiting the supply of blood needed to save both Black and white soldiers. Ironically, Dr.
Drew died in a horrible car accident on his way to Tuskegee. Urban legend around the circumstances of the accident are that Dr. Drew was taken to a rural hospital in North Carolina, where the accident happened that had a history of racial discrimination and did not receive the blood he needed to save his life. There is some question whether even with a transfusion he could have been saved.
A third example of the sordid history of health care and African Americans is the case of Henrietta Lacks. Mrs. Lacks died of cervical cancer, but before her death, cells were taken from her cancerous tumors. These cells became known as HeLa cells for cancer research. Mrs. Lacks was never asked to donate her cells and was never compensated for their use until recently, decades after her death. HeLa cells are being used today in the search for a COVID-19 vaccine.
These three cases are deeply embedded in the consciousness of African Americans and why so few, less than 40 percent, say they will get vaccinated with the COVID-19 vaccine.
If this were a disease that did not have the virulence or the mortality rate that it does, this unwillingness to get vaccinated might be a quaint anomaly. However, if large segments of the population do not get vaccinated it will impact us all, and our ability to conquer this scourge.
It will help that high-profile African Americans like former President Barack Obama and other political and community leaders pledge to publicly take the vaccine. But what is needed now in this year that is also a year of racial reckoning is an apology.
We cannot move forward on this or other vestiges of systematic racism perpetuated by government and other social institutions until there is a public apology of the harm done to African American citizens. It is too late for those Alabama sharecroppers or Dr. Charles Drew or Henrietta Lacks to personally hear that apology, but it is not too late for African Americans today to hear those healing words. It will not bring back lives, but saying “we are deeply sorry for the harm we caused you and your ancestors” will go a long way towards changing how African Americans feel about this vaccine today. Fred McKinney is the Carlton Highsmith Chair for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and director of the Peoples United Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Quinnipiac University School of Business. He is on social media at @drfredmckinney.