African American leaders skeptical of vaccine push
Area pastors dismayed at Lamont’s suggestion to help lead campaign
Shortly after Gov. Ned Lamont said he needed the state’s Black churches to support a COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available, state Sen. Douglas McCrory posed a question on his Facebook page.
“Governor Lamont just mentioned he was going to work with the Black churches to encourage the use of a vaccine for COVID19. What do you think about that?” McCrory asked. Within minutes, McCrory, a Democrat from Hartford, was deluged with responses, blasting Lamont and the notion of asking Black churches to take a lead on vaccinations.
“I don’t think I want to be a guinea pig,” one comment read. “Don’t do it! They are looking for people to be test subjects and who better than black people to take this poison!!!” stated another.
As Connecticut and other states race to develop a COVID19 vaccine, distrust in any government intervention into their physical well-being — stemming largely from the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which ended in 1972, and other historical examples — remains a powerful force in the Black community.
In his remarks about vaccinations and people of color last week,
Lamont cited a recent study that showed African-Americans and Hispanics were more likely to get tested for COVID-19 than whites, but less willing to be vaccinated. A recent Siena College Research Institute/ DataHaven survey of Connecticut adults showed that 38% of Black respondents said they would get vaccinated against COVID-19, compared to 67% of whites.
“I’ve got to do a better job in education,” Lamont said. “I’ve got to do work with the churches. I’ve got to do everything I can to give people confidence that we would never be asking you to first get tested and t hen try a vaccine until we’re absolutely certain it’s safe. ... That’s something we’re going to have to work on every day.”
McCrory said it was unusual for Lamont to single out Black churches. “It takes years for a vaccine to come to the forefront, and we all know this one is being rushed,” he said. “Why encourage the Black community to take part in something that most people would probably be afraid of taking themselves, understanding the historic relationship between the medical industry and the Black community?”
‘We don’t want your poison’
Reggie Hatchett, 42, a community activist and basketball coach who lives in the North End of Hartford, responded that African-Americans are “the target market, with the emphasis on ’target.’”
“It’s not the first time somebody has said, ’Yeah, we think that the African-American community has been affected by COVID the most, so they should be the ones to first have the vaccine,’” Hatchett said. “That’s not necessarily good news to most of us. It’s going to have to be tweaked and adjusted, and there’s probably going to be some powerful side effects on the first group of people to try it. A lot of us are aware of that and are very, very skeptical.”
Hatch et twas not surprised that only a third of Black survey respondents said they’d get vaccinated. “A lot of us understand that this country has not been great to African-Americans,” he said. “Even though we’ve had breakthroughs and a lot of advancement, it always seems to come back to racism being the underlying thing that does not go away.”
Sophia Taylor-Edwards, 52, of Hartford, said communities of color are too often approached as “clinical laboratories” — places to harvest information that will ultimately benefit white people only.
“Don’t bring that [vaccine] here. Don’t bring that to the Black churches,” said Taylor-Edwards. “You bring that to the suburban churches up there, and you approach them with that. ... We don’t want your poison. You bring your poison someplace else.”
Across the country, the coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately affected African-American and Latino residents, who are more likely to live in densely populated areas, to suffer from pre-existing conditions and to have diminished access to health care than white residents.
Last week, British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, which recruited 30,000 people in the U.S. for a COVID-19 vaccine study, announced that research was being temporarily put on hold due to a “potentially unexplained” illness— potentially, a side effect of the vaccine shot.
Bishop John L. Selders Jr., organizing pastor of Amistad United Church of Christ in Hartford, cautioned Gov. Lamont to “wade lightly” in his dealings with Black churches regarding vaccinations. “There could be a considerable backlash and a considerable push-back to the idea of pressure from government for a vaccine that, in my mind, however we slice it, has been rushed to market,” he said.
Selders said a long history of testing, experiments and abuse of people of color have made members of his congregation highly suspicious of any push — particularly by the government — for vaccinations.
“You can’t help but hear the echoes coming from Washington that say we’re going to have a vaccine maybe before the election, how it’s being used in a political context,” Selders said. “It’s very hard to be able to hear and have confidence, quite frankly, in what might be offered.”
Archbishop LeRoy Bailey Jr., senior pastor at The First Cathedral in Bloomfield, emphasized the need for greater COVID-19 testing and advocated for improved diet, nutrition and overall well-being programs. For too long, Bailey said, the Black community has been “guinea pigs ... and [the government has] lied to our people.”
“My main issue is this: Why doesn’t [Lamont] work with the white churches first, or the Spanish churches?” he said. “Why pull out the Black churches? Why should we trust this? Why not have a conversation with the African-American pastors first to see our take on it?”
Overcoming medical mistrust
Dr. Wizdom Powell, director of the Health Disparities Institute and associate professor of Psychiatry at UConn Health, said the medical mistrust has roots in documented, historical abuses against Black people in the U.S. at the hands of medical professionals.
“The mistrust we’re observing is not a figment of people’s imagination or linked to some unjustified sense of wariness on the part of Black people,” Powell said. “If you understand that, then your approach to resolving the issue takes on a different kind of feeling.”
But contemporary injustices, Powell added, resulting in unequal treatment on the basis of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and other social identities, also play a role.
In an early 2010 study, Powell found that medical mistrust reported by Black men was linked not to historical incidents of abuse, but rather to everyday experiences of racism. Men who were frequently stopped and frisked, harassed or treated unfairly on the basis of race, the study found, carried negative perceptions into dealings with health care systems and providers.
Still, medical mistrust among Black and indigenous populations shouldn’t be treated as an unsolvable problem; the same study showed that men who had recent, patient-centered medical experiences reported lower levels of medical mistrust, even while dealing with systemic racism in their everyday lives.
Powell said lawmakers and medical professionals should maintain transparency around the vaccine development. They should also ensure that Black, indigenous and people of color are involved in all phases of clinical trials and “engage in bi-directional conversations with communities of color” throughout the vaccination process.
“The evidence is there that, when given the opportunity, some folks in the medical community would put folks at risk for their own scientific gain and advancement,” Powell said. “That truth-telling has to happen alongside with the recognition that if we don’t get the vaccine to the people who need it most, we’ll see a lot more deaths from COVID-19.”