Don’t deter Black citizens from getting vaccine
There is a lot to like about the 24-hour news stations. I like waking up to national news, interviews and discussions. Our TV was on all manner of channels during the Bush-gore hanging chad 2000 election and aftermath.
The big three — CNN, Fox News and MSNBC — have thrived to varying degrees since that time. They all devoured the drama of the 2016 primary season and the Donald Trump phenomenon. Protestations to the contrary from at least two, CNN and MSNBC, they were more than happy to provide multiple tens of millions of dollars in free media. It brought in the viewers but also unintentionally played to Trump’s strength as a larger-than-life TV personality.
But I am losing patience with the harmful repetitions of some very unhelpful framing. Almost every discussion of COVID-19 vaccinations veers into the reputed lack of trust regarding the vaccine among African Americans. This may well be true, but it is overstated, and each overstatement becomes a self-serving prophecy.
Referencing and justifying distrust can have only one effect: fewer people getting the vaccine. That can have only one impact: more people dying from COVID-19. And in this case, more African Americans dying from it.
The Tuskegee experiments
This assertion usually is followed by a reference to the Tuskegee experiments of 1932-1972, a horrible breach of ethics where hundreds of Black men with syphilis were involved in an experimental study that denied them needed information that would have allowed them to withdraw from the study and receive up-to-date treatment. Later they and their families reached a financial settlement and President Bill Clinton issued a formal apology.
There is no reason to hide from the ugliness of the Tuskegee study. It was done with a callous indifference. It should be part of our history that must be acknowledged. But it never had anything whatsoever to do with vaccines. Quite the contrary. The issue was that treatments and information were withheld, not that experimental, damaging treatments were administered.
Raising this issue as the vaccine begins to roll out can serve no purpose other than the unintended purpose of sowing doubt where none is merited.
Behavior is a better indicator than survey responses. In fact, African Americans have been very responsible in vaccinating their children. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 91% of Black parents have their children vaccinated for hepatitis and 93% of against measles, mumps and rubella, slightly higher than the rate for whites.
The pandemic has hit the Black community hard
COVID-19 has had a proportionate impact on the African American community. This impact can be mitigated by aggressive, purposeful distribution of the vaccine. This distribution will be at the state level where many governors, including Gov. Bill Lee, have employed the term equity in reference to an approach.
Academics are appropriately interested in expression of larger themes embedded in global framework. Journalists are increasingly feeling the need to provide context, often gratuitous, beyond the reach of the story at hand.
There is a time and a season for every message. Realization and appreciation of history — pretty, ugly and in between — is essential. Obsession with negative framing of situations that touch on race can often cause real harm where it counts — in individual lives.
It would be as if a program to encourage minority students to apply for available scholarships was prefaced with “While scholarships are available, there is ample distrust in the African American community of education based on the state-sponsored segregated school systems of the Jim Crow era.” Inevitably some young people will think it’s hopeless and just give up, with great damage to their futures.
Thank God for Sara Lindsey, the African American nurse in New York who was among the first to step forward for the vaccine. She knew it was important to set a good example.
The COVID-19 vaccine is safe. Endlessly referencing trust issues amplifies and legitimizes them at a certain cost in lives.