Chasm grows between whites, people of color, California poll shows

Latino voters say COVID-19 has hurt their ability to pay for food and rent

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic and its economic toll are hitting people of color in California especially hard, and a new poll illustrates just how alarming the disparity has grown among the state’s families.

Black, Latino and Asian residents are more likely than white residents to say COVID-19 has had a negative impact on their family’s health and financial situation, according to a poll of more than 8,000 registered voters done by the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley.

In one of the most dramatic findings, though just 16% of white voters say the virus has seriously hurt their ability to pay for basics like food and rent, that figure skyrockets to 72% among Spanish-speaking Latino voters. A similar percentage say the virus has caused very serious problems when it comes to their family’s ability to get necessary medical care.

“Overall, the findings show the disproportionate burden that communities of color in California shoulder as they and their families face serious health threats,” Cristina Mora, co-director of the institute, said in a statement. “They in large part form the skeleton crews that keep the state’s service sector economy going during the pandemic,”

Two-thirds (66%) of both Black and Latino residents surveyed said the virus poses a major health threat to them or their families, and 62% of Asian residents said the same. Among those who speak mostly Spanish, 84% see the virus as a major threat. Yet just 48% of white residents felt that way.

In a related finding, people of color — who are more likely to work jobs that require them to leave home — are more concerned than white voters about the risk they or their families face from working outside their homes during the pandemic. Though just slightly more than a third of white voters said they were very concerned, more than half of Latino, Black and Asian voters felt that way.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, said Thursday more awareness of systemic racism is necessary for people to understand why COVID-19 is hitting communities of color the hardest.

“I had friends of mine, very progressive people, call me up when they saw so many Black people dying from the virus, asking me what’s going on,” Lee said in a video chat with her colleague, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Dublin. “I said, ‘Wait a minute.’ They had no clue that the health care system has not really been fair or accessible for low-income people, for Black and brown people.”

Latino voters are the most likely (59%, and 79% among those who speak mostly Spanish) to see the virus as a threat to their family’s financial situation. For Black voters, it’s 49%. And 45% of Asian and Pacific Islander voters feel that way, though just 31% of white voters feel the same. Predictably, families earning less than $20,000 a year are the most likely to see the virus as a financial threat.

Orlando Moreno, a Latino resident of East San Jose, has felt the financial effects of the pandemic firsthand. The construction worker has seen a dip in income because construction projects have slowed in recent months.

“They’re keeping us busy but it’s not what we’re accustomed to in years prior,” said the 37-year-old father of three boys ages 8 and younger. “In the past it was like, ‘We got this.’ We felt a sense of security.”

His wife, Moreno said, had to take a job outside the house for Amazon assembling orders for online shoppers after losing her at-home job watching a neighborhood boy with autism along with their three children. That has left the pair scrambling to stagger their work schedules so someone can be at home with the kids and help them with online school.

“It’s exhausting,” Moreno said. “This is really hard.”

The poll of 8,328 registered voters was conducted online in English and Spanish July 21-27 and has a sampling error of about 2 percentage points.

Although Moreno says his family is making it work, the pandemic has been stressful and left them “right down to the wire.”

“You just have to adapt to the changes,” he said. “Tomorrow there’ll be better days.”