An invitation to ask serious social questions
A week after rejecting calls to collect race-based data on COVID-19, Ontario made a U-turn Wednesday and put the collection of disaggregated data into action.
Dr. David Williams, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, said the province would begin collecting data to identify which populations are at risk, a development that came thanks to the relentless efforts of health-equity experts and advocates.
In the eight weeks since the global pandemic hit the country, Canadians have traversed new distances in our awareness of our collective vulnerability and of our humanity. Look closer and COVID-19 is adding layers to the meaning of “we’re in this together.”
“We are in this together” is used as a feel-good moralebooster based on the premise that humans are united in a common cause against the same enemy and in the end, no matter our differences, we are here for each other. This premise breaks apart on inspection.
If there’s anything the pandemic has exposed, it’s not just that social inequities exist, it’s not just that they deeply wound the marginalized, but that they hurt us all. It shows us that when we’re this interconnected, this interdependent, the most privileged among us have a vested interest (if not a moral one) in making societies more equitable.
York University professor Carl James is best known for his role in gathering groundbreaking data on Black experiences in sectors ranging from education and jobs to interactions with police. He has been avidly following calls to collect race-based disaggregated data on COVID-19.
James argues that while Ontario’s health data will reflect health outcomes for people of different backgrounds, it should “make us have a good look in the mirror about ourselves.”
The mirror might help break down how we got to a place where some of us are more at risk from a deadly virus than others.
Let’s begin with stereotypes. Stereotypes about “dirty” homes, uninterested parents, absentee fathers, etc., make educators unable to see certain students, but especially Black and Indigenous ones, as having real potential.
Data shows these are the children most expelled, suspended and streamed out of pathways to university.
“What jobs they’re likely to get?” said James. “What jobs they’re likely to get might be service jobs. And if you look at right now and what happens to certain service jobs in terms of this crisis of COVID, it’s going to disproportionately impact people based on the education they get.”
Even if they make it through college, stereotypes continue to lead to discrimination in the job market and access to housing.
Research shows racialized people are significantly more likely to live in poverty in Canada. The 2016 Census showed that one out of five people of colour are low-income compared to 12.2 per cent of white folks. The same census also showed that 80 per cent of Indigenous people living on reserves in Canada live in poverty — where overcrowding and lack of fresh water increases COVID-related health risks.
For those who get service jobs, what is their income?
Enter long-term-care facilities, where we send our parents and grandparents to be taken care of if they’re too old, too sick to stay home. Who are the people who take care of them? They’re often the people not counted as our equals.
They are women relegated to caretaking roles, adults who were once shunted out of the school system, immigrants whose qualifications are devalued and considered unworthy of “real” jobs, and undocumented migrants. It turns out asylum seekers who have no guarantee they will get to stay in Canada form a big portion of caregivers in Quebec’s longterm-care homes.
We entrust our most precious relations to the care of workers we don’t value enough to compensate adequately. They work in more than one facility. They live in cramped housing.
And our elders are dying. Journalist Nora Loreto, who painstakingly compiled the data, found 85.9 per cent of Canada’s roughly 4,400 deaths from COVID-19 have been in long-term-care homes.
Our relations are this badly hit because we’ve placed them in the care of people who are unnecessarily made vulnerable; in good times we looked at health care as a No. 1 budget line rather than a lifeline. We made decisions around profitability rather than safety and stability.
COVID-19 should be an invitation for us to ask serious questions about the economic and social situation, James says. “It’s not just health. It’s education, it’s housing, it’s access to medical facilities, not having a doctor, and if you do, then (looking at) did the doctor pay attention to how race might be a factor in this person’s life.
“If we deal with COVID-19 with no significant understanding of undocumented immigrants … it still puts the population at risk.”
Instead of rushing to reopen the economy, it might be worth contemplating these interconnections and reprioritizing the economy around care rather than corporations. That just might help us weather other global crises still to come.