Why are Black people skeptics about a virus vaccine? Trump

The African American experience in this country, to me, is shaped by social exchange. Over smoking barbecue pits and simmering pots of gumbo, Black folks in my life commiserate about everything from sports to police brutality. These gettogethers are where we heal, as a group, while living in a country that only recently seemed to place an emphasis on the importance of preserving our lives.

During trying times, the social spaces we can inhabit together are a necessity. They make us feel whole.

I’m not sure when we’re going to be able to gather like this again. With the hesitancy in the Black community about getting a vaccine, it most likely won’t be for quite some time.

There’s a palpable fear in the Black community about the intersection of government and medicine, and it’s one that goes back generations. When Black people were slaves in this country, Black women were given painful gynecological surgeries for research without their consent. In the 1930s, Black men were part of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, where they were told they were getting free medical care but instead were denied therapy for their syphilis for decades. Our fear is based in logic and perspective.

Stories of the latter were told to me by older family members, long before I studied it in books. Black grandparents taught people like me to be cautious, to ask questions and search for data. So, when it comes to COVID19, which has disproportionately affected Black lives — 1 in 1,000 of the total Black population have died from the disease — right or wrong, we approach vaccines and treatments with caution. According to polls conducted by the Pew Research Center, in September, just 32% of Black adults said they would get a vaccine.

That number is more startling when looking back at May, the same month the Black Lives Matter protests began and right before President Trump called the BLM group a “symbol of hate,” when roughly 54% of Black adults said they would get the vaccine.

And it’s here where I see how tribal politics over the past four years, a period when my Millennial generation was first introduced to a White House filled with voices openly spewing antiBlack rhetoric, that I see how the Trump presidency is going to have a lasting impact on my community’s ability to get out of this pandemic, even when the time comes that an end is in sight via a vaccine.

Black people, well before he was sworn into office, were aware of Trump’s antiBlack views. So, it makes sense Black people would distrust the idea of a vaccine while he’s in office, because for years, he has shown no care for my community’s wellbeing.

This thought crosses my mind whenever I think about Black folks in the Bay Area, especially San Francisco, a city where just a few decades ago the Black population was around 13% but is now closer to 5%. Yet, somehow we make up 37% of the city’s homeless population, according to data collected by the city in January 2019. And there’s nothing showing us that our people, the folks who make up the most atrisk population in the Bay Area during the pandemic, will be prioritized when it comes to a vaccine.

Would I have had this concern for the Black community a little more than four years ago, when politics felt less tribal and Black people thought the leader of the free world cared about them? I doubt it. Our country is struggling with so many social issues that, at times, the pandemic almost gets lost in the background, especially when seeing Bay Area cities slowly creep toward an economic reopening.

There’s a feeling of normalcy returning for some, but that feeling is a luxury not afforded to the Black community.

I haven’t seen my family in Louisiana in almost a year, so with more angst than I like to admit, I’m flying to them for the Thanksgiving holidays. The trip is going to have a complicated maze of COVID-19 tests before and after I arrive, along with an extended hotel stay before I see any of my family members. There’s going to be a lot of joy when we get together. Within it will be some heartbreak as we talk about the people we won’t be eating and drinking indoors with for at least another year.

Even if a vaccine is approved and my family is the first in line for it, we know we might be alone. Years of mistreatment of the Black populace, by a president some white people somehow still argue is looking out for our wellbeing, are hard to forgive. As much as I and other Black folks want to see an end to the pandemic, I know that even when it’s over, our struggles are nowhere close to finished. And, to my mind, we owe a lot of this to Trump.