Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has demanded minority-focused “reparations” for coronavirus, insisting “inequality is a comorbidity” exacerbating the deaths – after calling for shutdowns that impoverished millions.
The New York Democrat called for coronavirus relief to be “drafted with a lens of reparations,” insisting that deaths from the virus were “disproportionately spiking in Black [and] Brown communities” in a tweet on Friday.
Blaming “the chronic toll of redlining, environmental racism, wealth gap,” she smoothly conflated economic inequality – a problem in white and nonwhite communities alike – with racism.
COVID deaths are disproportionately spiking in Black + Brown communities.
Why? Because the chronic toll of redlining, environmental racism, wealth gap, etc. ARE underlying health conditions.
Inequality is a comorbidity. COVID relief should be drafted with a lens of reparations.
However, economic inequality has gone stratospheric in the last few weeks as relief packages shoved through Congress paid out trillions of dollars to financial institutions and large corporations.
Those same packages, which AOC voted for despite token opposition, promised individuals a paltry $1,200 check at some future date, and even the $350 billion earmarked for small businesses has proven distressingly difficult to obtain in the few hours since some lenders began taking applications on Friday.
The Democratic Party has been mostly united in calling for a total shutdown of the country in the name of slowing the spread of coronavirus. The result has been mass unemployment and a gigantic spike in poverty – not just among “black and brown communities,” but across the country.
While some areas have softened the blow by pausing evictions and postponing mortgage and rent payments, rent and mortgage amnesty has not been forthcoming. Americans will owe several months’ worth of payments whenever the moratorium is over. In a country where two thirds of the population doesn’t have $600 to cover an emergency expense and a fifth of citizens live paycheck to paycheck, the “wealth gap” doesn’t discriminate by skin color.
Urban areas, which typically have a higher concentration of racial minorities than suburbia or rural regions, have been hit especially hard by the virus, due to high population density. For the same reason, they’ve been devastated economically, with high infection rates used to justify citywide lockdowns.
The virus is currently hitting densely populated cities which have disproportionately high minority residents Vs. Rural areas. This is why infection rate may be higher. It’s the choice to live in densely populated cities. Rural areas are cheaper to live in. This isn’t racism.
Low-income neighborhoods in AOC’s home New York City have indeed been especially devastated – according to a map released by the city’s Department of Health on Wednesday. However, racial data for coronavirus has not yet been published, a detail that has already outraged AOC’s fellow legislators, who demanded a racial breakdown of epidemic deaths in a letter sent to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar earlier this week.
The Democratic Socialist’s critics pounced, cracking jokes about “cognitive distancing.”
— Governor Nipples🕵️♂️ (@EricInfoTech) April 3, 2020
Not everyone seemed to think the idea of reparations was ridiculous, however.
I've also noticed that stores that mostly serve white customers are enforcing social distancing more than those in some black and brown communities. I have no idea why, it was just something I noticed while driving past grocery stores in different areas.
— Alexandra MacArthur (@alexgoesthere) April 3, 2020
