1. Deadly Disparities in the time of COVID-19: How Public Policy Fails Black and Latinx Chicagoans
- Author:
- Cal Lee Garrett, Cynthia Brito, Ivan Arenas, Claire Laurier Decoteau, and Fructoso M. Basaldua Jr.
- Publication Date:
- 12-2021
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy (IRRPP), University of Illinois at Chicago
- Abstract:
- In this report we center the lived experiences Black, Latinx, and white residents of three neighborhoods — Austin, Little Village, and Albany Park — in order to explore how the pandemic has impacted different communities in the city. Drawing on over 150 interviews with residents and policy makers, we find that while COVID-19 has been treated as a health crisis at the federal, state, and local levels and thus has been fought through a series of public health strategies, the residents we spoke to experienced it as a much broader crisis related to housing, jobs, childcare, schooling, and healthcare. The policy response to COVID-19 gave explicit attention to racial equity but, for a number of reasons we lay out, often fell short in meeting the needs of the most vulnerable. Longstanding structural inequities meant that low-income and working-class Chicagoans were more vulnerable both to the disease and to the impact of disease mitigation strategies (e.g., economic fallout of the shutdown).
- Topic:
- Minorities, Discrimination, Urban, Community, Health Crisis, and Equality
- Political Geography:
- North America and United States of America