Why the Black Community is Receiving Vaccines at Lower Rates

By: Jasmine Smith

When talks of a vaccine first began last year, little was known. Would we be forced to get one?, Could we not travel without one?, etc. Despite all the uncertainty, one thing remained true among the Black community; they were skeptical of the vaccine whether that meant they wanted to wait and see if people had any negative side effects from the vaccine or skip out on the vaccine as a whole.

The biggest reason? Health commissioner Mysheika Roberts believes that there is a level of distrust of public health officials amongst the Black community that goes as far back as the Tuskegee syphilis Study and Henrietta Lacks. With the Tuskegee syphilis Study, health officials were instructed to give placebos to participants instead of providing them with the proper treatment causing many to die, go blind, go insane or suffer from severe health problems. For Henrietta Lacks her cancer cells were used for medical research without her knowledge or financial compensation. This idea that Black people are going to be used as an experiment has caused many Black people to become alarmed. Especially when before the vaccine was even out health officials were trying to push Black people to the front of the line for the vaccine due to health concerns such as high-blood pressure, diabetes, etc.

In fact, Minister Louis Farrakhan has urged people on the Nation of Islam website to not get vaccinated, saying “Don’t let them vaccinate you with their history of treachery through, vaccines, through medication…”

In a December poll, one-third of Black adults said they don’t plan on getting vaccinated due to the newness and fears of safety and possibly getting Covid from the vaccine. This fear has even spread to Black health-care workers who are deemed essential. Even though, they are exposing themselves to Covid everyday they still are fearful of getting the vaccine.

For experts, skepticism and misinformation such as tracking chips being placed in the vaccine spreading around social media has caused quite the headache.

While negative results in the past is a big factor of skepticism for many in the Black community, others are more focused on the future due to the fact that the vaccine is so new and scientists haven’t had enough time to research and study any potential long-term effects.

“I just think there will be some long-term negative effects caused by the vaccine that we can’t know now because the vaccine is new. I think in 2 years, or 3 years, or 4 years, there will be side effects that people get who got the vaccine that could not have been foreseen because not enough time has passed,” says Wynne Stovall-Johnson, a 54-year-old mathematics teacher adding that seeing Black people getting shots on TV hasn’t necessarily caused her guard to go down.

On the other hand, many health experts dispute the theory that Black people aren’t getting the vaccine because they distrust them. In fact, they believe that claim can be dangerous. Sean Dickson, the director of health policy at the West Health Policy Center believes the real issue is a lack of investment in vaccine distribution in Black communities.

A NPR analysis found that in Louisiana, Texas and Alabama, few white neighborhoods were without vaccine hubs while they were largely missing from predominantly Black and Hispanic communities. A national study conducted with the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy found that Black Americans in nearly two dozen urban counties including Atlanta, New Orleans and Dallas faced longer driving distances to vaccine centers than white Americans.

In fact, a recent Pew survey shows that 61 percent of Black Americans plan to get vaccinated or already have. That’s a 19 percent increase from a November poll that asked the same question.

Whatever the reason may be, it is clear that Black people are getting vaccinated significantly lower than White Americans and that something has to be done to create a better relationship between the Black community and health officials. So how can health officials gain the trust of the Black community? Dorothy Roberts, JD believes that for starters the idea that Black people have an irrational fear of “new medical technologies” has to be erased. She says trying to convince Black people to get the vaccine because they have a problem or attitude toward medicine and science is the wrong approach.

 “The approach should be how can medicine and science be made more deserving of Black people’s trust,” Roberts, JD says. “It’s not just that there was a past history of medical experimentation on Black people that makes them suspicious of new technologies today. There is a continuing practice of racism in medicine and government policies that many Black people have experienced themselves. That’s why there’s a skepticism about the government rollout of the vaccine. It’s a rational skepticism, and the only way to address it is to work toward ending the racism in medicine and health care that caused the skepticism in the first place.”