Material Insecurity, Racial Capitalism, and Public Health

This introductory essay contextualizes the special collection of papers on the pandemic and seeks to map the terrain of extant public health research on Palestine and the Palestinians. In addition, it is a contribution in Palestine studies to a nascent yet propulsive conversation that has been accelerated by Covid-19 on the erasure of structures of violence, including those of settler colonialism and racial capitalism, within the discipline of epidemiology. Using public health as an analytic, this essay asks us to consider foundational questions that have long been sidelined in the public health discourse on Palestine, including the implications for health and health research of eliding ongoing settler colonialism. Rather than ignoring and reproducing their violence, this essay seeks to tackle these questions head-on in an attempt to imagine a future public health research agenda that centers health, and not simply survivability, for all Palestinians.

Download Full-text

Epidemic Response

Monthly Review ◽

10.14452/mr-073-02-2021-06_4 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 54-58

Author(s):

Jennifer Dohrn ◽

Eleanor Stein

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Health System ◽

Social Organization ◽

Public Health System ◽

Swine Flu ◽

Lightning Strike ◽

Racial Capitalism ◽

Long Line ◽

The Social ◽

Epidemic Response

The COVID-19 pandemic is at its root a crisis of globalization, racial capitalism, colonialism, the social organization of our public health system. It is a crisis of treatment and care versus demonization and wall building. And it is the latest pandemic in a long line of modern ones—from SARS to swine flu to HIV to Ebola—a predictable and predicted outcome, not the mysterious unforeseeable lightning strike as it is often portrayed.

Download Full-text

“The Whole Damn System Is Guilty”: Urban Violence, the Principal Contradiction of Racial Capitalism, and the Production of Premature Death in Oakland, California

Critical Sociology ◽

10.1177/0896920520923429 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 46 (7-8) ◽

pp. 1057-1074

Author(s):

César “che” Rodríguez

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Working Class ◽

Structural Violence ◽

Premature Death ◽

Urban Violence ◽

Racial Capitalism ◽

Communities Of Color ◽

Historical Activity

Discourses of “urban violence” are deployed in reaction to the mobilizations advanced by working-class communities of color following extrajudicial police murders. This discourse delegitimates these mobilizations while pathologizing said communities by insisting that “urban violence,” not police murders, is a more pertinent issue. This article takes seriously the claims made during the Oscar Grant “moment”— a period of popular struggle — that “the whole damn system is guilty.” This article uses Gramscian conceptualizations of socio-historical activity, organic and conjunctural, along with public health and socio-economic measures, to counter the obfuscating discourse of “urban violence” by illustrating the structural violence that communities in Oakland endure and contest. The sum of this structural violence constitutes the principle contradiction of racial capitalism, which produces premature death for working-class communities of color in Oakland. The extrajudicial police murder of Grant in Oakland catalyzed the blossoming open of this contradiction into an intensified moment of struggle.

Download Full-text

Open Letter on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee’s A Framework for Equitable Allocation of Vaccine for the Novel Coronavirus

10.31219/osf.io/x87ua ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Michelle R Caunca ◽

Haadiya Cheema ◽

Jennifer Weuve ◽

Eleanor J. Murray ◽

Epidemiology COVID- Response Corps

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Science Communication ◽

The Novel ◽

Structural Racism ◽

Major Step ◽

Public Health Response ◽

Racial Capitalism ◽

Health Response ◽

Equitable Allocation ◽

Novel Coronavirus

This is a public comment on behalf of a group of epidemiologists, public health students, and public health practitioners for submission to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee for A Framework for Equitable Allocation of Vaccine for the Novel Coronavirus. We believe that Equitable Vaccine Distribution is of the utmost importance as the next major step in COVID-19 response. The pandemic has disproportionately affected BIPOC populations by almost every measure--risk of infection, death, and economic toll--due to the structural racism and racial capitalism that underlies all major systems of American culture, including healthcare, public health response, resource allocation, and science communication.

Download Full-text

Racial Capitalism Within Public Health—How Occupational Settings Drive COVID-19 Disparities

American Journal of Epidemiology ◽

10.1093/aje/kwaa126 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 189 (11) ◽

pp. 1244-1253 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Elizabeth S McClure ◽

Pavithra Vasudevan ◽

Zinzi Bailey ◽

Snehal Patel ◽

Whitney R Robinson

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Lung Function ◽

The United States ◽

Worker Safety ◽

Workers Compensation ◽

Impaired Hearing ◽

Structural Determinants ◽

Economic Implications ◽

Racial Capitalism ◽

Viral Spread

Abstract Epidemiology of the US coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak focuses on individuals’ biology and behaviors, despite centrality of occupational environments in the viral spread. This demonstrates collusion between epidemiology and racial capitalism because it obscures structural influences, absolving industries of responsibility for worker safety. In an empirical example, we analyzed economic implications of race-based metrics widely used in occupational epidemiology. In the United States, White adults have better average lung function and worse hearing than Black adults. Impaired lung function and impaired hearing are both criteria for workers’ compensation claims, which are ultimately paid by industry. Compensation for respiratory injury is determined using a race-specific algorithm. For hearing, there is no race adjustment. Selective use of race-specific algorithms for workers’ compensation reduces industries’ liability for worker health, illustrating racial capitalism operating within public health. Widespread and unexamined belief in inherent physiological inferiority of Black Americans perpetuates systems that limit industry payouts for workplace injuries. We see a parallel in the epidemiology of COVID-19 disparities. We tell stories of industries implicated in the outbreak and review how they exemplify racial capitalism. We call on public health professionals to critically evaluate who is served and neglected by data analysis and to center structural determinants of health in etiological evaluation.

Download Full-text