The Washington Post reports that African-Americans are less willing than Whites and Hispanics to be vaccinated against the Wuhan coronavirus. It cites a Pew Research study finding that fewer than half of American Blacks express willingness to be vaccinated. By contrast, 63 percent of Latinos and 61 percent Whites say they are agreeable to taking the vaccine.
Blacks are resisting the vaccine even though, according to the Post, they are nearly three times as likely as Whites to die from the coronavirus. Community activists are desperately trying to overcome this resistance.
Why are so many Blacks unwilling to be vaccinated? The Post cites a “trust gap.” Many Blacks don’t trust the vaccine. Apparently, they fear that the government is out to get them and that the vaccine will be a means of harming Blacks.
What is the source of this mistrust? According to the Post, some of it stems from the Tuskegee Study, in which federal health officials conducted a secret, abusive, and deadly experiment on Black men to study the progression of syphilis.
But the Tuskegee experiment occurred in the 1930s. It’s absurd to suspect that something like this would be undertaken today, much less to believe it would be conducted in the midst of a pandemic in which Blacks can transmit a potentially deadly virus to Whites.
I doubt that the Tuskegee experiment is the main driver of the “trust gap.” More likely, the main driver is current claims that Whites are out to damage Blacks.
These claims come from radical Black preachers, for example. Some tell parishioners that Whites are the devil. Who would take a vaccine promoted by the devil?
These types of claims also come from Black politicians like Trayon Martin, the D.C. council member who says Jews are manipulating the climate. And, of course, radical Black preachers have the prestige that comes with being taken seriously, even today, by mainstream Black politicians like Barack Obama.
And what about BLM? One of its core claims is that, as a systemic matter, White police officers are out to kill Black men because of their race.
If you think the police force is into genocide, why would you not suspect that the public health service is too?
To the extent that Blacks disproportionately are unwilling to be vaccinated due to not trusting “Whitey,” Black activists and other leftists are reaping what they have sown.
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