Author: Sam Buisman

The harms of the coronavirus are disproportionately falling on black Wisconsinites.

According to data released Wednesday night by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, black Wisconsinites represented 42.4% of Wisconsin's COVID-19 deaths and 26.9% of its cases, despite constituting under 7% of Wisconsin's population.

While the US Census Bureau estimates that 87.1% of the state is white, white Wisconsinites represented only 43.4% of COVID-19 deaths, only one percentage point higher than that of black Wisconsinites.

These unbalanced effects are not limited to Wisconsin. According to the Washington Post, Washington, D.C, Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina, Florida and other locations are reporting outsized COVID-19 impacts on their black citizens. Additionally, NBC reports that similar findings in other states are likely, as ethnic breakdowns of COVID-19 data are only starting to emerge from state health departments.

According to Axios, these differences likely stem from pre-existing disparities between black and white Americans in terms of access to healthcare, healthcare quality and housing quality exacerbated by the global pandemic.