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COVID-19’s effects have underscored the ways our nation’s history of racism, bias, and discrimination are embedded in our health, social, and economic systems.
People of color are experiencing disproportionately more infections and hospitalizations – and among Black people, highly disproportionate death rates – with people of color also overrepresented in jobs that are at higher infection risk now and in the jobs hardest hit economically.
Shaping these outcomes are structural barriers like wealth and income disparities, inadequate access to health care, and racial discrimination built into the health system.
States have critical policy choices to make: they can repeat and exacerbate these inequities, which will damage the economy, or they can set another course – toward anti-racist, equitable, and inclusive communities and an economic recovery that extends to all people.
The three principals are:
- Target aid to those most in need due to COVID-19 and consequent economic crisis.
- Advance anti-racist and equitable policies to dismantle persistent racial, gender, and economic inequalities and other barriers that non-dominant groups and identities experience.
- Protect state finances to preserve the foundations of long-term economic growth and opportunity.
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