University of St. Thomas Journal of Law and Public Policy Volume 14 Issue 1 Article 1 December 2020 Pandemic of Inequality: An Introduction to Inequality of Race, Wealth, and Class, Equality of Opportunity Dr. Charles J. Reid, Jr. University of St. Thomas School of Law, Minnesota, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.stthomas.edu/ustjlpp Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Housing Law Commons, Law and Economics Commons, Law and Gender Commons, Law and Philosophy Commons, Law and Politics Commons, Law and Race Commons, Law and Society Commons, Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons, Other Law Commons, Social Welfare Law Commons, Taxation-Federal Commons, and the Tax Law Commons Recommended Citation Dr. Charles J. Reid, Jr., Pandemic of Inequality: An Introduction to Inequality of Race, Wealth, and Class, Equality of Opportunity, 14 U. ST. THOMAS J.L. & PUB. POL'Y 1 (2020). Available at: https://ir.stthomas.edu/ustjlpp/vol14/iss1/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by UST Research Online and the University of St. Thomas Journal of Law and Public Policy. For more information, please contact the Editor-in-Chief at [email protected]. Pandemic of Inequality: An Introduction to Inequality of Race, Wealth, and Class, Equality of Opportunity DR. CHARLES J. REID, JR. This Symposium was proposed and planned months before COVID- 19 emerged as a public health emergency. Still, it can safely be said that the COVID pandemiC that ravaged the United States in the summer and fall of 2020 – a pandemic, furthermore, that poses an even greater threat in the upcoming winter – has revealed in vivid detail the inequalities at the heart of AmeriCan life. Similarly, this Symposium was ConCeived long before the police homicides of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and other African AmeriCans plunged the American nation into a summer of passion and protest. Again, however, these homicides only made plain what was already there: a Chasm of inequality that defines raCial relations in the United States. The symposium foCuses on different faCets of what is a tragic and multi-dimensional reality of inequality. For, surely, America is a land not of equality, but of yawning inequality. It is an inequality that deprives human beings of the opportunity to develop their talents, to thrive, to form families, and to contribute to the welfare and well-being of society. And it is an inequality, furthermore, that damages not only individuals but all of soCiety, by depriving the American community of the benefits derived from the contributions of persons who, but for the accident of birth, would assuredly be doing great things for the general public advantage. I. RACE AND POVERTY We might begin with raCe. So muCh Could be said. RaCism permeates muCh of AmeriCan history, from slavery, through the wars of subjugation waged against Native AmeriCans, to Jim Crow laws, to the waves of paniC that led to the Chinese ExClusion ACt and numerous other harsh measures directed at Asian AmeriCans, to the so-called scientific racism that dominated too muCh of American university and public life in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. Acknowledging this long and bitter history, let us consider what the COVID pandemiC of 2020 has revealed. A survey published in The New York Times in July, 2020, documented pervasive racial disparities in rates of infeCtion and in outcomes. 2 U. ST. THOMAS J.L. & PUB. POL’Y [Vol. XIV “Latino and African AmeriCan residents of the United States have been three times as likely to beCome infeCted as their white neighbors,” Citing Centers for Disease Control statistics.1 This was the Case early in the pandemic, and it remains largely the situation today.2 MuCh of this disparate impaCt was – and is – reduCible to who does what type of work in AmeriCa. AmeriCa’s so-called “essential workers” – many of them underpaid and eConomiCally oppressed service-seCtor employees, are also disproportionately members of racial and ethnic minority groups.3 In July, the Centers for Disease Control Called attention to the 1 Richard A. Oppel, Jr., et al., The Fullest Look Yet at the Racial Inequity of Coronavirus, N.Y. TIMES (July 5, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/05/us/coronavirus-latinos- african-americans-cdc-data.html; Cf., Kate Taylor, 87 % of the Thousands of Meatpacking Workers Diagnosed with COVID-19 Are Hispanic, Black, or Asian, BUSINESS INSIDER (July 8, 2020), https://www.businessinsider.in/retail/news/87-of-the-thousands-of- meatpacking-workers-diagnosed-with-covid-19-are-hispanic-black-or- asian/articleshow/76860281.cms; and Heather Schlitz, Arkansas Poultry Plants Hit Hard By COVID-19. Hispanic Workers Are Facing the Worst of It, USA TODAY (Aug. 31, 2020), https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/08/31/arkansas- poultry-plants-hit-hard-covid-hispanics-bear-brunt/3433543001/ (further developing these points). 2 Dan Keating, et al., Covid’s Cruelty Cuts Deepest in Communities of Color WASH. POST (Nov. 22, 2020); Jon Zelner et al., Racial Disparities In COVID- 19 Mortality Are Driven by Unequal Infection Risks, CLINICAL INFECTIOUS DISEASES (Nov. 21, 2020); In December, 2020, it was noted that “[i]n Rhode Island, more than one in eight Latino people have tested positive for COVID- 19, compared with one in 31 white people.” Alice Goldfarb et. al., COVID Tracking Project, This Is Only Going to Get Worse, THE ATLANTIC (Dec. 10, 2020), https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/12/worst-week- pandemic-yet/617363/. Similarly, “in Louisiana, one in six Asian people have tested positive for COVID-19.” Id. The COVID Tracking Project notes finally that “for Native Americans . the weekly new cases reported per capita have been higher than for any other group.” Id. 3 Tiana N. Rogers, et al., Racial Disparities in COVID-19 Mortality Among Essential Workers in the United States, WORLD MEDICAL HEALTH POLICY (August 5, 2020); Catherine Thorbecke, ‘Heroes or Hostages?’ Communities of Color Bear the Burden of Essential Work in Coronavirus Crisis, ABC NEWS (May 22, 2020), https://abcnews.go.com/Business/heroes-hostages- communities-color-bear-burden-essential-work/story?id=70662472; Cf., Anna Romina Guevarra, Essential, Not Disposable, CHICAGOREADER.COM (Oct. 20, 2020), https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/essential-not- disposable/Content?oid=83654592; Annie Lowrey, Don’t Blame Econ 101 For 2020] Pandemic of Inequality 3 “disproportionate burden of illness and death” suffered by racial and ethnic minorities in the meat processing industry, largely thanks to workplace risks.4 These risks have been exaCerbated by the terms of employment imposed by the meat proCessors upon their workers.5 Thus the eConomiC Compulsion caused by the absence of paid leave and sick time forced – and continues to force – many food proCessing workers to put themselves (and others) at undue risk of contagion.6 Inadequate safety measures and Cramped working conditions have Compounded the Crisis,7 and the same can be said for the the Plight of Essential Workers: They’ve Been Systematically Devalued for Years. But They Don’t Have to Be, THE ATLANTIC (May 13, 2020), https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/why-are-americas-most- essential-workers-so-poorly-treated/611575/; and Mindy Isser, Workers Are More Valuable Than CEOs, JACOBIN (Mar. 25, 2020), https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/03/coronavirus-low-wage-workers-front- lines-grocery-store (regarding economic oppression). 4 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL (July 10, 2020), https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/index.html. (“Distinctive factors that increase meat and poultry processing workers’ risks . include prolonged close workplace contact with coworkers . for long time periods, [and] shared work spaces”). 5 Michael Grabell, What Happens If Workers Cutting Up the Nation’s Meat Get Sick?, PROPUBLICA (Mar. 28, 2020), https://www.propublica.org/article/what-happens-if-workers-cutting-up-the- nations-meat-get-sick (“meat and poultry workers rarely get paid when they’re sick. At many companies . workers receive disciplinary points for calling in sick”). Id. Cf., Meat Packers Deny Workers Benefits For COVID-19 Deaths, Illnesses, NBC NEWS (Sept. 29, 2020), https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/meatpackers-deny- workers-benefits-covid-19-deaths-illnesses-n1241348. 6 Shawn Hubler, et al., Many Latinos Couldn’t Stay Home. Now Virus Rates Are Soaring in Their Communities, N.Y. TIMES (June 27, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/us/corona-virus-latinos.html; Heather Schlitz, Meatpacking Workers with COVID-19 Symptoms Are Still Being Forced to Work, JACOBIN (Nov. 18, 2020), https://jacobinmag.com/2020/11/meatpacking- tyson-covid-symptoms-work. 7 Komala Ramachandra, US Meatpacking Workers Face Crisis, Slashed Safety Protections During Pandemic, HUM. RTS. WATCH (April 24, 2020), https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/04/24/us-meatpacking-workers-face-crisis- slashed-safety-protections-during-pandemic; Matt Smith, “How Meat Plant COVID Outbreaks Revealed ‘Devastating’ Workplace Conditions, MARKETWATCH (Aug. 20, 2020), https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-meat-plant-covid-outbreaks- revealed-devastating-workplace-conditions-2020-08-17; Kim Krisberg, “Meatpackers, Other Workers, Face High COVID-19 Risks,” 110 AM. J. PUB. HEALTH 1447 (2020). 4 U. ST. THOMAS J.L. & PUB. POL’Y [Vol. XIV frightening levels of deCeit and indifferenCe shown by management.8 Migrant agriCultural workers have also been heavily impaCted.9 Like the employees of meat proCessing plants, they were the victims of employers and a system that are utterly indifferent to their health needs.10 An international team of medical researchers blamed in part “long standing struCtural inequities” for this devastation.11 Furthermore, the disparate impact COVID is visiting upon Latino populations shows no signs of slowing down, as COVID continues its uncontrolled march through locations like the Texas 8 Pilar Melendez, Meat Plant Bosses Bet Money On How Many Workers Would Get COVID: As Dozens Were Hospitalized, DAILY BEAST (Nov.