If one story illustrated the concept of Black-Run America (BRA) perfectly, it would be this sob story from Maine.
No, blacks don’t run America, but America is run for the benefit of blacks. Wherever one black individual is failing, all blacks are failing.
New data show that African Americans in Maine are testing positive for COVID-19 at a disproportionally high rate.
Forty-one African Americans have tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. While that number may seem small compared to the 1,095 statewide cases, it suggests a disparity because African Americans account for only 1.7 percent of the state’s population, but 3.7 percent of its infections.
Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said the figures show a “deeply concerning” racial disparity that has been seen elsewhere in the United States. One study found that African Americans were twice as likely to die of COVID-19 in New York City. And the New York Times reported that blacks accounted for 40 percent of the deaths in Michigan despite making up only 14 percent of the population.
“These disparities are concerning,” Shah said. “They were alarming to us.”
Maine, which released the racial and ethnic breakdowns of COVID-19 cases for the first time Wednesday, is the last state in New England to do so. The information was reported the same day the state announced an outbreak at Tyson Foods’ meat processing plant in Portland, which employs many immigrant workers.
As of Thursday, 10 Tyson workers had tested positive for COVID-19, and arrangements were being made to test all 400 workers, Shah said.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Maine called on the state to release the data April 16. Alison Beyea [Tweet her] the ACLU’s executive director, applauded its release, calling it the first step to ensuring Mainers of color are protected during the pandemic.
“We are not surprised to see that Black and brown people in Maine are being harmed at higher rates than white people,” Beyea said in a written statement. “This is consistent with what we are seeing around the country and reflects the systemic inequities that exist here and everywhere. The most important thing the Maine government can do now is ensure equitable access to testing, treatment and resources for these most vulnerable communities.”
The newly released data show that white people in Maine account for 731 cases, or 66.8 percent of the state’s caseload. However, whites make up 94.6 percent of the state’s population, according to 2019 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. But 250 people, or a quarter of those with COVID-19, did not provide their race to state epidemiologists, so the percentage of positive cases among whites is likely much higher.
Patients are not required to provide that information to state epidemiologists during their investigation, according to a Maine CDC spokesperson.
New Hampshire is seeing even more of a disparity, with African Americans accounting for 5.6 percent of its case load but only 1.4 percent of the population. In Vermont, however, the case rate among African Americans is similar to the population, at 1.9 percent of cases and 1.4 percent of the population.
Shah speculated that African Americans and other minorities in Maine and nationally are contracting COVID-19 at higher rates because they often work in public-facing occupations and have less access to health care coverage.
Shah said he’s been holding regular video calls with representatives of Maine’s immigrant community to identify roadblocks to care and to share information about how immigrants can access health care if they’re sick, get tested and find follow-up care.
Read the story again. Take your time. Read it thoroughly and carefully.
Black immigrants flocking to Portland, Maine (who have overwhelmed the welfare services) are now barely overrepresented among those infected with the coronavirus in the state, and this is somehow cause for a crisis and the state CDC director to label the dispraise as “concerning.”
The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram reported in December about the increasing numbers of families from sub-Saharan Africa making the long and dangerous journey through Central America and Mexico to the southern U.S. border, where they ask for asylum. Many of the migrants ask to be sent to Portland, Maine, because of the support the city provides and because of the immigrant community that has taken root here.
“We heard that Maine was a place where a lot of people have been able to get asylum,” a man named Matare told the Press Herald after arriving in Portland with his wife and four children.
The family left Angola to escape violence and completed an epic two-month, 13,100-mile journey through South and Central America, avoiding drug cartels, militias and human traffickers, walking through jungles and over mountains to get to Texas. Matare spoke on the condition that his full name wouldn’t be published because of fears for family members in Angola.
The current influx of arrivals comes a week after a CBS affiliate in San Antonio reported last week that officials were struggling to handle an influx of about 350 asylum seekers from Angola and the Congo. The station quoted an assistant city manager as saying they hoped to be able to send many of the asylum seekers to Portland.
“The plan was 350 of them would travel from San Antonio to Portland. When we reached out to Portland, Maine, they said, ‘Please don’t send us any more. We’re already stretched way beyond our capacity,” interim Assistant City Manager Colleen Bridger told KENS 5.
City Hall Communications Director Jessica Grondin pushed back on the assertion that any city official discouraged San Antonio from sending people to Portland. Jennings said in his email to councilors that the city manager in San Antonio told him on Monday to expect 150 asylum seekers in the coming days.
“He said this is just the beginning as there are currently between 1,500-2,000 African migrants at the border seeking asylum with the probability of more to come,” Jennings said in his email.
Jennings said he was told by the San Antonio manager that U.S. Customs and Border Protection changed its policy on asylum seekers. As of June 4, border agents are releasing individuals to a point of destination in the U.S. without verifying a sponsor. And he said that thousands of people are “being bused to San Antonio for distribution throughout the U.S. according to the city manager.”
Meanwhile, whites in Maine–who represent the overwhelmingly amount of the coronavirus cases in the state–are hardly worth worrying about.
Do White Lives Matter in the age of Coronavirus? Not if blacks are barely impacted at a disproportionate rate, as in Maine, where a massive influx of African migrants overwhelmed the welfare system in 2019 and now has a negligible spike in black Coronavirus cases in the state.
