Emergency: Covid-19 and evaluating an unequal life Claire Laurer Decoto university. Chicago Press (2025)
In May 2020, with the Covid-19 pandemic, George Floyd, a black man, was killed by the police in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In response, US government officials and public service promised marginalized societies that they would make real efforts to address racial injustice.
However, sociologist Claire Loriere Decoto says, and it appears that both the epidemic and those promises have now forgotten in her hometown in Chicago, Illinois.
in emergencyDecoteau 110 of the city’s residents and 65 officials of the Covid-19 effect systematically on marginalized groups. Her analysis reveals how policies that aim to address racial injustice instead to an endless cycle of inequality.
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At the time of the death of Floyd, black Americans made up 60 % of the deaths caused by Covid-19 in Chicago, although only 30 % of its residents are included, a pattern that reflects many other American cities and western countries. The risk of increasing death is attributed to what Decoteau calls “converging” – the confluence of structural injustice, including poor access to health care, housing and employment, which is not proportional to the black, Latinic Chicago and migrants.
Chicago’s initial response to the epidemic was poor, the author asserts. Instead of addressing regular problems, public health officials connected the gap with short -term interventions, such as social care payments to cover rent or pathological days. Although such policies may have benefited from less people, they condemned people on the margins to “slow or rapid death.”
The tenants who have unofficial agreements for the owner or an undocumented situation have faced emergency rental payments, because their owners often will not comply with administrative operations. As a result, the weak people who should have been protecting themselves from the virus were unable to do this – instead, they had to reduce the risk of evacuation and became homeless.
Reducing the number of cases and deaths between black and Latin people has become the focus of some public health efforts. But this did not produce long-term changes to the societies most affected by Covid-19. Although many people with goodwill have used statistics to show that racism is the public health crisis, Decoteau warns of reducing the complex date that produced structural inequality today to quantum measuring goals.
Society Care
Decoteau interviews highlight how joint aid groups and societal organizers are the heroes of the anonymous epidemic, and often achieve what governments can or not. Many stories are dark, showing how systematic discrimination, from bad housing to police brutality, has physical and mental losses. However, I found hope in their stories about the community cooperatives that manage food banks and provided Covid-19 tests by employing people registered in drug recovery programs.
In Chicago, Illinois, the cooperatives led by society, such as food banks, are the law of life for many.Credit: Scott Olson/Getti
“We need more organizations like this. We need greater growth. We grew up here in the conflict. We know how to deal.” I couldn’t agree more.
In 2018, a community organization in London called Decoloning Owkextry, which was running events focused on sexual and reproductive health. Decoteau does a great job in showing what she also discovered: The approach is often from top to bottom a little effect on those who need urgent help. Often, the red and bureaucratic tape means that those who are the most vulnerable cannot reach government support, and instead, they end up relying on popular organizations.
Disturbing policies
After that, Decoteau explains how the racist “chart” produced – creating wealth by exploiting the racist classified people – policies that caused the death of the main workers, but often, and many of them were in Chicago Black and Latinians. For example, one of this policy provided additional payments to the city’s main workers. But Kandis, a black woman and a former nurse, remembers the following: “Every two weeks when you get their salaries, you got an additional $ 350 but you cannot miss one day. So if you miss a day, you will not get $ 350.” This policy encouraged people to lie about awareness, and to increase the risk of viral spread.