AS GOVERNMENTS and countries around the world struggle to get to grips with the spread of coronavirus, many have implemented ‘social distancing’ measures. 

However one leading U.S. academic and commentator has claimed that these drastic policies do not represent anything new for African Americans.

Andre M. Perry, a scholar-in-residence at American University, and a Fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings Institution, claims that a form of social distancing has been practiced for several decades in the U.S. which has culminated in having a discriminatory effect on people of colour.

Writing for the blog of the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, Perry said: “To mitigate the spread of COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending social distancing measures: avoiding mass gatherings and maintaining at least six feet of distance from other people. For decades, however, Black people and Native Americans have been subject to a different kind of social distancing in America: segregation, discrimination, and devaluation.

“These policies, which were built on a racial hierarchy, isolated Black and indigenous people closer to polluters and in areas more susceptible to natural disasters.

“History has shown that social distancing through racist housing policies such as redlining extracted wealth from communities of color, eliminating a crucial buffer against the financial shock of a crisis such as today’s. 

“COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate, but U.S. policy has—in ways that now leave Black and brown people more vulnerable to effects of the pandemic.

“Segregated housing and schools are manifestations of the United States’ long history of legal discrimination, which have ramifications for our current crisis.

“Redlining was the practice born of the federally backed Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, which outlined areas with sizable Black populations in red ink on maps as a warning to mortgage lenders, effectively isolating Black people in areas that would suffer lower levels of investment than their white counterparts.”

History has shown that social distancing through racist housing policies such as redlining extracted wealth from communities of color, eliminating a crucial buffer against the financial shock of a crisis such as today’s. 

Andre M.Perry

Perry continued: “If we don’t address the discrimination that is baked into current policy, efforts to address this pandemic will be undermined by the past practices that led to such inequality.

“Even as we heed the CDC’s advice on social distancing, policymakers need to see opportunities to bring historically disenfranchised communities closer to the systems they’ve been excluded from. The war against the virus and the war against structural racism can be fought at the same time.”

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