Ethnic/Racial Disparity in Mortality from COVID-19: Data for the Year 2020 in Brazil.

The study aimed to investigate ethnic/racial disparities in COVID-19 mortality in Brazilian federative units and their respective capitals in 2020. Population data and number of COVID-19 deaths were extracted by skin color (white, black, brown and indigenous) from all Brazilian states and their respective capitals. The mortality rate of COVID-19 by ethnicity in Brazilian states was higher between people from brown skin color, followed by indigenous and black. Only in one state, in the Federal District and in the federal capital, age-standardized mortality rates were higher among white's people. There is a high percentage of deaths from COVID-19 higher than expected among non-white individuals, especially in south-central states and capitals of the country. Mortality from COVID-19 affect ethnic-racial groups unevenly in Brazil and the number of excess deaths among non-whites was over 9000. Urgent government measures are needed to reduce the racial disparity in health indicators in Brazil.

Reimagining a Broader Framework for Education in Emergencies within Comparative and International Education

Education in Emergencies (EiE) as a subfield of Comparative and International Education (CIE) has played a vital role in advocating for the world’s most vulnerable people with a focus on short-term responses to specific events like conflict and natural disasters that often occur in the Global South. However, recent events, like the protests exposing structural racial and gender inequality, the COVID-19 pandemic, and multiple global “slow” conflicts, have revealed a different nature of modern emergencies where issues, which are often considered important but not urgent, can quickly become emergencies under the right circumstances or have in fact always been so. Accordingly, in this chapter, we reimagine a broader framework for EiE which includes long-term, systemic, and universal challenges that affect both the Global North and South. The chapter includes a historical review of EiE as a subfield within CIE along with evidence of new forms of modern emergencies in the United States, Bolivia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar, and Syria that build toward a broader framework of EiE intended for both CIE scholars and practitioners.

The Syndemic of Race, Gender, and COVID-19: Culturally Comparative Reflections of Intersectional Discrimination

This essay explores how women scholars grapple with gender and racial inequality during a syndemic. Using a culturally comparative lens, two mother-scholars, one Afro-Boricua who identifies as Black and the other Thai who identifies as Asian, examine this topic through a comparative international womanist theoretical framework. This discussion provides a brief overview of the challenges faculty women of color have faced around the world in contemporary history. It also interrogates how the professional identities of these scholars inform their teaching, scholarship, and personal lives during a period fraught with anti-Blackness and anti-Asian hostility, gender bias, familial demands, and heightened fear and isolation. Through counter-narratives, their lived experiences are placed into a global context and insightful comparisons spotlight specific challenges that uniquely converge for women of color in the academy. This analytical discussion reflects trends in the field of comparative education by examining the impact of gender and racial discrimination on women scholars of color within political, economic, social, and cultural landscapes.

Humor That Harms? Examining Racist Audio-Visual Memetic Media on TikTok During Covid-19

During times of crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic, digital platforms are under public scrutiny to guarantee users’ online safety and wellbeing. Following inconsistencies in how platforms moderate online content and behavior, governments around the world are putting pressure on them to curb the spread of illegal and lawful harmful content and behavior (e.g., UK’s Draft Online Safety Bill). These efforts, though, mainly focus on overt abuse and false information, which misses more mundane social media practices such as racial stereotyping that are equally popular and can be inadvertently harmful. Building on Stoever’s (2016) work on the “sonic color line,” this article problematizes sound, specifically, as a key element in racializing memetic practices on the popular short-video platform TikTok. We examine how humorous audio-visual memes about Covid-19 on TikTok contribute to social inequality by normalizing racial stereotyping, as facilitated through TikTok’s “Use This Sound” feature. We found that users’ appropriations of sounds and visuals on TikTok, in combination with the platform’s lack of clear and transparent moderation processes for humorous content, reinforce and (re)produce systems of advantage based on race. Our article contributes to remediating the consistent downplaying of humor that negatively stereotypes historically marginalized communities. It also advances work on race and racism on social media by foregrounding the sonification of race as means for racism’s evolving persistence, which represents a threat to social cohesion.

The disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on minority groups: A social justice concern

This reprinted chapter originally appeared in Journal of Gerontological Social Work, 2020, 63[6-7], 580-584. (The following of the original article appeared in record 2021-00510-008.) Here in the U.S., and across the globe, humans are practicing "social distancing" to protect themselves and others from the effects of the COVID19 pandemic. However, social distancing has brought adverse side effects such as social isolation. Particularly, older adults are more vulnerable to this pandemic because they are experiencing extreme loss of physical, social, and psychological interaction, which is essential for their health and well-being, as well as they are at higher risk of morbidity and mortality from COVID-19. To make matters worse, older adults are witnessing family members suffer due to job loss and financial difficulties, which may increase the risk of mental health concerns. Fear and anxiety, stress and depression may result in maladaptive coping mechanisms where turning to alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs while staying at home becomes habitual. During this time, the direct impact and secondary consequences of COVID-19 disproportionately impacts older adults marginalized by sexual orientation, racial, economic inequalities, and/or disability. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

ALGORITHMIC DISCRIMINATION AND INPUT ACCOUNTABILITY UNDER THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACTS

The disproportionate burden of COVID-19 among communities of color and a necessary renewed attention to racial inequalities have lent new urgency to concerns that algorithmic decision-making can lead to unintentional discrimination against members of historically marginalized groups. These concerns are being expressed through Congressional subpoenas, regulatory investigations, and an increasing number of algorithmic accountability bills pending in both state legislatures and Congress. To date, however, prominent efforts to define algorithmic accountability have tended to focus on output-oriented policies that may facilitate illegitimate discrimination or involve fairness corrections unlikely to be legally valid. Worse still, other approaches focus merely on a model's predictive accuracy-an approach at odds with long-standing U.S. anti-discrimination law. We provide a workable definition of algorithmic accountability that is rooted in case law addressing statistical discrimination in the context of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Using instruction from the burden-shifting framework codified to implement Title VII, we formulate a simple statistical test to apply to the design and review of the inputs used in any algorithmic decision-making process. Application of the test, which we label the Input Accountability Test, constitutes a legally viable, deployable tool that can prevent an algorithmic model from systematically penalizing members of protected groups who are otherwise qualified in a legitimate target characteristic of interest.

Implicit Racial Bias Education and Healthcare Students: A Review of Current Practices

Purpose: Racial disparities in health are well-documented, underscoring the need for health equity education for future healthcare professionals. The goal of this literature review was to examine and describe the interventions, strategies, and an overview of the current evidence-based strategies for implicit bias education of future medical providers. Method: Guided by the exploratory question of discovering the ways Physician Assistant and Medical students are being taught about implicit racial (IR) bias, a search was conducted in PubMed, CINAHL, N1 -https://media.proquest.com/media/hms/PFT/1/JK72N?_a=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%3D%3D&_s=fnGKJ6NvZ5SGOajG7LW%2BQUF48wY%3D ERIC, and Google Scholar. Search terms reflected keywords about IR bias education strategies with an intervention and outcome, and PA or medical students within the last 10 years. Results: Of the dozens of peer-reviewed articles on this topic, 12 were chosen for inclusion. Despite heterogeneity in the study designs in this review, there is evidence that healthcare professional student’s exhibit implicit racial or ethnic bias. In both quantitative and qualitative measures, students and faculty consistently and overwhelmingly recognize the importance ofeducation on this topic. Conclusions: There are different types of successful strategies implemented for IR bias education. There is limited and inconclusive research evidence about the impact of IR bias on clinical decision-making due to difficulty in measuring this.

Inequality and Misperceptions of Group Concerns Threaten the Integrity and Societal Impact of Science

Racial and ethnic minority and lower-income groups are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards and suffer worse health outcomes than other groups in the United States. Relative to whites and higher-income groups, racial-ethnic minority and lower-income Americans also frequently express greater concern about high-profile global environmental threats like climate change, but they are widely misperceived as being less concerned about these issues than white and higher-income Americans. We use new survey research to explore public perceptions of COVID-19—another global threat marked by substantial racial, ethnic, and class disparities—finding a distinct pattern of misperceptions regarding groups’ concerns. We then discuss how these misperceptions represent a unique form of social misinformation that may pose a threat to science and undermine the cooperation and trust needed to address collective problems.

Introduction: Policies and Practices Shaping Long-Term Care: Between an Inclusivity Ethos and Service Delivery Realities

Long-term care (LTC) provision is diverse across Europe and more economically developed countries with input from different actors and agencies ranging from informal family carers, the state, and, increasingly, migrant workers. The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown an intense light on the LTC sector for all the wrong reasons: from high infection levels and death rates in care settings, mainly residential care (OECD, 2020), to evidence of failure to protect the LTC workforce with fragmented and contradictory guidelines and delays in or inadequate supplies of personal protection equipment and training (Reed etal., forthcoming). [...]Roland and colleagues highlight that the role of, and reliance on, informal care, whether implicit or explicit in national LTC policies continues to be essential. [...]Hussein examines racial inequalities in the UK’s health and social care work outcomes, including recruitment, work experience, and rewards.

Introduction

Overnight, public and communal installations of children's shoes appeared on the steps of governmental buildings and art galleries across the country. Critical inquiry into climate change and its impacts have taken off as interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary endeavors with activists, artists, and academics scrambling to make sense of what it means to be "living on a damaged planet" (Tsing et al., eds, 2017). Constituting what Chela Sandoval (2000) refers to as a "methodology of the oppressed," "a set of processes, procedures, and technologies for decolonizing the imagination" (68), the cultural forms included in this issue respond to the ways impending global impacts of climate change often lead to universalizing assumptions that promote colonialist power hierarchies and exacerbate, not eradicate, racial inequalities. Whether it is Betsy Huang's (2010) argument that Asian Americans can "retool" the genre, "providing different narratives lenses for revising generic imperatives and epistemologies" (102);Grace Dillon's (2012) observation that "Native slipstream thinking, which has been around for millennia, anticipated recent cutting-edge physics" (4);or Jayna Brown's (2021) assertion that "unburdened by investments in belonging to a system created to exclude [Black people] in the first place, we develop marvelous modes of being in and perceiving the universe" (7), there is a deep tradition of Indigenous scholars and scholars of color who understand how speculative fiction can illuminate the time and place of those who exist out of sync with settler temporality.

Do Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Savings and Job Loss during COVID-19 Explain Disparities in Housing Hardships? A Moderated Mediation Analysis

Despite the array of public programs offered to help households mitigate the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, many still needed to rely on savings, credit, or other assets to make ends meet. This reality may exacerbate existing social and economic inequities because racial and ethnic minorities often have lower access to assets and credit than white households. We use longitudinal national survey data to explore the extent to which different racial and ethnic groups experienced housing hardships during the pandemic, the role of liquid assets in mediating housing hardship, and whether job/income loss moderated the relationship among race/ethnicity, liquid assets, and housing hardship. We find that liquid assets significantly mediated the relationship between race/ethnicity and housing hardships and that the effect was stronger for those who lost jobs or incomes as a result of COVID-19.

Crashing without a Parachute: Racial and Educational Disparities in Unemployment during COVID-19

The burden of the COVID-19 pandemic has not been shouldered equally by American families. Black and Hispanic communities have been hit the hardest, with the pandemic often exacerbating existing disparities. Using nationally representative data, we assess the economic and public health effects of the pandemic among different socioeconomic groups and whether typical sources of protection from economic insecurity are uniformly protective across the U.S. population. Within these sociodemographic groups, we also explore differences by education and industry. We find higher levels of employment loss among Blacks and Hispanics, those without college degrees, and frontline workers. We also find evidence that individuals and families are facing mental health episodes and are turning to costly alternative financial strategies to cope throughout the pandemic.

Socioeconomic Status as a Risk Factor in Economic and Physical Harm from COVID-19: Evidence from the United States

We provide an empirical summary of the relationship between socioeconomic status and the economic and disease burden of the SARS-CoV2 pandemic in the United States. We rely on large-scale public data, including a zip code database we constructed from public records, to investigate the relationship between socioeconomic status and the risk of economic harm, COVID-19 infection, or COVID-19-related death. We find that low levels of education and income are associated with 1.3 to 2 times higher risk of economic harm and 2 to 3 times greater physical harm. Education and income have a similar effect size to racial and ethnic disparities, with many Americans of color facing worse outcomes. Using Gallup data to investigate potential mechanisms, we find that socioeconomic status is not related to preventative behavior like mask use but is related to occupation-related exposure, which puts lower-socioeconomic-status households at risk.

The Puzzling Persistence of Racial Inequality in Canada

This article examines the failure of Canadian public policy in addressing racial economic inequality directly. Our analysis contends that Canada's key policy regimes were established in the postwar era, when approximately 96 per cent of Canadians were of European descent. As a result, the frameworks, problem definitions and policy tools inherited from that era were never intended to mitigate racial economic inequality. Moreover, this policy inheritance was deeply shaped by liberal universalism, which rejected racial distinctions in law and policy. These norms were carried forward into the more racially diverse Canada of today, where they have steered attention away from the use of racial categories in policy design. As a result, racial inequality was not a central priority during major policy reforms to core policy regimes in recent decades. In theoretical terms, our analysis contributes to Canadian Political Development through a sustained consideration of the intersecting roles of ideational frameworks, path dependency and policy inertia.

Discrimination in lending? Evidence from the Paycheck Protection Program

We assess the role of race in loans made through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The PPP program, created by the U.S. government as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, provides loans to small businesses so they can keep employees on their payroll. We argue that the historical record and PPP program design choices made it likely that many Black-owned businesses received smaller PPP loans than White-owned businesses. Using newly released data on the PPP program, we find that Black-owned businesses received loans that were approximately 50% lower than observationally similar White-owned businesses. The effect is marginally smaller in areas with more bank competition and disappeared over time as changes to the PPP program were implemented allowing for entry by fintechs and other non-traditional lenders.Plain English SummaryWe find that Black-owned businesses received loans through the Paycheck Protection Program that were approximately 50 percent lower than White-owned businesses with similar characteristics. However, this difference in loan size shrank over time as more non-bank lenders such as fintechs were allowed to participate in the program and began approving PPP loans. Loan size differences were also slightly smaller in zip codes containing a larger number of bank branches. These results are consistent with prior research which shows lending discrimination by commercial banks against Black borrowers. It is also consistent with studies showing that greater access to and competition among banks and other lenders can reduce discrimination. In light of these results we recommend that policy makers account for existing racial inequalities within banking or other systems in their program design to produce more equitable outcomes.