Letter: Social justice commission refused to hear plea for equitable vaccine distribution to minorities

The COVID virus is no respecter of race or ethnicity, but its infection rate ravages Black and Hispanic communities at far higher rates that White populations. Black and Hispanic hospitalizations and mortality also occur at far higher rates than among White populations, but their life-saving vaccination rates are far below that of Whites.

The reasons are not a mystery. Black and Hispanic workers are more likely to work in essential services where transmission of the virus is more frequent, they often live in multi-generational homes, and have less access to health care.

Why the Prince William Health District and the Board of County Supervisors haven’t targeted desperately needed outreach efforts to save these vulnerable populations is, however, the real mystery.

The current majority on the Board of County Supervisors has not required the Health District to collect race demographics in the vaccination sites. The Health District lamely points the finger at everyone but themselves saying no one has told them to report on any of that information.

Meanwhile, the most vulnerable members of the Black and Hispanic communities in Prince William County remain trapped in a vaccine distribution system that fails to account for disproportionately higher infection rates, hospitalizations, and deaths in communities of color when they decide who gets that life-saving shot in the arm.

No one would have expected this would be allowed in a minority-majority community like Prince William County where even the Board of County Supervisors has a majority of minority members. Inexplicably, it is the Republicans on that Board who have spoken out the loudest to question why the problem exists.

The Board of County Supervisors appointed a Racial and Social Justice Commission precisely to examine how Black and Hispanic populations are being served by operations of government, and that surely would include how the COVID vaccine distribution system may be racially biased.

National data shows clearly that is exactly what is happening, and the daily news is full of reports of states, counties, and towns moving quickly to close the racial and ethnic gap in vaccinations and improve outreach programs. Vaccine sites at Black Churches, in low-income communities, and in targeted door-to-door vaccinations in communities of color are being used.

Innovative programs to serve and protect minority communities who are the most vulnerable that address the critical gap in the vaccination rates.

But none of that is actually happening here in Prince William County.

The Racial and Social Justice Commission heard a desperate plea at its last meeting to immediately recommend the Board of County Supervisors start using demographic data to identify inequitable vaccine distribution, target vaccines to communities of color who are most vulnerable, and act now to save the lives of Black and Hispanic residents who are being left behind in the inequitable vaccine distribution programs right here in Prince William County.

The Racial and Social Justice Commission refused to hear or act on that plea, and the Commission leaders and the individual Commissioners who themselves were appointed by minority members of the Board of County Supervisors specifically rejected the call to recommend any solutions and excused themselves saying their only mission was to make a formal report to the Board in December.

Sadly, that report will have to include a section on the number of body bags needed for the unnecessary deaths in the Black and Hispanic communities of color in Prince William County precisely because nothing was done, no voice was given to the forgotten communities of color, and why the Racial and Social Justice Commission chose to worship at the altar of the government bureaucracy instead of speaking out to protect their own community.

The Racial and Social Justice Commission was created to be the canary in the coal mine on unfair treatment, denial of essential government services to communities of color, and racial injustice in Prince William County. That Commission was formed to propose solutions to issues of injustice and racial bias.

In its first test to address a crisis of fairness and inequity that is sweeping across communities of color in Prince William County in a life and death issue, the Racial and Social Justice Commission sits silent.

Another colossal failure for which there is absolutely no rational or defensible excuse.

This post is written by Mac Haddow, an appointee to the Prince William County Racial and Social Justice Commission, and a White grandfather to three Black grandchildren.