People of color can’t go back to ‘normal’ after COVID | Opinion
Updated Mar 15, 2021;
Posted Mar 15, 2021
“Normal” was white New Jerseyans having a median net wealth of $106,210 in 2016, while typical Black and Latinx residents of our state had $179, say Laura Sullivan, director of the Economic Justice Program at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, and Kiran Handa Gaudioso, CEO of the United Way of Northern New Jersey.
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As Americans and as New Jerseyans, we are emerging from a long, cold winter.
Our nation has lost more than 530,000 souls to the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to rage. Our state and national economies are reeling from unprecedented unemployment and small business losses. In the space of a year, our lives have been fundamentally altered.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is acknowledging that Black and Latino New Yorkers are receiving COVID-19 vaccines at far lower rates than white or Asian residents.
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The NYPD acquitted itself badly during the Black Lives Matter protests of last summer, beating protesters (often with Trek bikes) and barricading precincts all over the city behind metal barriers that choked off streets and sidewalks. (Many barricaded precincts persist in this assault on New Yorkers’ mobility months after the end of the protests.) This, after years of officers’ racial biases in traffic, bike and even “jaywalking” enforcement not to mention reckless driving by officers, as Streetsblog chronicled in an investigative series.