You're listening to Disinformed, a mini series from There Are No Girls on the Internet. I'm Bridget Todd. Did you watch Saturday Night Live last week? If you did, you probably saw a skit a lot of people are criticizing for unfairly portraying Black folks and our hesitancy around the
COVID nineteen vaccine. In the skit, Daniel Caluya plays a black doctor trying to take evinced as a black cousins, aunties and uncles to get the COVID nineteen vaccine by offering the money, and none of them will do it. What about you? You know I can't take that vaccine. I am a Christian who told you Christians can't take the vaccine Facebook. Okay. So here's the problem. If we're going to talk about vaccine hesitancy in the black community,
we also need to be putting it in context. Our country has a deep and lasting legacy of medical racism where black folks were ignored or actively mistreated, and that
still has far reaching impacts today. So it's not difficult to understand why some black folks might be hesitant about vaccines and the medical field in general, and any conversation that does not include that reality as a necessary context is incomplete, and Furthermore, making black communities the face of vaccine hesitancy is not actually borne out by the data. Black folks are actually enthusiastic about the COVID nineteen vaccine. We're the fastest growing demographic to say that we would
like to get vaccinated. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that Black adults saw the largest increase in vaccine enthusiasm, with the portion of those who have gotten or say they will get the vaccine jumping to from just in December. And what about white vaccine hesitancy? According to Pew, white evangelicals are the least likely demographic to say they'll get vaccinated of the year round forty one million white evangelical adults in the United States, Around of them say they
will not get vaccinated against COVID nineteen. And yet we still make black folks the face of vaccine hesitancy. Despite COVID dispreport ortionately impact in the Black community and our enthusiasm for getting vaccinated, black folks are still getting vaccinated less. Black folks and Latinos are only about six as likely to have had the COVID nineteen vaccine. As their white counterparts,
according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. That's because right now, the real issue isn't hesitancy, it's equal access. An NPR study that you can find a link to in the show description found deep disparities in black communities when it comes to accessing the COVID nineteen vaccine. They found that in some states with lots of black folks, states like Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama, black and brown neighborhoods had fewer vaccine distribution sites, while few wider neighborhoods were
without one. Not to mention the fact that many vaccine registration portals require internet access, and Pew found that black households are less likely to own a computer. We've also seen white, wealthier folks jumping the vaccine line and misusing programs meant to vaccinate black, brown, and low income communities. I know here in d C where I live, people looking for vaccines had to get up early and keep refreshing the city's website in the hopes of getting an
open slot. And what if you had to work or deal with childcare. Not everybody has the ability to spend a few hours refreshing a website and the hopes of getting an open vaccine slot. The bottom line is blaming black hesitancy without any context for the black community's low vaccination rates is actually really harmful because it minimizes the importance of equal access to healthcare and instead shift the onus away from our medical institutions and puts it on
the choices of individual black people instead. I'm happy to say that I got my first dose of the Maderna vaccine. I was even happier to learn that it was developed by a team led by thirty four year old doctor Kismika Corbett, a black woman scientist who leads a team at the National Institute of Health. Here's what she told
CNN's Abbey Philip. There is a subset of people who just hasn't been listened to around their health issues and around you know, technology, really and at this point, I just I just felt like it was time for me to sit down and empathize with an entire group of
people who had been ignored. And I know it may not make for the most hilarious SNL skit, but when we talk about black folks and vaccines, I hope we can also make room to amplify the fact that this amazing black woman is a big part of the reason why we have one of the vaccines in the first place. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please help us grow by subscribing. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say Hi. We'd love to hear from
you at Hello at tangoi dot com. Dis Informed is brought to you by There Are No Girls on the Internet. It's a production of iHeart Radio and Unbust creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Tary Harrison is our supervising producer and engineer. Michaelamato is our contributing producer. I'm your host bridgetad. For more great podcasts, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. M m HM