There are a handful of takeaways from the New York Times’s piece on vaccine hesitancy among young black New Yorkers, but the most notable one is the natural outgrowth of the widespread left-wing belief of systemic racism.
The New York Times piece details the reasons several black New Yorkers have for declining to get vaccinated, most of which have to do with distrust in the government. It even quotes a local Black Lives Matter leader who, upon finding out that politicians were prioritizing minority neighborhoods for vaccinations, dismissively asked, “Since when does America give anything good to black people first?”
This question is not exactly surprising. The narrative of institutional racism has been pushed on the Left for years, particularly in higher education. That narrative intensified in June 2020, becoming the popular position among establishment media, the entertainment industry, and the Democratic Party. Over one year removed from the death of George Floyd, this liberal racial obsession has infected every aspect of public life.
It is only natural, then, that telling black people that the system is still racist would foster a distrustful attitude toward the government when it comes to vaccines. After all, why would you trust a government you have been told is racist to its core about anything, much less your own health and well-being?
You can add this to the list of drawbacks that come with pushing the fictional narrative of present-day systemic racism. Vaccine hesitancy among minority communities is simply another price to pay for those who want to use the narrative to gain political power.
