Building A Pro-Black World

Pro‐Black Actions That Health Justice Organizations Can Model

Amira Barger

Racial disparities in healthcare are killing Black people across the United States. People of color and other underserved groups have higher rates of illness and death across a range of health conditions. Before COVID‐19, 70,000 Black people died every year because of these compounded disparities. The pandemic exacerbated¹ this excess of Black mortality.² In 2020, Black people in the United States had a death rate that was one‐third higher than that of Latinx people and more than double that of White and Asian/Pacific Islander people.

If Black lives matter to the nonprofit sector, it must acknowledge and address these disparities and the preventable deaths that result from them. Marginal responses will not do, as these issues are not marginal, and communities are in crisis. Using available data,³ we can poignantly describe the problem, put it in context to expose and fix health inequities,⁴ and design actions to create a pro‐Black healthcare system.

Acknowledgment: A Vital Antiracism Tool

As examples in the next section will show, nonprofit healthcare institutions have ignored racial injustice for far too long and, consequently, have remained complicit in its continuation. Although the nonprofit sector is entrusted with walking alongside the “most vulnerable” communities, it remains capable of perpetuating harm thanks in large part to the sector's origins in saviorism, patriarchy, and white guilt and ...