How Racism Kills

A conversation with Harvard social epidemiologist Nancy Krieger

A patient describes her symptoms at a mobile Covid-19 testing station in Compton, California, just south of Los Angeles, on April 28, 2020. Photo: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

Racism is deadly.

This is apparent when police kill unarmed people of color such as George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. But the lethality of systemic racism is also evident in the Covid-19 pandemic, which is killing African Americans at a staggering three times the rate of white people.