Hit Hard By COVID-19, Black Americans Share Their Grief

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, as hospitals facilitated goodbyes over iPads and funeral homes buried dead without services, families were left with a uniquely isolating grief, devoid of the rituals that traditionally surround death. For Black Americans, who were 1.9 times more likely than white Americans to die of COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic, this stifled grief fits into a long history of unacknowledged pain. Dating back to slavery, when scientific journals claimed that Black people had higher pain tolerances, to now, as the maternal mortality rate for Black women is 2.9 times that of white women, Black Americans have long faced medical discrimination. The pandemic—and the racial justice reckoning that erupted after the death of George Floyd—only magnified many of the structural inequities that left Black Americans more vulnerable. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] In spring 2021, photographer Andrea Ellen Reed drove from Minneapolis, Minn., where she currently lives, to her hometown of Peoria, Ill., to capture photographs and long-form interviews with Black Americans in five Midwest cities who had lost family members to COVID-19. “You don’t always see stories about Black people in the Midwest,” says Reed, who wanted to document people and landscapes that were familiar to her. “There are some really powerful stories of everyday people that wouldn’t necessarily be told.” In May, the U.S. tallied its 1...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 freelance healthscienceclimate Photo Source Type: news