The Case for Reparations for the Color of COVID

Abstract

This essay first, surveys the data showing the many ways COVID generates starkly skewed adverse outcomes for vulnerable communities of color in the US, Brazil, and India. These discriminatory outcomes reflect long-standing socio-economic vulnerabilities and are in all likelihood replicated globally. Second, it argues that current plans to reform the global health regime in response to COVID do not as yet embrace changes to address the outcomes documented in the first part, namely, the ‘color of COVID,’ and explains why such reforms remain colorblind. Third, the essay connects the dots between arguments for and against reparations for African-Americans within the US, for the victims of slavery, colonialism and its legacies, and for generally for COVID’s victims. It concludes that the arguments for reparations on behalf of the victims of the color of COVID made by persons against their own governments are on the most solid ground politically and under international law.