Dead on arrival—body after body flooding a local morgue in Hayward, CA, just outside of Oakland. These recent deaths at a convalescent home are attributed to the Coronavirus also known as the colonialvirus as it affects the poor, the vulnerable and colonized communities disproportionately to that of whites, the colonizer community.
The statistics on COVID-19 racial disparities are slowly appearing in numerous media outlets. However shocking for some, these statistics mirror the overall health of the African community.
In Alameda County, Oakland has the largest concentration of African people located there. According to the Alameda County Health Data Profile, an African child born in West Oakland is more likely to have 14 years less life expectancy than that of a white child born in the Oakland Hills.
One in 40 youth (10-17 years) in high poverty neighborhoods are incarcerated for mostly nonviolent offenses, compared to 1 in 200 youth in affluent neighborhoods.
African people have the highest rate of death from all cancers as well as from unintentional injury compared to anyone else in Alameda County.
These conditions are generally accepted as normal. They are the colonial reality faced by African people generation after generation after generation.
Oakland’s African community plight is summed up best in the pages of The Burning Spear, the revolutionary newspaper of the African People’s Socialist Party. Point 13 of the Party’s 14-Point Platform states in part, “our problems with housing—from the unavailability of decent and adequate housing for the majority of our people, to the dilapidated and vermin-infested housing we are forced to live in—are caused by colonialism. This is where our whole people are dominated and oppressed by a foreign and alien State power for the purpose of economic exploitation and political advantage.”
A recent article on homelessness in Oakland by The New York Times likened it to the conditions found in so-called third world countries.
Oakland’s homeless population has grown 47 percent since 2017. In 2017 the total homeless population was 2,761, and in 2019 it was 4,071. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, more than 65 percent of those homeless in Oakland are African people.
These are the conditions that have existed pre-COVID-19 in the African community, and are expected to deepen during this colonialvirus.
No one should be shocked by the newly revealed statistics of racial disparity related to COVID-19. No one should be shocked that the state of California is leasing two hotels at a cost of 2.1 million dollars per month to house homeless people in East Oakland to stop the spread of the virus.
The same state of California is offering hotel vouchers and free flights to frontline workers and others to oversee the homeless population herded into these makeshift homeless encampments.
There were no monies available to transform the economic reality for Africans before this crisis and there are no resources available now. The only money is for containing us, never for genuine economic development or reparations to African people.
The colonizers benefit from this parasitic arrangement they have set up at the expense of the colonized African community.
Colonized African workers must take power in our own hands! Point 1 of the 14-Point Platform states, “We want peace, dignity, and the right to build a prosperous life through our own labor and in our own interests.”
Join the African Revolution Today.
Contact us at apspuhuru.org!
