“Unvaxxed are the new blacks,” opined one writer. This is ironic, too, because a disproportionate percentage of America’s unvaccinated are black. This means that under the logic of the Left and its “disparate impact” theory, the vaccine passports it’s currently pushing are racist.
In fact, one acting black mayor likens them to slave papers.
American Thinker’s Drew Allen reports on the story, writing that the “unvaxxed are the new blacks. As a matter of fact, many of the unvaxxed also happen to be blacks. The Kansas City mayor, Quinton Lucas, recently admitted as much in an interview with Face the Nation on CBS. Lucas, a black man, said, “Young men of color is a place where we have incredible weakness right now.”
Commentator Andrea Widburg buttresses the point with a series of headlines:
- “No, Black people, there is no white supremacist scheme behind the COVID vaccine“
- “CDC: Blacks and Hispanics still least likely to be vaccinated“
- “US Black and Latino communities often have low vaccination rates — but blaming vaccine hesitancy misses the mark“
- “Young Latino and Black people have the lowest rate of COVID-19 vaccination in L.A. County, new data show“
In fact, it was reported about six weeks ago (the stats likely have changed since then) that 40 percent of whites, but only 27 percent of blacks, have been vaccinated nationwide.
Nonetheless, beginning “the week of Sept. 13, unvaccinated blacks [and others] will be prohibited once again from dining in any establishment in New York City,” writes Allen. “NYC mayor Bill de Blasio made the announcement on Tuesday morning. ‘If you’re unvaccinated,’ de Blasio said, ‘unfortunately, you will not be able to participate in many things.’”
Yet an irony here is that as time progresses, we hear about more and more people suffering serious vaccine side effects and about how the COVID shots are ineffective against new virus strains such as the much reported Delta variant. So probability dictates that by September 13, the vaccines will have been even further discredited.
Another irony was pointed out by the Washington Examiner’s Timothy P. Carney. “Nobody could honestly suggest that de Blasio is trying to discriminate against black people with his vaccine passport rule,” he writes. “But according to the racial politics that the Left and the media are trying to cram down the nation’s collective throat, ‘Intentions in racism don’t matter. Impact does.’”
“There is no doubt that the impact of de Blasio’s rule is discriminatory,” he continues.
For background, the Left long ago conjured up the aforementioned “disparate impact” theory, which essentially states that if groups perform unequally on a test or based on some other standard, the yardstick in question is by definition unjustly discriminatory. This is the social-engineering rationalization that has been used, mind you, to strike down police and firefighter exams (and has given us 5’2”, overweight female cops). It’s why Barack Obama’s DOJ was able to sue the Pennsylvania State Police in 2014 for treating women equally.
As for de Blasio’s policy, Carney writes:
Here’s where it gets hairy: There are great racial disparities in vaccination rates in New York City, which means there will be a hugely disparate impact from de Blasio’s rules.
More than 47% of white New Yorkers are vaccinated, according to Bloomberg’s tracker, compared to 33% of black New Yorkers and just under 45% of Hispanics in the city.
That means that black New Yorkers will be barred from public accommodations at a far higher rate than will white New Yorkers. This is kind of an awkward policy.
“Non-governmental organizations — businesses and schools — are also demanding vaccines,” adds Widburg. “To name just a few, Pfizer, Microsoft, Facebook, Netflix, and Google, as well as colleges across America (whose students are statistically at minimal risk from COVID), are all mandating vaccines. Employees who refuse can be fired, says the EEOC. Again, this will disproportionately affect Blacks and Hispanics.”
“Likewise, the fact that the Biden administration is forcing troops to take the vaccine will disproportionately affect Blacks and Hispanics, who are disproportionately represented, relative to their numbers in the general population, in our armed forces,” Widburg continues.
And de Blasio’s policy, at least, doesn’t sit well with one fellow Democrat: Boston’s acting mayor Kim Janey, who recently became her city’s first black mayor. “‘There’s a long history in this country of people needing to show their papers,’ she said in apparent reference to ‘freedom papers’ freed slaves carried,” reports the Daily Mail.
“During slavery, post-slavery, as recent as you know what immigrant population has to go through,” the paper continued.
Janey’s comment about “immigrants” (read: illegals) is silly, and she is playing the race card. But famed socialist Saul Alinsky of Rules for Radicals infamy did counsel to make the “other side” live up to its own ideals. Janey is putting such pressure on her own side.
The bottom line is that the vaccine passport policy disrupts Democrat cohesion. As Widburg explains:
The Democrats, for much of the 20th century, represented the American working class. However, they built their latest political empire by targeting myriad special interest groups: Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, LGBTs, Muslims, Jews, the handicapped, etc. in addition to the reliable college-educated White voters. Despite Democrats’ paeans to diversity, though, the coalition’s disparate members often dislike each other. That schism is showing as Blacks and Hispanics realize that the vaccine passports that White Democrats are urging damage their communities.
How much this will matter come voting time remains to be seen — especially since you don’t have to worry about electoral wrath when you can just steal elections. But we are talking here about compelling people to take an experimental drug. And if forcing injections doesn’t lose elections, what will?
