One of the great tragedies of COVID-19 is the disproportionate impact it’s had on the Black or African American community.
According to state officials, despite being only 14% of Michigan’s population, Black people make up 30% of all coronavirus cases and 40% of COVID-19 related deaths.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said she believes those numbers are because of uneven health care delivery and signed an Executive Directive to develop rules to require implicit bias training for health professionals to address racial disparities.
The governor’s task force said people of color suffer in medical settings from the unconscious bias by medical professionals.
She turned to Dr. Randolph Rasch, Dean and Professor of the Michigan State University College of Nursing, who spoke extensively about what implicit bias is. Rasche said it’s an evolutionary human self-defense mechanism, but “because it is so frequently associated with race, it has the implications of thinking that we’re accusing someone of being racist. The key is that it is unconscious.”
Implicit biases also deals with weight, gender and even how attractive someone is.
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