Last Updated on September 30, 2021 by BVN
Alex Reed and S. E. Williams
In the wake of the 2020 uprisings in response to the George Floyd murder coupled with the concerning and disparate impacts of COVID-19 on the Black community, municipalities, nonprofits, businesses, and industries jumped at the opportunity to publicly declare, “Racism a Public Health Crisis.”
Nearly two years after rising national tensions pushed the nation to the brink and elevated racial inequities to the forefront, beyond the declarations, the Racism as a Public Health Crisis Dashboard provides a view of what is changing/or has changed across California municipalities in this regard.
Have these organizations moved from rhetoric to action? If yes, what have they done, and what is the impact of their efforts? What municipalities or governing organizations made declarations but never followed through? The Racism as a Public Health Crisis California Map helps answer many of these questions.
What it shows
To date, nine counties, 15 cities, and three governing organizations have taken the initial step to declare racism and police violence as having a direct impact on the health, economic and educational outcomes of communities of color.
Mono, San Bernardino, San Diego and Santa Clara counties as well as the cities of Napa, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, San Luis Obispo and Long Beach translated their words into action by forming formal committees, appointing equity officers and enacting training programs in an effort to directly combat the problems laid out in their Racism Declarations.
Key findings
Among the revelations highlighted by this dashboard is firstly, nearly two years after the passing of many of these resolutions, the majority of California city and county officials have still taken no steps to formally address issues of inequality.
In conclusion
The dashboard allows individuals to view cities, counties and other governing organization that have made a declaration about racism as a public health crisis; the type of declaration offered (i.e., formal resolution or statement), the date of the declaration, a summary of what was stated, the steps taken post declaration if applicable type of declaration (formal resolution or statement), date of declaration, a summary of steps taken post declaration if applicable, an equity contact if assigned, and a link to the declaration.
The dashboard will be updated monthly. Follow this link to explore the “Racism as a Public Health Crisis” dashboard.
Alex Reed is a Project Manager for Black Voice News as part of the Mapping Black California team where she works at the intersection between data and storytelling, helping to build solid connections between content and consumers, providing research, data analysis and creative services to Black Voice News and its partners.
Header photo: George Floyd protest downtown Riverside, June 2020. (source: Saida Maalin)