The ideals of contemporary democratic society are marked by a marked contradiction, characterized by the coexistence of diametrically opposed ideas. More specifically, the public recognizes and promotes a philosophy of diversity expressed, among other things, through people’s racial differences. On the other hand, an emphasis on an individual’s ethnicity can be seen as racist, and therefore the new ethics recommends careful attention to words. While recognizing the critical importance of discussing racial differences, special attention should be paid to the shortcomings associated with a strict categorization.
To concretize the study, a current journalistic article in The New York Times was chosen to highlight racial inequalities in the context of pandemic vaccination. Expressly, the authors acknowledge that communities of color have a double negative social effect, expressed both through the low availability of medicine at critical times and the unequal distribution of vaccines (Walker et al., 2021). On average, they say, the number of vaccines available to blacks is half that of whites, with an even more significant gap for Hispanics. Nevertheless, serious problems are noticeable with the strict identification of individuals as members of certain racial groups.
In particular, jurisdictions in each state have slightly different definitions of ethnic families, which in turn creates problems with accurate statistics. On the other hand, the apparent problem in this context can be seen in the purpose of such identification. The cultural segregation of the Black population is a source of the low availability of medicine, which means that the initial division of society into Blacks and Whites has negative consequences for the absorbed culture. Most likely, if American society’s model were represented by an idealized form of melting pot assimilation, then every individual would have an equal chance of receiving the vaccine. However, in the current state of the health care system and the socio-economic policies of the government, as well as the cultural subconscious of the nation, communities of color cannot claim the level of comfort that Whites have traditionally enjoyed. Herein lies the answer to why the ethnic categorization of individuals may be the wrong strategy for societal development.
Reference
Walker, A. S., Singhvi, A., Holder, J., Gebeloff, R., & Avila, Y. (2021). Pandemic racial disparities persist in vaccine rollout. The New York Times. Web.