During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, news headlines across Britain raised the alarm over the disproportionate rate at which Black and Asian people were dying. Broadcasters were quick to imply that biological or even genetic vulnerabilities were at work. For New Scientist journalist Layal Liverpool, a discomfort with this explanation became the springboard for a much more comprehensive investigation into how the social category of race has been misunderstood by medical institutions.
Globally, people of colour are more likely to die while giving birth, but they are also more likely to die while being born, or soon after. And despite a similar incidence rate for breast cancer across racial lines, the death rate is 41 per cent higher for Black women than for white.
