Fearing being mistaken for criminals, people of color shy away from homemade face masks

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that Americans wear face masks in public to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus and preserve medical-grade masks for hospital workers.

The CDC released guidelines and tutorials for how to make cloth masks out of homemade materials, including T-shirts and bandannas.

But some people of color say they won’t be wearing homemade masks for fear they could be perceived as criminals.

“We have a lot of examples of the presumed criminality of black men in general,” Trevor Logan, an economics professor at Ohio State University, told CNN. “And then we have the advice to go out in public in something that ... can certainly be read as being criminal or nefarious, particularly when applied to black men.”

Twitter user Aaron Thomas posted a tweet — which has more than 123,000 likes as of Wednesday — saying he wouldn’t feel comfortable wearing a handkerchief or anything that wasn’t “clearly a protective mask.”

Many Twitter users expressed their support for Thomas, some offering to send him protective masks and others sharing their own stories.

“I wore a nursing mask w a hat on and still got profiled,” one user wrote.

“I understand,” wrote another. “Everything is too hard on us. Nobody should be in impossible situations just trying to live, especially not during a public health crisis.”

“I’m not a man but I am black and when I wore my bandana for the first time the other day, I did notice that I was being looked at far more than others doing the same,” wrote another Twitter user. “It was unnerving to say the least.”

Thomas expanded on his concerns in a story for the Boston Globe.

Thomas wrote that he’d planned to cover his face with an old bandanna to run to the grocery store, but thought better of it, writing that for him, “the fear of being mistaken for an armed robber or assailant is greater than the fear of contracting Covid-19.”

“I know masks work, and I trust the CDC’s recommendation. What I do not trust are the innate biases and lack of critical thought about the implications of these decisions,” he wrote. “I do not trust that I can walk into a grocery store with my face covered and not be disturbed. I do not trust that I will not be followed.

“I do not trust that I will be allowed to exist in my Black skin and be able to buy groceries or other necessities without a confrontation and having to explain my intent and my presence. I do not trust that wearing a make-shift mask will allow me to make it back to my home.”

Jody Armour, a law professor at the University of Southern California, called the CDC’s directive “tone deaf from a racial justice perspective,” according to KTTV, adding that racism should be approached as a public health problem “that requires a public response and a public solution.”

Surgeon General Jerome Adams told CNN he’s working with the NAACP to address concerns over racial profiling and COVID-19.

“Health equity, and the complex interactions between race and health, have always been an area of emphasis for my office,” he said in a statement to CNN. “I understand the concerns communities of color would have about being racially profiled, and am working with the NAACP, the NMA, and other organizations representing people of color to ensure no one is unduly harmed by COVID-19, or our response to it.”

As some say they will eschew masks, preliminary research has found that black Americans are dying from COVID-19 at alarming rates, the New York Times reported.

Forty-three percent of people in Illinois who’ve died from COVID-19 are African Americans, the Times reported, but the group only makes up 15% of the state’s population. In Michigan, the group accounts for 40% of coronavirus-related deaths and only 14% of the population.

In Louisiana, a staggering 70% of people who’ve died from COVID-19 are African Americans, while the group accounts for only a third of the state’s population, according to the Times.

Researchers say they don’t know what’s causing the disproportionately high rates but believe inequalities in resources and access to health care could be to blame, the newspaper reported.

“These communities, structurally, they’re breeding grounds for the transmission of the disease,” Dr. Sharelle Barber, an assistant research professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Drexel University, told the Times. “It’s not biological. It’s really these existing structural inequalities that are going to shape the racial inequalities in this pandemic.”

This story was originally published April 8, 2020 at 10:40 AM with the headline "Fearing being mistaken for criminals, people of color shy away from homemade face masks."