Please don't overuse the word racism. Yes, a smaller percentage of black people in both the US and Canada are vaccinated. Yes they have very good reasons to be distrustful of government and institutions in general. It doesn't mean the vaccine distribution or enforcement is racist.

I am very much against the forced vaccinations of people, and I very much abhor what is happening in Canada (where I live) with the vaccine passports and the making of the unvaccinated second class citizens. But don't make the term racism a worthless term by using it for everything. It's counterproductive.

I say all this as a black Trinidadian immigrant that lives in Canada. I am vaccinated myself, but many black people I know are not.

I am not going to state here whether I think it would or would not be racist.

I am saying though, that if you unilaterally denied COVID care to non-vaccinated patients, that would be the equivalent of denying service to ~70% of "young black people," which would be easy bait for people calling that racist. Which is why the health system probably won't do it.

I understand what you're saying actually. I mean, if that hinders the enforcement of vaccination to exist in society, then I'm on board I guess. Even if I would prefer if people got vaccinated.

> Only 28% of black people in New York are vaccinated […]

This is not what the article you’ve cited says.

Whoops - It said young (whatever that means) as an adjective. I'll edit that in.

It means 18 to 44, according to the article.

AKA working age people that will have to choose eventually between getting the vaccine and losing their job. A pretty rough choice for those hesitant.

(I am vaccinated please don't post hot takes about how I am a anti-vaxer.)

Ah yeah, anti-vaxxers (I'm not calling you one) grasping at straws including calling the vax mandates racist because of the low vax uptake from Black people.

If it was a policy that's based on something that the Black people can't change about them (e.g. refusal to entry to a club based on your address, with majority black areas of town being in that list), and it disadvantages them, yes that'd be racist. But in this case, the Black people (or whoever) can easily change it by getting vaxed...

Racism by intent and racism by outcome are both racism.

Regarding the latter, it's not difficult to create a policy that's non-racist in construction, but has reliably racist results. Correlated parameters, etc. Whether anything can or should be done about it is a thornier question.

It's important to keep in mind that black people have very many reasons to distrust government.