Black America Is Vaccinated at 10% Higher Rate Than Whites And 5% Greater Than Latinos Photo: Florida International University student Rico Rozier gets the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a site on campus, Aug. 24, 2021, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)
Despite efforts by GOP politicians to blame the recent spike in covid cases across the country on Black America, Black America is actually getting vaccinated at a higher rate than other demographics, according to an NBC News poll.
Early on, vaccinations were lagging among Black people, but they are now getting vaccinated at a rate 10 times higher than whites and 5 percent higher than Latinos, the report said.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick claimed during a recent interview that Black people are the most unvaccinated Americans.
This isn’t so, according to the NBC News poll which found 76 percent of Black respondents said they were vaccinated compared with 66 percent of white and 71 percent of Latino respondents.
Of the unvaccinated Americans, 57 percent are white, while 20 percent are Hispanic and 13 percent are Black, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Still, some are trying to blame Black America for the recent increase in covid cases. Black people have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic for a variety of reasons including underlying health conditions, a lack of adequate health care and being more apt to work in frontline jobs as essential workers.
Covid is spreading, particularly among the unvaccinated, “and the Democrats like to blame Republicans on that,” Republican Lt. Gov. Patrick said during an Aug. 19 Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham. “Well, the biggest group in most states are African Americans who have not been vaccinated. The last time I checked, over 90% of them vote for Democrats.”
Black Republican gubernatorial candidate Allen West, former head of the Texas GOP, called the remark “unconscionable, utterly disturbing, and highly insulting,” although he admitted that he had not been vaccinated.
Patrick revised his statement a day later by posting on Facebook that he was referring to vaccination rates, not the overall number of unvaccinated Black people.
“Not surprisingly, Democrat social media trolls were up late misstating the facts and fanning the flames of their lies,” Patrick’s statement read. “Federal and State data clearly indicate that Black vaccination rates are significantly lower than White or Hispanic rates.”
Lisa Andrzejczyk @Ligaleagle tweeted, “Well, looks@like it is not Black people@that are the problem, @DanPatrick”.
Ladybug 53.5 @ladybugdink tweeted, “So rural white Evangelical males are the problem?”
In Texas, 44 percent (about 10.7 million people) of those eligible for the vaccine are unvaccinated. White people make up the largest portion of this total with about 6.2 million (roughly 53 percent) unvaccinated, according to data from the Texas Department of State Health Services.
Hispanics make up the second-largest group with 4.7 million people, 44 percent of eligible unvaccinated Texans, followed by Black Texans with 1.8 million eligible unvaccinated people, about 17 percent, Politifact reported.
These numbers hold true for the U.S. at large.
As of Aug. 13, 72 percent of the adult population in the U.S. have received at least one dose of a covid-19 vaccine. But while white adults account for the largest share (57 percent) of unvaccinated adults, Black and Hispanic people remain less likely than their white counterparts to have received a vaccine, according to the CDC.
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