Racism and inequity in the aftermath of natural disaster? You can count on it

“All you could hear was screams from people,” Chelsea Logue told a reporter from the Courier Journal the next day. She was standing amid the wreckage, searching in vain for the belongings she’d left in her car, which included her debit cards, Social Security card, and other essential identification. 

There were about 110 people working inside Mayfield Consumer Products (MCP) last Friday night, among them were currently incarcerated people who were participating in a work-release program. A corrections officer was among the eight people who died in the wreckage. 

The monstrous storm that introduced the people of Mayfield, Kentucky to the rest of world included 34 confirmed tornados across eight states, one of which traveled through four states for 227 miles, wreaking havoc across 200 miles of Kentucky alone.

There is much we don’t yet know about the full extent of the damage and death toll but there are some things we can reliably predict about what happens next.

First, is that white disaster victims will be more likely to receive federal aid than people of color—and in higher amounts—even when the level of damage is the same. Studies indicate that it is true both on the individual and community level. 

We can also reasonably predict that severe weather events are likely to increase, and the communities most vulnerable to their effects will continue to suffer disproportionately. 

Finally, an ongoing homogeneity crisis in disaster relief agencies will likely ensure that the inequities currently enshrined in disaster planning and response will not be improving anytime soon. “An overwhelming number of individuals designated as emergency managers are white males,” Curtis Brown, the emergency management coordinator for Virginia, told a Congressional committee in July 2020. “Diversity in emergency management will help to reverse the existing failure to enact equitable practices before, during and after disasters.”

Because disasters both reveal and amplify existing inequities in society, it is essential that everyone from policymakers, emergency personnel, agency leaders, to donors and particularly employers understand whose expertise to center when formulating their response to this and future crises. 

The experts who care about and understand the complicated lives of the kind of people who labor through the night for $8.00 an hour for a 10-12 hour shift—with frequent mandatory overtime—to make the candles we use to punctuate our tranquil spaces. 

People like Kyana Parsons-Perez, a 40-year-old MCP employee who filmed her horrifying plight on Facebook Live while trapped under five feet of debris. 

Or people like Deandre S. Morrow, 28, of St. Louis, Missouri, who was one of six people killed after a powerful tornado hit their Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Ill. “There, too, workers had been toiling in the midst of severe weather,” says New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie. “Had either of these groups of workers been empowered to say no — had they been able to put limits on work and resist unsafe working conditions — they may have been able to protect themselves, to leave work or miss a shift without jeopardizing their jobs.”

And that’s a change that can happen immediately. It doesn’t, or shouldn’t, take an act of Congress for employers to put the safety of their employees first. So, what are the odds of that?

Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com

This edition of raceAhead was edited by Wandy Felicita Ortiz.

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