Consider a recent story out of New York City, home to one of the most draconian coronavirus responses in the country.
A skirmish broke out on the Upper West Side at a popular Italian restaurant, Carmine’s, that seems to have hinged in part on the city’s recently implemented rule requiring diners to show proof of vaccination if they wish to eat inside.
According to reports, a brawl broke out between a hostess and several black patrons over this issue, three of whom were charged with assault and criminal mischief.
The women’s lawyers claim racism was at play, that the hostess allegedly used a racial slur and suggested the women were using fake vaccination cards, and that the hostess assaulted them.
The restaurant denied that story.
Black Lives Matter found the denial wanting.
Its New York chapter protested outside Carmine.
“Seventy-two percent of black people in this city from ages 18 to 44 are unvaccinated,” she said. “So what is going to stop the Gestapo, I mean the NYPD, from rounding up black people, from snatching them off the train, off the bus?”
Offensive as the comparison is, as recent images from Australia make clear, one could conceive of cops being forced into just such a position in the way of demanding papers or detaining people. The West has taken on a dystopic character in these last 18 months under the banner of public health.
Newsome didn’t stop there. She said: “We’re putting this city on notice that your mandate will not be another racist social distance practice. Black people are not going to stand by, or you will see another uprising. And that is not a threat. That is a promise. ... The vaccination passport is not a free passport to racism.”
The co-founder of the Black Women’s March, Kimberly Bernard, added: “We are serving notice on the mayor, on the governor, on the restaurant industry that we will not allow for you to use this pandemic, vaccination cards, and masks as another reason to be racist, to put us in prison—because there’s enough of us in there.”
Why is the disparity in vaccination rates significant? Well, it would stand to reason that if restaurants in New York, and perhaps businesses across the country, are going to be forced by the government to mandate that employees and patrons be vaccinated, then this burden will fall most heavily on blacks.
Given the relative vaccination rates among people of different races, how could mandates do anything but produce or sustain racial inequity between racial groups?
Disparate impact refers to judging, as the likes of Kendi do, too, whether a policy is discriminatory on the basis of outcomes, rather than intent—that is, if a policy is completely racially neutral, but leads to different outcomes for different people on the basis of race, it may be cast as discriminatory.
If vaccine mandates generate inequity—if they have a disparate impact—this presents a paradox for the left that on the one hand is devoted to an agenda of coercive coronavirus policies, but on the other embraces wokeism.
Either vaccine mandates are racist, or disparate impact isn’t evidence of racism.
The left can’t have it both ways.