New York, May 24 (RHC)-- The U.S.-based Antiracist Research & Policy Center has helped launch a COVID Racial Data Tracker to document how the pandemic is devastating communities of color.  The site highlights how the pandemic has taken the lives of nearly 20,000 African Americans. 

While Black people account for 13% of the U.S. population, they have accounted for 25% of deaths during the pandemic.  

Ibram X Kendi, who heads the Antiracist center, said the tracker was needed because the federal government was failing to collect racial demographic data.  He said: “We felt it was necessary to build the most comprehensive data set available and make presentable for people to understand the racial disparities we’re actually seeing all over this country.  And hopefully people will use the tracker to recognize what communities are the most vulnerable in their states, and ensure that those communities are — policy is changing and those communities are receiving relief.”