For just one concrete example, I visited an AIDS ward in a Detroit hospital in 2017. Part of an entire floor was devoted to caring for people whose HIV disease had progressed to a full-blown illness no one should suffer from today.

Effective treatment exists to prevent HIV from progressing to illness, and to decrease the viral load so much that the person with HIV can’t pass it on to anyone else.

Often, treatment is as simple as taking one or two pills a day.

So what has this got to do with racism and a public health crisis? Every single person on that AIDS ward was Black.

They were being treated for life-threatening conditions, because they lacked access to routine healthcare.

While lack of health care is a problem that impacts all Americans, of course, Black people are more than just disproportionately affected.

Our entire system is designed to keep people of color down, and lack of access to healthcare is just one of the ways that happens.

Nowhere is that more evident than in an AIDS ward in a major American city.