Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, the first Black U.S. senator in Maryland’s history, dragged Robert F Kennedy Jr.’s history of racist pseudoscience to the fore during his confirmation hearing to lead the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday.
Kennedy’s history of pushing anti-vaccine claims, which he tried to distance himself from during his confirmation hearings this week, includes peddling the baseless conspiracy theory that “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
On Thursday, Alsobrooks asked Kennedy about a false claim he made in 2021 alleging Black people have “better” immune systems than white people and, for that reason, should have different vaccine schedules.
In the past, Kennedy has repeatedly referred to a study from the Mayo Clinic authored by Dr. Greg Poland as proof of his claims. But Poland has issued public statements saying Kennedy has mischaracterized his work. And as health news website Stat noted, there’s “no scientific evidence that the immune systems of Black people differ from those of white people.”
Watch the exchange:
Kennedy has targeted the Black community with dangerous anti-vaccine misinformation, including in a 2021 documentary he produced and during his failed 2024 presidential campaign, when he appeared on rapper Math Hoffa’s podcast.
Delegate Stacey Plaskett of the Virgin Islands publicly flayed Kennedy for his dubious efforts to spread anti-vaccine propaganda to and about Black people during a House hearing in 2023. She called out Kennedy for pushing anti-vaccine claims, despite having all of his children vaccinated (which he touted during his Senate testimony this week, though he stated in 2020 that he wished he could go back in time and not vaccinate them.)
Kennedy “tells the Black community and myself, a mother of five Black children, that I should really be careful and not necessarily have the same safeguards to protect my family, my children, from a virus that has killed millions of people, because I’m Black,” Plaskett said at the time.
Alsobrooks and Plaskett gave voice to the righteous rage of Black people offended by Kennedy’s dangerous and paternalistic guidance. And this rage stems from a knowledge of the ways race-based pseudoscience has been weaponized against Black people from the earliest days of American history.
In the United States, there is a sordid and well-documented history of medical racism, including white health officials denying health care to Black people, downplaying the severity of health maladies afflicting Black patients, and overestimating Black pain tolerance. This history is covered extensively in Dr. Uché Blackstock’s book “Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine.” (For more information on Blackstock’s health equity work, read past blogs I’ve written here and here.)
When you’re aware of this history, the outrage toward Kennedy makes perfect sense. His nomination, which has been denounced by several civil rights groups, is a threat to the Black community.