Why Our Teaching Assistant Employment Policy is a Racist, Not an Antiracist, Policy

For the past two semesters, the School of Public Health has implemented a teaching assistant employment policy by which applications are automatically rejected from people with health conditions that preclude them from going into the classroom because they are at increased risk for severe complications of COVID-19. If applicants are unable to work in-person in the classroom because of a health condition (or are just anxious about COVID-19 or about transmitting infection to vulnerable family members or other household members) and do not consent to working in-person, their employment applications are automatically rejected. The policy holds that they are simply ineligible for employment as a teaching assistant unless they agree to spend essentially 42 hours in the classroom (14 sessions at 3 hours each). Note that this policy was in place at the start of the current semester, at which time Massachusetts was experiencing the all-time peak of COVID-19 infection in the state. It is not difficult to imagine why people with certain health conditions would not be able or willing to attend class in-person.

While there was no intention, of course, to discriminate by race, anyone who works in public health knows that chronic health conditions are disproportionately prevalent among people of color. Overall, people of color are 1.5 to 2 times more likely to have a chronic health condition. Moreover, this racial disparity in chronic health conditions in also present in youth and young adults. Furthermore, there are marked racial disparities in many of the specific health conditions that put people at high risk of severe COVID-19 infection. 

For example:

  • "Blacks and American Indian/Alaska Natives have the highest current asthma rates compared to other races and ethnicities. In 2018, Blacks (10.9%) were 42 percent more likely than Whites (7.7%) to still have asthma."
  • People who are Black are 24 times more likely than people who are White to have sickle cell anemia. 

Therefore, a policy that automatically rejects employment applications from people who have certain chronic health conditions like asthma, diabetes, and sickle cell anemia is going to discriminate on the basis of race, even though that is not the intention.

I don't see any way that we can defend this policy against charges that it is a racist policy since it has the ultimate effect of discriminating on the basis of race.

In addition, it may be unlawful as it appears to violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. Having or not having a chronic health condition such as asthma or diabetes cannot be used as a criterion for employment. Prospective employers are not even allowed to question applicants about these conditions. Furthermore, once a health condition (technically, a disability) is disclosed, the employer must make a reasonable accommodation unless it would cause undue hardship. In this case, the employer can easily make a reasonable accommodation that would not cause undue hardship by simply allowing the teaching assistant to attend class virtually. The teaching assistant can fulfill all other responsibilities virtually and it is difficult to see how such an accommodation would be viewed as being "unreasonable." 

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