Black, Hispanic, and Asian people make up more than 70 percent of New York City's essential workers, including transit, childcare, health care, cleaning service, and postal employees, according to this BuzzFeed News article on the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus on people of color in major cities.
Provost and Professor of Sociology Mary Osirim was among the experts BuzzFeed turned to to explore the issue.
From the article:
“Essential workers are absolutely more vulnerable,” Mary Osirim, provost and professor of sociology at Bryn Mawr College, told BuzzFeed News. “While there are certain professionals that are of every ethnicity and race in the country, it is also the case that many on the front lines are low-wage…low-status workers and they’re often very disproportionately African American and Latinx.”
Professor Osirim's research focuses on gender and development, economic sociology, immigration, race, ethnic relations, sociology of gender, and the family.