On how President Donald Trump handled the pandemic, the 'All of Me' singer could not help but deem POTUS' words to the public 'so ridiculously dumb and so ridiculously selfish.'
- May 5, 2020
AceShowbiz - John Legend has credited the coronavirus pandemic for "exposing weaknesses" in America in terms of racial inequality.
Since the health crisis began, statistics have been released showing the death rates, with a recent study showing that black people living in New York are twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as white people.
And now "All of Me" singer John is weighing in on the shocking statistics in a new interview in GQ magazine.
"That's a fact here in America and I believe it's an effect of systemic issues that we've known were the case for a long time," he said. "First of all, black people are more likely to be poor in America. There's a wealth gap and an income gap. They're more likely to live in segregated neighbourhoods that have fewer services and are more crowded. They're also more likely to be treated differently when they go to the doctor. Black people's symptoms, our symptoms, are not taken as seriously in a lot of medical offices and hospitals."
He adds that "environmental racism" - "when poor neighbourhoods with less political power take the brunt of air and water pollution" - has led to a spike in the numbers of black children suffering from asthma.
"When you combine all of these pre-existing factors with the lack of access to health insurance that a lot of folks have, you see how a disease that is affecting everybody is affecting us worse," he continued. "And that’s what's happening. The crisis is exposing weaknesses in our system, and one of them is that we've treated black people unfairly for the entirety of our nation's history."
John has never made a secret of his dislike of U.S. President Donald Trump, and regularly slams the leader on his social media pages. Trump recently made a mockery of himself by alleging the injecting of disinfectant could help battle the virus, and the 41-year-old Oscar winner didn't hold back in his GQ chat.
"It's so ridiculous. It's almost like you can't believe it's real that we elected this idiot to be the president of the United States," he said. "The things that he says are just so ridiculously dumb and so ridiculously selfish and narcissistic at the same time."
