Alabama’s Black Belt is in trouble, again

This is an opinion column.

A year ago, some folks at ProPublica noticed that most of the people audited by the IRS weren’t the ones with the most income to audit. In fact, what they found was that the less money you made the more likely you were to get an unwelcome knock on your door by the federal government. And they plotted where that was happening on a map.

It was the sort of map we in Alabama have seen many times, revealing a pattern as old at the state itself. This time the artist used hues of crimson because it’s difficult to draw a striking data visualization in the colors that best reflect what’s going on — black and white.

Where the IRS audits more — Note: Audit rates were calculated per 1,000 income tax filings, over the four tax years from 2012 to 2015. Rates were estimated using audit coverage rates published in the annual IRS Data Book in combination with county tax return data on the IRS website. Source: Kim M. Bloomquist, Tax NotesProPublica

It showed that someone living in Greene County, which is 80 percent black and has a median household income of $20,954, was about 50 percent more likely to be audited than someone living in Shelby County, which is 83 percent white and has a median household income of $74,063.

Greene County wasn’t alone. That familiar pattern stretched like an old wound across Alabama’s midsection— from the Mississippi line, through the state’s most fertile plains, and across to Georgia.

The Black Belt.

It was there that cotton once grew better than anywhere else. It was there that plantations sprung. It was there that a gruesome slave trade transplanted black people against their will. And it’s there that many of their descendants still struggle.

IRS audits and race shouldn’t have anything to do with each other, but that map showed that wasn’t the case.

When something bad happens in Alabama, it always seems to hit the Black Belt hardest.

And it’s happening again.

Mobile and Jefferson Counties lead the state in raw coronavirus cases, but look at a map of cases per capita, and you’ll see something else.

That same old map.

While Jefferson County has 21 cases per 10,000 residents, Lowndes County has 153.2.

While Mobile County has about 42.9 cases per 10,000 residents, Butler County has 154.8.

Those patients are showing up in regional hospitals, some of which are now on the brink of being overrun. On Wednesday, Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed warned that his metro area had only one free ICU bed and patients were being diverted north to Birmingham.

RELATED: Montgomery running out of ICU beds as coronavirus cases double in May

“Right now, if you’re from Montgomery, and you need an ICU bed, you’re in trouble,” he said. “If you are from Central Alabama, and you need an ICU bed, you may not be able to get one because our health care system has been maxed out.”

The region is leading the state in 7-day averages for new cases per capita, and Black Belt counties have the highest percentages of positive results of tests given in the last 14 days.

Percent positives has been used as a measure for whether enough tests are being given, the lower the better. The Black Belt’s percent positives are among the highest in the state. In the last two weeks in Choctaw County, more than a third of tests there have come back positive.

But numbers only tell so much of the story, like looking at this problem from six feet away doesn’t show you how big it is.

The best way is to see it from above — that old familiar map.

The places most likely to see the worst outcomes are the shortest on treatment, those in most need of help are having the most difficulty getting tested.

Unless the test is an audit by the IRS.

A map of IRS audits and maps of coronavirus data shouldn’t have anything to do with each other, but they do — they show infections will always exploit our wound that never healed.

Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group.

You can follow his work on his Facebook page, The War on Dumb. And on Twitter. And on Instagram.