Covid-19 and the Black lives Movement

Quebec Black young adults faced increased economic hardship, social isolation, and disproportionately high infection and mortality rates from Covid-19.  Could their participation in the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement help them recover from the damaging psychological effects of the Covid-19 pandemic?

Professor Richard Koestner and Postdoctoral Fellow Anne Holding from McGill University worked with researchers at the Black Community Resource Center of Montreal, a non-profit community organization working to strengthen the English-speaking Black community in Quebec, to find the answer to this question.

Young Black English speaking Quebec adults were surveyed in July and December 2020 and questioned about their social functioning, well-being, and sense of achievement.  The results were quite nuanced, but one of the things that was concluded was that the Covid-19 pandemic did have a significant negative impact on English Speaking Quebec Black young adults, but the BLM events did not counteract these negative impacts.

To learn more about Professor Koestner and Anne Holding’s findings, you can watch their presentation on YouTube.