“How much would it be worth to a young man entering upon the practice of law, to be regarded as a white man rather than a colored one? Six-sevenths of the population are white. Nineteen-twentieths of the property of the country is owned by white people. Ninety-nine hundredths of the business opportunities are in the control of white people … probably most white persons, if given a choice, would prefer death to life in the United States as colored persons. Under these conditions, is it possible to conclude that the reputation of being white is not property? Indeed, is it not the most valuable sort of property, being the master-key that unlocks the golden door of opportunity?”
- Albion Tourgeé, Lawyer for Plessy in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), as cited in “Whiteness as Property” by Cheryl I. Harris[1]
In January 2021, a public health scandal gripped the city of Philadelphia. The 22-year-old CEO of Philly Fighting COVID (PFC), the private entity contracted by the city to carry out its first mass vaccination clinic at the Philadelphia Convention Center, was seen leaving the site with doses of the new COVID-19 vaccine. Snapchat pics later emerged of him vaccinating himself and his friends[2]. He was not a healthcare worker, nor was he eligible for the vaccine. As Nina Feldman – the investigative reporter at WHYY – described in her podcast series “Half Vaxxed,” “these first doses were like liquid gold.” The question remains today. How did the sixth largest city in the U.S. entrust its first COVID vaccination drive – this liquid gold – to a young white man with essentially no healthcare experience?[3]
The answer to this question is complex. In this piece I unpack why the city had chosen Andrei Doroshin and his startup over Dr. Ala Stanford, a Black female pediatric surgeon, and her nonprofit, Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium (BDCC). In a city full of healthcare systems, the Department of Public Health faced two large issues with the vaccine rollout. One, they needed to vaccinate healthcare workers who were not affiliated with any of the large hospital systems in the city. Two, the city needed to address long standing disparities in access for Black and Brown Philadelphians. Of the many groups that had expressed interest in running the city’s vaccination efforts for unaffiliated healthcare workers, PFC and BDCC stood out (Temple, Drexel, Jefferson, and Penn were focusing on their own employees). Both groups were founded in the first few months of the pandemic. Both had been testing Philadelphians under city contract. Both had promised to reach out to the Black and Brown Philadelphians most affected by the pandemic. But where PFC was composed largely of student volunteers, Dr. Stanford’s team had more experience, vastly more trust, and an actual record of success with the Black and Brown community. It is not a question that the city’s selection of PFC was a prime example of racism. What I want to show instead – drawing upon critical race theorist Cheryl Harris’ work – is how whiteness, as a valued form of property, made Andrei Doroshin the recipient of the city’s liquid gold.
The initial process of vaccine distribution in the U.S. was complicated. The federal government allotted vaccine doses to the city, which had exclusive control in deciding how much to give vaccine-administering entities. Each individual administration site, however, needed to apply directly to the CDC “for authorization to receive and administer the vaccine,” according to the Philadelphia Inspector General’s investigation into the debacle. The city administered this application process, checking the medical license of the Chief Medical Officer of each applying entity and ensuring that they had access to cold storage. There was no further vetting by the city, and Dr. Caroline Johnson, then deputy health commissioner, determined vaccination distribution numbers “on-the-fly.” The department of Public Health decided to not administer the vaccine themselves, relying instead on external partners.
On the one hand, there was a formal process for finding, selecting, and funding external partners. The City issued a request for proposal (RFP) late in December to interested parties. The deadline was January 22nd, 2021, after which the city would decide which external partners would receive funding to administer the vaccine. On the other hand, there was a gray area if a potential external entity did not seek funding to administer the vaccine, merely the vaccines themselves. Since summer 2020, Andrei Doroshin had been expressing his interest in running vaccination clinics to the Department of Public Health. When Dr. Johnson started the vaccination advisory committee in the fall to prepare the city for Federal vaccine distribution, she put Andrei Doroshin on the committee. Separate from the RFP process, the City reached out to PFC in late December to run a “pilot” vaccination clinic in January. Andrei Doroshin jumped at the opportunity, and because the city didn’t pay PFC anything, there wasn’t an official contract or agreement. PFC found the space and volunteer labor, the Department of Public Health brought the vaccines and their tacit endorsement of the operation.
On January 8th, the pilot PFC vaccination clinic opened to much fanfare at the Philadelphia Convention Center with Mayor Kinney and Dr. Johnson opening the event, both stressing the need for vaccine distribution to be equitable. While the first weekend went well, things quickly unraveled in the following weekends. The sign up links were widely shared, leading to the vaccination of folks who were not eligible, according to CDC’s guidelines. Reports of people calling their family and friends to come get remaining doses when the clinics were closing began to surface. Questions started pouring in about PFC’s vaccine pre-registration website, where the privacy policy contained language that authorized the selling of people’s information. PFC had also quietly created a for-profit arm called “Vax Populi,” which was the entity that signed the contract with the Philadelphia Convention Center to use it for the vaccine clinic. Questions from the press flooded the Department of Public Health after the January 23rd clinic, where Andrei Doroshin was seen leaving with vaccine doses, and two days later, then health commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley announced that the city was severing their relationship with PFC.[4]
This story dominated the news cycle for the ensuing weeks, climaxing with the resignation of Dr. Johnson on January 30.[5] It emerged that Dr. Johnson had sent Andrei Doroshin, on December 31st, an email with the vaccine program RFP that read,
This RFP will be posted on the city’s website soon, but here is an advanced copy. Please submit a budget for about $500,000 to start. This is being funded by the City initially. We are hoping that significantly more funds can be awarded if Congress ever passes the covid relief bill, but we need to start conservatively. It is fine to include costs for your planning activities and the proposed Jan 8-9 event.
The whole point of a bidding process is to ensure that the city receives the most competitive proposal, one that delivers the most service for the least cost. This is a crucial mechanism for those who advocate for fiscal responsibility in government spending. Outsourcing government functions to the private sector allows multiple entities to compete to do the same work, incentivizing bidders to cut down the cost. While the city is not beholden to the lowest bid, telling a potential bidder a budget to aim for negates this possibility of competition driving the cost down.[6] While Dr. Stanford also received a similar email outlining a scope, their email did not include the last sentence regarding the Jan 8-9 event, because the city had already chosen PFC as their partner for the “pilot” clinic. According to communications director James Garrow, these emails were inappropriate because they contained information that was not available to all potential applicants. Dr. Johnson resigned in the wake of this revelation, and as Nina Feldman noted in her podcast, the City had found someone to shoulder the blame.
Following this, the Department of Public Health organized another clinic to give those who had already been vaccinated by PFC their second dose. That they were able to do so raised the question of why the city hadn’t just distributed the vaccines themselves in the first place. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) came in subsequent months to help the city distribute subsequent vaccine allotments.[7]
“Half Vaxxed” offered two explanatory hypotheses. The first being that Andrei Doroshin received some inside help from a City Council member. WHYY’s investigations uncovered some curious introductions, but nothing that suggested a quid pro quo or some undue political pressure on the Department of Public Health. That left their second hypothesis: incompetence. The inspector general found several structural issues that prevented PFC from being properly vetted. One, the commissioner took a hands off approach and delegated testing to one group within the department and vaccination to another. Two, there was little communication between the two groups, so all the red flags identified by the testing group, such as PFC’s abysmal racial data collection rates, were not passed onto the vaccination group. Three, because the department didn’t fund the January PFC vaccination clinics, there were no contracts in place. The CDC approved PFC as a vaccine provider, and the city gave them doses. As Nina Feldman put it, “the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing, and the leadership was so desperate for a plan that it took some ill-advised shortcuts … strik[ing] up contractless handshake agreements with promising young companies who are offering to do vaccination for free.”
But there is another explanation: white supremacy. By white supremacy, I don’t mean the highly visible kind that explicitly avows racial hierarchy and uses both physical and symbolic violence to maintain it. I mean the ordinary, invisible assumptions about who is to be entrusted as well as the continued disparity of multiple health measures – from vaccination to COVID death rates – between races. The latter are facts that everyone cites and recites. COVID disproportionately impacts communities of color. We just never invert it: our society and healthcare system disproportionately protects whites. Should you subscribe to Occam’s razor, this is the simplest explanation of why a blonde-haired blue-eyed young man would be picked over a Black woman with both experience and expertise.
Yet the explanation involving the fewest assumptions also gives us the least purchase when it comes to figuring out how to address the problem. The phrase structural racism has gained traction in recent years, but precisely what constitutes the “structure” seems to be unclear. Many understand the phrase to indicate scale: something large, historical, enduring, permanent. Difficult to address. Amorphous. In medicine it has been been framed as cognitive bias, a mental discrimination against people of color and a simultaneous preference for white folks. As Dr. Stanford explained to Nina Feldman, “I think some of it was just comfort, you know, and I don’t know that people will openly admit or say that, but some people are just more comfortable working with white men. He was familiar; he looked like someone’s son, he looked like someone’s nephew, and you know, that’s why.” This is bolstered by the pervasiveness of what Black feminist scholar Moya Bailey[8] calls misogynoir, “the uniquely co-constitutive racialized and sexist violence that befalls Black women as a result of their simultaneous and interlocking oppression at the intersection of racial and gender marginalization.” Structure, however, is more than an enduring bias. It is constituted by tangible parts of society: practices, relationships, and customs. These are the specific mechanisms by which individualized racial bias produces material and monetary effects. It’s not just that Andrei Doroshin got the “master-key that unlocks the golden door of opportunity,” he got the key to the “liquid gold” itself.
This is an extension of what Du Bois[9] called the “public and psychological wage” of racism: the benefits, privileges, and protections conferred by whiteness. Where your capitalist boss won’t give you actual monetary compensation for your labor, you can at least take comfort in that your skin color elevates your status, granting you access to things that Black folks are excluded from. The “Separate but Equal” world of Jim Crow South is a familiar example, but redlining practices in the “Free North” provides a similar comfort to whiteness, one that is both psychological and monetary. So what structures of structural racism helped Andrei Doroshin access this “liquid gold?”
Americans jealously guard their financial information, and Andrei Doroshin was no exception. When prompted by Nina Feldman for the January vaccine clinics’ funding source, he evaded the question. It would later emerge that the clinics were funded by a mixture of donations, loans (including his student loans), and private investments that totaled over $250,000. His father, a real estate developer, supported his son’s dreams in other ventures that preceded and followed PFC. Generational wealth is the capital that allowed Andrei to bankroll his start-up. Why wouldn’t an underfunded Department of Public Health take his money? This is not to say that only white people can do this, but in a country where most of the capital is controlled by whites, it is much more likely for a white young man to be in a structural position to take on this venture, even when things are decided at random.
Andrei Doroshin revered Elon Musk, who has similar access to familial wealth. But that is not sufficient. He would’ve spent down his inheritance. What keeps the money flowing is credit, and whites Americans on average have higher credit scores than Black Americans[10]. Whiteness begets money. The “comfort” that Dr. Stanford talked about isn’t just with you and me. Banks and angel investors have the same predilection for “comfort.” Once upon a time, this literally meant whites could get loans where Blacks couldn’t. In today’s “colorblind” world, one’s generational wealth gives banks the comfort and reassurance that they will get back their money (with interest). Investors, who are mostly older white men, have an affinity with their younger counterparts that they rarely share with those trapped below the glass (or bamboo) ceiling. Whiteness literally confers value. On August 8th, 2022[11] The New York Times ran this article: “Home Appraised With a Black Owner: $472,000. With a White Owner, $750,000.” The Black Owners were Dr. Nathan Connolly and his wife, Shani Mott. Dr. Connolly is a history professor at Johns Hopkins and an expert on racism and capitalism. After being denied a refinance loan because their house was valued at $472,000, Dr. Connolly removed family photos and had a white male colleague, also a Johns Hopkins professor, meet a second appraiser. The second appraiser valued the house at $750,000. Cognitive bias doesn’t translate to just better bedside manners. It can quite literally bring you hundreds of thousands of dollars. Whiteness gives you credit, and not just the citational credit where institutions parade token model minorities around to show how anti-racist they are. This is real money.
As far as I know, Andrei Doroshin wasn’t a homeowner. He, however, owned a non-profit (PFC) and a for-profit (Vox Populi) that allowed him to secure private investors. But money alone is insufficient. There were plenty of others who sought the same relationship with the city. This is where the city’s support and encouragement of Andrei Doroshin was so curious. Andrei Doroshin started PFC in April 2020, manufacturing face shields for local hospitals with volunteer labor from fellow students and local nurses. In June 2020, after obtaining testing kits from Quest Diagnostics, he set up shop at the Fillmore theater in Fishtown to offer testing. It was there that he was discovered by the Health Department’s Chief Testing and Surveillance Officer. The officer lived in the Fishtown neighborhood, one that is over 80% white. This employee reached out to PFC and later encouraged them to apply to the RFP for COVID-19 testing contract. Because PFC had already set up a testing operation, the Department of Public Health approved of PFC’s testing site proposal and awarded the entity up to $194,234[12].
In the following months, the part of the Department of Public Health charged with testing (The Containment Group) would experience some issues with the group, including timesheet submission and record keeping. These did not deter Andrei Doroshin, who began actively soliciting meetings with the Department to discuss vaccine distribution in August. Members of the testing team connected him to Dr. Johnson, who led the vaccine team. When Dr. Johnson formed a Vaccine Advisory Committee in September, she invited Andrei Doroshin to join. As the state and city’s vaccination plan was formulated in October and November, it was decided that a portion of the vaccine would be set aside for the approximately 18,000 healthcare workers who are not directly affiliated with hospitals. With Andrei Doroshin actively seeking an opportunity to run a vaccine clinic and the lack of formal communication with other potential providers, the department reached out to him on December 23, 2020 to discuss a “pilot” vaccination event, leading to the setup of the January 8th clinic at the Philadelphia Convention Center.
The speed of this timeline and the informal nature of communication and partnership – when no other potential providers were given this opportunity – suggests a preferential bias. The division between the testing group and the vaccination group meant that none of the red flags identified by the testing group made their way to (or was not taken seriously by) the vaccination group led by Dr. Johnson. Yet, Andrei Doroshin didn’t come with references or qualifications to recommend him for the opportunity either. That he was given the opportunity speaks to the default assumptions about white men – trustworthy, competent, and comfortable – in the absence of evidence to prove it. Dr. Johnson gave him the opportunity to participate, advised him, spoke to his private investors to assure them that PFC would receive vaccine doses, and didn’t take the time to vet him and PFC thoroughly. Ironically, even though PFC aimed to address equity, the reason why the organization even appeared on the Health Department’s radar in the first place was because PFC was doing work in a white neighborhood where the Chief Testing and Surveillance Officer lived.
These passes and privileges stand in sharp contrast to how Dr. Farley first viewed the Black Doctors COVID-19 consortium. When pressed by City Council members at a May 2020 budget hearing about why the department is not funding the organization that has the Black community’s trust and a robust record of testing, Dr. Farley said, “It wasn’t like they’re the only organization out there offering testing to African American populations in the city.” A few days after the hearing, George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin, prompting worldwide protests. A few weeks later, Farley awarded Dr. Stanford’s group their first testing contract[13].
PFC wasn’t the only group asking about the vaccination clinic. Dr. Ala Stanford, who is also on the Vaccine Advisory Committee, inquired but was asked to wait for the formal application for funding. She was told that the earliest time would be February, and so when the city announced the PFC vaccine clinic in early January, she was caught off guard. What is the simplest explanation for why one group was asked to wait while the other was shepherded through the fast track?
Aside from money and inside help, there is one more structure that created this bias. It was the hope that entire groups of people placed in Andrei Doroshin and his vision. Healthcare provider volunteers eagerly responded to PFC’s call (largely on Instagram) for the testing and vaccination clinic, hoping that this new energy would make a difference.
Debbie Flamholz, a nurse who started working for PFC in summer 2020[14], recalled: “I was clutching to these kids who were like the cusp of something new.” When she saw the group’s struggles, like potential HIPAA violations when strong winds at the testing site would blow away pieces of paper with patient information, she thought she could help the group with her clinical experience. Even after she heard that she was fired from the group for asking too many questions – no one actually came to her and said she was fired – she still had faith: “I still have this, like, feeling in my heart that we had a chance to do something really good for the community.” Dr. Jose Torradas, EM doctor and Penn Med graduate, served as the group’s Chief Medical Officer for the CDC’s application. “It’s Philly at its core, right? These undergrads, these people that you would never think that necessarily would be able to stand up what they’re doing and they’re doing it. So the underdog story was pulling at me and when I would describe it to people, that’s what it was.” Andrei Doroshin used the word “sprezzatura” to describe the ethos of PFC. As Dr. Torradas understood it from Doroshin, it was basically, “fake it till you make it.’…exude supreme confidence, that even if you’ve never done this before, you make it seem like you’ve done it a thousand times.” But as with any performance, you needed an audience to buy what Andrei Doroshin was selling. Despite some reservations, Dr. Torradas stayed with the group until January 4th, when he discovered the uncertain corporate structure of PFC. Faith in this young white man and his vision, despite Andrei Doroshin’s lack of professionalism and qualification, lent PFC the legitimacy it desperately needed. Returning to the idea of comfort, it was the emotional investment in this narrative of the “whiz (white) kid” that supported Andrei Doroshin, that made him the presumptive recipient of the “liquid gold.”
To me, the lessons learned from this episode aren’t as straightforward as adequately funding public health departments so that they don’t need to rely completely on the private sector – or even that it’s necessary to properly vet potential partners and put additional regulations and guidelines in place. While important, these do not address three specific components of racism’s structure: the inequitable distribution of capital and connections, the preferential assistance and connections available to white folks, and a biased emotional investment in whiteness, its presumed trustworthiness, and its ability to change the world for the better. These factors cannot be reduced to individual cognitive bias. An awareness of individual bias does not change familial circumstance, segregated professional networks, or the widespread emotional faith in the purity and ingenuity of whiteness – a faith that led well meaning people to trust, assist, and excuse someone like Andrei Doroshin. He was ordered by the court in February 2022 to dissolve Philly Fighting COVID[15], but without addressing these specific components of structural racism, another Andrei will arise in the next emergency.
I opened this piece with UCLA law professor and critical race theorist Cheryl Harris’ citation in her foundational paper in the Harvard Law Review, “Whiteness as Property.” Her argument is complex, but it forces us to reckon with the society we live in. It is one which accrues material benefits and opportunities to whiteness. As she writes, “the set of assumptions, privileges, and benefits that accompany the status of being white have become a valuable asset … Whites have come to expect and rely on these benefits and over time these expectations have been affirmed, legitimated, and protected by the law.” This is not merely a charge for those who are white to “check their privilege,” but a call for everyone to consider how they are part of the relational networks and belief systems that maintain whiteness as a “treasured property,” a tangible asset. Andrei Doroshin had these assets, but it’s not about him. It’s about how society creates the structural position that he occupies, a position to which “liquid gold” will always flow. To be anti-racist, then, is to deconstruct the material connections and faith in whitness that allowed the sixth largest city in the United States to be swindled by a 22-year-old white man.
[1] Harris, Cheryl I. 1993. “Whiteness as Property.” Harvard Law Review 106 (8): 1707–91.
[2] Murrell, David. 5/1/2021. The Bizarre, Infuriating Story of Philly Fighting COVID’s Meteoric Rise and Swift Fall. Philadelphia Magazine. https://www.phillymag.com/news/2021/05/01/philly-fighting-covid-andrei-doroshin/
[3] This piece sources heavily upon the podcast “Half Vaxxed” produced by Nina Feldman at her team at WHYY. Facts and quotes are largely taken from the podcast, re-ordered to produce a re-reading of the piece’s conclusions. See https://whyy.org/programs/half-vaxxed/. This piece also references and quotes the Public Report on Philly Fighting COVID, Inc. issued by the City of Philadelphia Office of the Inspector General on March 8th, 2021. https://www.phila.gov/media/20210308093731/Philly-Fighting-COVID-Report-of-Investigation.pdf
[4] Murrell, David. 1/25/2021, 5:43 p.m. Philadelphia Health Department Severs Relationship with Philly Fighting COVID, Philadelphia Magazine. https://www.phillymag.com/news/2021/01/25/philly-fighting-covid-health-department-sever-relationship/
[5] Marin, Max, Feldman, Nina and Yu, Alan. 1/30/2021. Philadelphia Deputy Health Commissioner resigns over Philly Fighting COVID messages. WHYY. https://whyy.org/articles/philadelphia-deputy-health-commissioner-resigns-over-philly-fighting-covid-messages/
[6] Whether an ethics of bidding is possible or even relevant during an emergent pandemic is an open question.
[7] FEMA. 5/26/2021. FEMA’s Role at Philadelphia Vaccination Centers Comes to a Successful End on May 25th. https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20210525/femas-role-philadelphia-vaccination-centers-comes-successful-end-may-25th
[8] Bailey, Moya. “They Aren’t Talking about Me. . . .” Crunk Feminist Collective (blog), March 14, 2010. www.crunkfeministcollective.com; Bailey Moya. 2021. Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance. New York: NYU Press.
[9] Du Bois, W. E. B. 1935. Black Reconstruction in America 1860 – 1880: An Essay Toward a History of the part which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America. New York: Russell & Russell.
[10] https://www.investopedia.com/average-credit-scores-by-race-5214521
[11] There are many more examples in The New York Times. e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/25/realestate/blacks-minorities-appraisals-discrimination.html
[12] Tanenbaum, Michael. 3/8/2021. Series of red flags during city’s Philly Fighting COVID partnership detailed in inspector general’s report. PhillyVoice. https://www.phillyvoice.com/philly-fighting-covid-report-doroshin-vaccine-testing-contract/
[13] Feldman, Nina. 9/22/2021. “Watch a Man’s Feet.” Half-Vaxxed. WHYY. https://whyy.org/transcript-watch-a-mans-feet-half-vaxxed/ see also. Feldman, Nina. 6/9/2020. Black Doctors Consortium wins city’s first coronavirus testing bid. https://whyy.org/articles/black-doctors-consortium-wins-citys-first-coronavirus-testing-bid/
[14] Feldman, Nina. 9/1/2021. Sprezzatura. Half-Vaxxed. WHYY. https://whyy.org/episodes/ep-2-sprezzatura/
[15] Feldman, Nina. 2/11/2021. Philly Fighting COVID CEO Doroshin banned from working in Pa. WHYY. https://whyy.org/articles/philly-fighting-covid-andrei-doroshin-ag-shapiro-complaint/
Alex Chen is an MS3 at the Perelman School of Medicine.
