For an explanation of why vaccinated people are still wearing masks, taking Covid-19 tests, and quarantining, even though their risk of hospitalization or death from the Omicron variant is minimal, look to Critical Race Theory.

Critical Race Theory, as the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund explains it, is a framework that says “systemic racism is part of American society.” It says that racism “is more than the result of individual bias and prejudice” and “is embedded in laws, policies and institutions that uphold and reproduce racial inequalities.”

To unsympathetic white people, that can sound a lot like excuse-making. To many black and Hispanic people, the theory can go too far toward robbing individuals of their agency — instilling victimhood in young people of color rather than teaching them about their own responsibility and possibility.

To my taste, Critical Race Theory too often veers into anticapitalism and a kind of unremitting negativity about America that seems unanchored from reality.

When it comes to statistics about who is vaccinated and who not, though, the numbers fit the Critical Race Theory explanation. The Kaiser Family Foundation parsing of state and federal data as of December 13, 2021, found that, in, say, California 69 percent of whites had been given at least one vaccine dose, and 59 percent of blacks and 57 percent of Hispanics had one.

In Massachusetts, 81 percent of whites had at least one vaccine dose, while 73 percent of blacks and 68 percent of Hispanics had one. In Colorado, 74 percent of whites had at least one vaccine dose, while among blacks, it was 65 percent, and among Hispanics, 40 percent.

Nationwide, 77 percent of Asians had at least one dose of vaccine, with whites at 58 percent, Hispanics at 56 percent, and blacks at 51 percent.

What explains lower vaccination rates among blacks? A New York Times news article discovered what the article described as “a fear that during these uncertain times they could not trust the government with their health.”

The Times said those interviewed “described their own experiences living in decrepit public housing projects or with the criminal justice system as leaving them doubtful they could trust the government.”

The government earned black distrust. It enforced racist legislation dating back to the Fugitive Slave Act. It funded “urban renewal” that functioned as “negro removal.” It advanced a welfare system that destroyed families by incentivizing unwed motherhood, encouraging dependency, and penalizing wealth accumulation and earned income. It operated a public school system that failed to educate minority children.

Who else doesn’t trust the government? Republicans. An October 2021 Kaiser Family Foundation Survey of unvaccinated adults found 60 percent of them identified as Republicans or leaning Republican, while 17 percent of the unvaccinated identified as Democrats or leaning Democrat.

There’s a temptation among fully vaccinated and boosted urban white liberals to fume in anger at the unvaccinated, whether those unvaccinated are urban minorities or rural Republicans, or even black rural Republicans.

While the elderly and immunocompromised are also considerations, concern about the adverse health consequences that unvaccinated people face explains a lot of the remaining Covid restrictions.

If the U.S. were a lot closer to 100 percent vaccinated and boosted, the worries about skyrocketing hospitalizations or deaths would be much less.

That’s where Critical Race Theory comes in. You don’t have to believe that the lower black vaccination rate is the result of some racist conspiracy by white supremacist public health officials.

I don’t think that’s the reason, any more than I think the lower Republican vaccination rates are the result of an anti-Republican conspiracy by left-wing public health officials.

The interesting questions are around what the government has done to lose the trust of citizens — and what, if anything, can be done to win it back.

Some skepticism of government is warranted. A nation of sheep-like order-followers is not conducive to freedom. Independent thinking is important. Trust is not the same thing as blind obedience.

Yet before dismissing Covid-19 as only a problem for the unvaccinated, or raging against the unvaccinated as the reason that vaccinated people are still masking and testing — it’s worth asking why they haven’t gotten a shot.

When people don’t trust their doctors or their political leaders, it’s a crisis of confidence. That is a long-term threat that will outlast the coronavirus.