For many people across the world, the past 12 months have been among the most challenging faced in their lifetimes. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we experience and understand our lives and those of others. One striking feature of COVID-19 has been its disproportionate adverse effects on individuals from under-represented minority groups in terms of both morbidity and mortality. This has occurred amidst, and also contributed to, a societal backdropparticularly in the United Statesof intense discussion over whether racial and ethnic inequities across this and other domains of life have been systematically reinforced through political-economic, institutional and cultural structures, practices and presentations. Referred to as structural racism (https://www.aspe ninstitute.org/blog-posts/structural-racism-def inition/), it has been argued that this phenomenon is a social and cultural crisis as pressing and demanding of attention as the COVID-19 health crisis. The impact of these COVID-19 related events has most definitely impacted the scientific literature. A simple PubMed search of the terms 'child mental health' and 'COVID-19' yields 614 articles since January 2020. At the same time, although smaller in number, a similar search of 'child mental health' and 'racism' returns more articles in 2020 than in any previous year. It is interesting and informative, therefore, to think about how the JCPP, with its rigorous scientific approach and clinical focus, should respond to the intersection of these events. Given the recency of COVID-19, definitive evidence for how the virus and associated government-imposed disease-control measures will affect child mental health will likely require months, if not years to understand, in any meaningful way (Sonuga-Barke, 2021). However, by turning the spotlight on health disparities, the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted me to reflect broadly on how our field of child psychology and psychiatry handles race and ethnicity and whether its practices, including those of JCPP, are affected by, or even reinforce, the structural factors thought to perpetuate inequities between groups. I will focus on 3 main areas: how race and ethnicity are routinely handled in the literature; methodological challenges to the equitable handling of these factors; and where we go from here.