In a tumultuous 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and simmering racial protests have exposed gaps between the ideal America some of its citizens see and the real America on the ground. Few voices have captured that difference more clearly than Merck & Co.'s CEO Ken Frazier—and now Frazier is calling on corporate America to take a stand. 

In a Tuesday panel convened by Forbes, Frazier highlighted the role that private corporations play in driving societal change and said it was time for industry to step up to the plate to "stabilize society" amid rising economic inequity and racial injustice. 

"I think it's really critically important for us to not only think about what’s good for our individual businesses but what’s also good for the societies in which our businesses operate," Frazier said. "What makes me worry ultimately, is when people don't believe in our institutions, and they don't believe in our system, they don't believe there’s fundamental fairness, then I think our society begins to come apart.”

As COVID-19 continues to hamstring the U.S. economy, Frazier pointed out racial gaps in employment and healthcare for Black Americans, saying companies need to do more to level the playing field.

"I think what (COVID-19) has done is it’s forced us to confront the huge disparities that characterize our society and should cause us to take bold actions aimed at achieving social justice and health equity and other things of that nature," Fraizer said. 

In the days after the Minneapolis police shooting of George Floyd in May, Frazier—one of few Black executives in biopharma—has emerged as a leading voice, and moral authority, in the industry's response to systemic racism and the COVID-19 pandemic. 

RELATED: Merck CEO Frazier says COVID-19 vaccine hype a 'grave disservice' to the public

In July, as drugmakers and Trump administration officials trumpeted the possibility of a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of 2020, Frazier said those officials were doing a "grave disservice" to the public by ignoring the scientific and logistical challenges to a nationwide rollout.

Merck itself is pursuing a COVID-19 vaccine that entered phase 1/2 testing in September. 

“What worries me the most is that the public is so hungry, is so desperate to go back to normalcy, that they are pushing us to move things faster and faster,” Frazier said in an interview with Tsedal Neeley, the Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. “Ultimately, if you are going to use a vaccine in billions of people, you’d better know what that vaccine does.” 

On the scientific front, Frazier highlighted that it typically takes several years or longer to develop vaccines. Merck won approval for its mumps vaccine after four years of research and development, and it took five and a half years to score an approval for Merck’s Ebola vaccine.

RELATED: With protests continuing, Merck CEO Frazier urges businesses to help bridge the racial equity gap

Where Frazier has truly shined, however, is in his comments against racial injustice in the U.S., re-sparked by protests over Floyd's killing that swept through most of the country's largest cities.

In an early June interview with CNBC, Frazier described the pent-up anger in the African-American community and how the community saw the now-widespread video of Floyd's death as “clearly inhumane.”

However, that wasn't the first time Frazier has spoken up about racism in America: He was the first executive to resign from President Donald Trump’s manufacturing council in August 2017 after the Charlottesville, Virginia, white supremacy rally. In Frazier’s resignation statement, he indirectly criticized the president for not taking a stronger stand against the event.