The pandemic should be a metaphor for Whites to grasp the plague that is racism
Covid-19 can strike and kill any of us without our seeing it coming, without any warning, without our engaging in any risky behavior. We can get struck down by it regardless of how good, how caring, how conscientious or even how deferential we may be acting toward it. Covid-19 is on the loose in the environment we all must navigate through, threatening our lives every minute of the day whenever we step outside our homes, and even some times when we remain inside. The risk of a lethal exposure to the virus in any given moment may be low, but it never goes away. It's a fear that can never be dismissed and, four months into this, we desperately want for it to go away
Most of us are having real trouble adjusting to a reality that leaves us constantly vulnerable to a potentially deadly viral encounter. African Americans in this nation, no matter who they may individually be, no matter how carefully they manage the risks posed to them, have always dealt with an invisible threat to their lives, one that can attack and devastate them without any notice. And they have dealt with that threat every day of their lives. They live, and die, with racism as an ever present pandemic.
And finally, video footage has started to surface that documents the daily threat to African American lives in graphic, horrific, and undeniable detail, like some kind of "black light" that illuminates the usually invisible, to whites that is, contagion that stalks and strikes them down. But so many in White America choose to view it as isolated incidents, stray rotten apples in otherwise healthy barrels. White America handles the racism pandemic the way Donald Trump handles Covid-19; ignore it and maybe it will go away, "magically" so to speak. How is that working?
Racism will not go away. It continues to spread and kill and will not be eradicated until we marshal the full will of the American people to defeat it. And that means White America has to care, and up until now there is no reason to believe that we are taking racism any more seriously than spring break revelers on Florida beaches took Covid-19. How many more years can Black Americans be expected to live with the consequences of White relative indifference before rage boils over? Yes, rage is often "irrational", but what else is left when all rational efforts barely cause a ripple on the White societal pool of omnipresent complacency?
