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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 4/15/21

At the End of the COVID-19 Lockdown

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Dr. Lenore Daniels
Message Dr. Lenore Daniels

(Previously published at LAProgressive, April 12, 2021).

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Anything that has to do with black Americans is most definitely ignored by those who believe their interests aren't taken into consideration. And they don't need to be gun-toters or right-wing militia members to be used by those whose goal is to turn fears and hate of black Americans in particular into a campaign slogan.

MEGA! MEGA! MEGA! Black lives matter, but what about us?

Politicians and civic leaders know enough about US history to stir up white indignation, to use this indignation to write narratives in which the victims of conquest, genocide, enslavement, and internment are parasites, living off the achievements of the real people who built this country. Justify the violence inflicted upon the freeloaders, and in the resulting centrifuge, who notices how blacks are no longer entitled to a hearing. Guilty! Guilty! So say the "victims"! The success of the ministers of propaganda goes undetected, along with the disappearance of historical injustices and their legacy in present day against black people.

So in the year of the COVID pandemic, America didn't even press the pause button: Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Jacob Blake, Andre Hill. And now add Daunte Wright. The insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, showed the world what black people knew that anti-democratic forces, consisting, often of "victims," armed with guns, ropes, Confederate flags, Trump flags! And a legacy of white privilege!

Even so, how many of the insurrections were arrested on the spot? And if you answer, "0," then, why not? There were plenty in violation of some serious laws. Plenty committing violence...

Occasionally, a white American, a neighbor, a fellow citizen, informs me about how tired they've become of hearing even the word, "racism." It's all "overblown." As individuals, no one is a racist. So I don't bother to explain. No one benefits from hundreds of years of white supremacy.

So when I came across The Nation's justice correspondent Elie Mystal's article, "I'm Not Ready To Reenter White Society," I read it with a great deal of interest.

"I've said, here and elsewhere, that one of the principal benefits of the pandemic is how I've been able to exclude racism and whiteness generally from my day-to-day life."

I, too, recognized the benefits of the pandemic lockdown, even though I could picture people dying without the benefit of anyone they knew, any family or friends, at their side. But at 67 years old, I thought it would be an opportunity to reflect on how far I've come and what more needs to be done on my part to end the tyranny of the crazies. At least in terms of outside exposure to racism and whiteness, my mobility was curtailed; I went out only when necessary, to medical appointments and the stores near by. But, let's just say my period of "reflection" wasn't as contemplative as I had anticipated.

Mystal writes that he could "more or less only deal with whiteness" when he wanted to do so. He hadn't been driving or shopping in person. "White people," Mystal continues, "haven't improved; I've just been able to limit my exposure to them." Not that most of his interactions with white people are "bad," he writes. It's just that he's been able to choose being in white society. And prior to this past year of the pandemic that choice was a "privilege" he didn't have before.

Mystal knew the lockdown wouldn't last. However changed the nation after the murder of George Floyd and the coming together of a rainbow of people engaging in Black Lives Matter protests throughout the country, Mystal is saddened that his time in his "white-free castle" is coming to an end. Ephemeral was his freedom from racism.

"A weekend trip to CVS showed me that I'm not ready. I'm not ready to go back to accepting that, in a diverse and pluralistic society, some white people are allowed to just impose their implicit biases on the world, and the rest of us have to suck it up."

Last year, his wife wanted to venture out to CVS to buy Easter candy for the children. Once the family reaches the store, Mystal drops his wife off and takes the children for a ride. When he returns to the CVS parking lot, he and the children wait for his wife. "I'm idling in the parking lot, near the door, when another car pulled up," he writes. The driver stops in front of the store. She's an older white woman. Mystal sees a teenage black female near by. Sixteen, maybe. She's on her cellphone.

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Activist, writer, American Modern Literature, Cultural Theory, PhD.

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