Readers following my blog lately will know that I’ve been commenting on two huge, powerful forces in the world right now — forces that intersect and are impossible to ignore: The pandemic and the recent flood of resistance to racism.
The outrageous murder of George Floyd was the anti-racism flashpoint, but protestors worldwide have also been pointing out how Black lives matter — literally — far beyond police violence and racism.
As bad as COVID-19 is for the population at large, it’s even worse for people of colour who have long suffered inadequate medical care, housing, nutrition and other human injustices and indignities in predominantly white countries. The pandemic is simply shining a spotlight on it all.
An excellent article in The Guardian recently highlights these issues. For instance, when Trump’s health secretary was asked on CNN why the U.S. death rate from COVID-19 is so high (Americans make up less that 5 percent of the world’s population but nearly one third of COVID-19 deaths), he replied that America, unfortunately, has a diverse population, and Black Americans and minorities “in particular” had what he called significant underlying diseases.
This was an absurd statement, period. Worse, it was disturbingly racist to blame Black Americans for their higher death rate from COVID-19 because they have diabetes or high blood pressure.
In England, the COVID-19 death rate among people who are Black, Asian, and part of other minorities and ethnic groups, is much higher than it is for white Britons — 10-50% higher. Bangladeshi people living in England face the greatest risk of dying during the pandemic, while people from Black backgrounds are most likely to be diagnosed with the disease.
Here in Canada — where racism means we have 200 years of slavery to account for along with centuries of assimilation policies that have made First Nations second class — marginalized people are also suffering disproportionately from the pandemic.
In a largely ignored story, Indigenous Peoples have been hard-pressed to even find reliable information about how hard their communities are being hit by the disease on- and off-reserve. Temporary foreign workers who rely on the income they earn as farm labourers in Canada are struggling with travel bans, border closures and quarantines, while COVID-19 outbreaks in B.C. and Ontario have hit these workers hard.
For all ethnic minorities in Canada, systemic racism manifests itself in everything from biases in science and people being overlooked for promotions at work, to crowded living conditions, lower incomes, and unequal access to our educational and health care systems, even due to something as simple as language barriers. It often means living without the dignity and good health that come with equality.
The pandemic and the fallout from the killing of George Floyd have been shocking, but to many who track these issues, they’re not surprising. (See this excellent article in The Tyee about tackling racism during the pandemic that came out months before Mr. Floyd was killed.)
We are living in remarkable times. I’m heartened to see that IBM just dropped its face-recognition (read: racial profiling) products. In B.C., we’ve added a course on Black history to the school curriculum. But we have much more work to do.
With our new circumstances and new awareness, we’re looking at an unprecedented opportunity to effect deep and lasting change so that equality, justice and fairness triumph over inequality and the many illnesses it brings that have been festering for centuries.
Real, fundamental changes are long overdue. Lip service and passive acknowledgement just won’t cut it.
I wonder what our world will look like six months, or even a year from now.
Will we have the courage — and will we have done the hard work — to make the changes we need?
Daily atmospheric CO2 [Courtesy of CO2.Earth]
Latest daily total (June 8, 2020): 416.30 ppm
One year ago (June 9, 2019): 414.31 ppm
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