“This is not America in the 21st century,” I keep whispering to myself as image after image of police beating protesters plays on the screens. This must be Hungary in 1956, or Selma in 1965, or Tiananmen Square in 1989.

But of course, this is America.

We are in the middle of a pandemic. The Minneapolis police just killed a Black man remorselessly on camera. America is aching and exhausted from centuries of continued violence against minorities and four years of overt expansion of racist social practices and structures from the heights of leadership. We are openly displaying the underbelly of America that we don’t see in our hagiographic textbooks and state-approved high school curricula. This is the violence that Black America faces every day. This is the state violence that can come down on you at the drop of a hat, for no obvious reason except that the color of your skin and the texture of your hair is different than the person sitting next to you.

Is it just me, or are there not clear similarities between the management of the pandemic and the management of these protests? Instead of acknowledging the problem, we are faced with brute denial. Instead of taking responsibility, our leadership casts blame on the very people who are hurting the most. Instead of calling for new action, all the nations resources are mobilized to maintain the status quo. Just as we have a large population that will refuse to wear a mask to defend the lives of all Americans, so too do we have tens of thousands of people who are not able to see the fragility, fear, and danger that comes with being a Black person in America. All of it is rooted in a profound lack of basic human empathy.

Many leaders, like Civil Rights stalwart, Rep. John Lewis try to tamp down the rage and emphasize nonviolence and civic action. The debates from fifty years ago rise again like hot phoenixes right there in the comments to his Twitter post—how long do we wait? How patient must we be? Why do the bodies of Black and Brown protesters have to remain nonviolent while white power wields whatever weapon is at hand? 

Meanwhile, a simple virus for which there is no treatment continues, unaddressed by the so-called leader of the free world. I fear there is no Apollo Program behind the scenes working on a solution.

Note

[1] CDC, “Excess Deaths Associated with COVID-19,” May 30, 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm. Videos taken from media sources can be viewed on the JPY website.