“Racism and the Pandemic: Who is Safe? Who is Well?”

The following essay is based on a short talk I gave a few days ago as part of Iona College’s annual Week of the Peacemaker, a series of social justice events related to a different theme each year. This year’s Week of the Peacemaker uses the title above. I spoke as one of three faculty colleagues on a panel. Our panel organizer asked the three questions I paraphrase here:

1. Regarding racism and the pandemic — how, in the present circumstances, do these areas inform and shape each other?

2. Today who is safe? Who is well?

3. What are the next steps in addressing the entrenched and systemic racism in our society? What lessons could be learned from the pandemic and from the racial justice movement?

My essay:

Racism and the COVID-19 pandemic are two examples of what happens when you live in under authoritarian neoliberal capitalism. I will explain these three terms, but you can sum them up by saying that we have the bad luck to live in a society in which most power and survival are controlled by few, and many are oppressed and exploited. Neither the US nor its current president have caused this situation, but they both have made these problems worse.

Authoritarianism means a political regime in which an elite represses most of the population for example by denying free speech and government accountability (1).

Neoliberalism is raw capitalism with new rules starting about 1980 in which the owners of the economy have new ways of profiting (2). These include allowing corporations to further abuse workers, consumers, and the environment, and reduced government spending on human needs. Neoliberal corporations focus more on quick profits, and financial speculation, resulting in less pay for workers and more economic uncertainty (2).

Capitalism is a socio-economic system which separates most people from most property (3), and most property is then owned and controlled by very few. The powerful few enjoy wealth created by workers, which is then taken from workers via exploitation.

What does this have to do with racism and COVID-19? We hear repeatedly that we are all in the COVID-19 crisis together. That is a lie. There are many wonderful examples of people being helpful, courageous and considerate in dealing with COVID-19, trying to meet others’ human needs. But a new disaster hitting everyone on top of the disaster of authoritarian neoliberal capitalism means that many will suffer unnecessarily. Authoritarian neoliberal capitalism has increased inequality and moved society’s wealth further from most people to the upper class. During a few months of the pandemic, “America’s billionaires saw their wealth increase by 20%… as 45.5 million Americans lost their jobs” (4). Racism adds to this socio-economic inequality: before COVID-19, the typical black family with a head of household working full time had less wealth than the typical white family whose head of household was unemployed” (5).

Meanwhile the US public health system is sick. The chaos, dysfunction, and resulting suffering from the US government and corporate COVID-19 response is exposed as criminal when we realize that enormous resources, including wealth and power are wasted on ruling class projects falsely promoted as protecting national security. US military spending’s’ main purpose is to intimidate and harm in the interests of global big business. The US spends more on the military than 144 other countries combined and has 800 military bases in 80 countries (6). This actually harms most Americans’ security by provoking anger and violence around the world. A tiny portion of the money spent on these imperial projects, used for simple low-tech policies, would probably have saved most of those in the US who died. An early study found that U.S. “could have saved 36,000 lives if social distancing started 1 week earlier” (7) A study done months ago found that up to “99% of the Americans who died from this pandemic might have been saved by measures demonstrated by others to have been feasible” (8) A recent study estimated that “[u]niversal mask use could prevent nearly 130,000 deaths from Covid-19… in the United States through next spring” (9). The point is NOT that Americans are selfish and stupid. Some are, almost all are not. But even if we were all selfish and stupid, real political and economic democracy would have meant honest policies, and clear directions, which would mean more people would be careful and, more importantly, that first responders and all workers would not have to risk their lives unnecessarily. They would have needed information and equipment.

As geographer Harvey explains the big picture:

“Forty years of neoliberalism across North and South America and Europe had left the public totally exposed and ill-prepared to face a public health crisis of this sort, even though previous scares… provided abundant warnings… governments…had been starved of funding thanks to a policy of austerity designed to fund tax cuts and subsidies to the corporations and the rich.”(10)

Solutions are straightforward but require organized, mobilized social movements for socialism and justice. There are activist children emerging around the world, particularly on environmental issues, that, if they had power, would do much more to improve the human race’s condition than most of our “leaders”. This is not rocket science, and it doesn’t mainly depend on high-tech medical solutions, it’s about taking power from very few and making it something everyone has, so it is something nobody has.

References

1. Turner BS, editor. The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press; 2006.

2. Boffo M, Saad-Filho A, Fine B. Neoliberal capitalism: The authoritarian turn. Socialist Register 2019: The World Turned Upside Down? 2018;275–97.

3. Young TR, Arrigo B. The Dictionary of Critical Social Sciences. Boulder, CO: Westview Press; 1999.

4. Americans for Tax Fairness, Institute for Policy Studies — Program on Inequality. 3 Months Into Covid-19 Pandemic: Billionaires Boom As Middle Class Implodes [Internet]. Washington, D.C.: Americans for Tax Fairness and Institute for Policy Studies — Program on Inequality; 2020 Jun [cited 2020 Jun 21]. Available from: https://americansfortaxfairness.org/issue/3-months-covid-19-pandemic-billionaires-boom-middle-class-implodes/

5. Jones J. The racial wealth gap: How African-Americans have been shortchanged out of the materials to build wealth [Internet]. Economic Policy Institute. 2017 [cited 2020 Oct 25]. Available from: https://www.epi.org/blog/the-racial-wealth-gap-how-african-americans-have-been-shortchanged-out-of-the-materials-to-build-wealth/

6. Artiga-Valencia R. The U.S. Spends More on Its Military Than 144 Countries Combined [Internet]. National Priorities Project. 2019 [cited 2020 Oct 25]. Available from: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2019/07/18/us-spends-more-its-military-176-countries-combined/

7. Chappell B. U.S. Could Have Saved 36,000 Lives If Social Distancing Started 1 Week Earlier: Study [Internet]. NPR.org. [cited 2020 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/21/860077940/u-s-could-have-saved-36-000-lives-if-social-distancing-started-1-week-earlier-st

8. Sebenius I, Sebenius JK. A faster response could have prevented most U.S. Covid-19 deaths [Internet]. STAT. 2020 [cited 2020 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/19/faster-response-prevented-most-us-covid-19-deaths/

9. Mandavilli A. The Price for Not Wearing Masks: Perhaps 130,000 Lives. The New York Times [Internet]. 2020 Oct 30 [cited 2020 Oct 30]; Available from: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/health/covid-deaths.html

10. Harvey D. Anti-Capitalist Politics in the Time of COVID-19 [Internet]. Jacobin. 2020 [cited 2020 Oct 25]. Available from: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/03/david-harvey-coronavirus-political-economy-disruptions/