Fifty Shades of Black

This is America. The problems with our response to the pandemic reflect the problems of the country itself. Our health-care system is almost uniquely ill-suited to dealing with a national health crisis; preexisting health disparities, entrenched and deepened by decades of racism, cannot be erased overnight; state and local health departments desperately needed federal leadership they did not receive; the Senate has not entertained a longer-lasting economic-rescue package that would allow a more prolonged period of sheltering in place; states are facing a fiscal cliff. And yet, even though this health crisis reflects our nation’s political, social, and civic infrastructure, this plague has no consideration for morality. People partying in a pool may live while those protesting police brutality may die. People who assiduously followed the rules of social distancing may get sick, while those who flouted them happily toast their friends in a crowded bar. There is no righteous logic here. There is no justice in who can breathe easy and who can’t breathe at all.

Runner Boy Problems

And there’s a freedom in that, for it allows you to prioritize your own voice over the scolding one that speaks nothing but fear. It affirms that the voice asking to see your papers, or calling those in Minneapolis "thugs," or shouting out a warning "Move along now!" does not belong to you. It belongs to individuals who have been made minuscule and sharp by their addictions to white supremacy and systems of oppressions that are ambivalent about your goodness. In the end, these people and the systems they function in and control and are slaves to do not care if you are subservient or loud; they do not care if you are cooperative or resist; they do not care if you have a good job and qualifications and a license that says you live in this neighborhood and a huge smile and wide eyes. They only want to destroy you. And you never quite know for sure who “they” are. Until it’s too late to matter.

You learn, at some point, how to perform being non-threatening and you learn that often it matters less how well you perform and more whether the audience for said performance believes it. Or wants to believe it. Or is in the mood to believe it. Or woke up that morning and made a conscious decision not to believe it. And you think: “If it’s futile anyway, if I am powerless over the reception that I get, what does it matter how I approach the world?”

This week began for many with footage filmed by a black man of a white woman, Amy Cooper, frantically calling the police on him and alleging that he was threatening her. The black man, Christian Cooper, unrelated to Amy, can be heard speaking clearly and calmly as she constricts her voice in panic, performed or actually felt. As outrage over the video spread, much was made of Christian’s tone, which to many was a successful performance of being non-threatening. And when video footage of Christian surfaced showing him to be a bespectacled, fit, and erudite gay bird watching enthusiast, much was made of that, too. One thread of the response seemed, reasonably, to focus on the fact that Christian Cooper is attractive and interesting, a hero in a story that got off to an ugly start. Another thread, however, seemed to get stuck on the apparent dissonance of someone like him being seen as threatening. How could someone so “respectable” get mixed up in a situation like this? Because it doesn’t matter if you’re respectable.

Stories.

A statement from the Minneapolis Police Department released early Tuesday said the officers had responded to a report of a forgery in progress and found the suspect in his car. He stepped out of the car when he was ordered to, police said, but then physically resisted officers. "Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress," the statement said. "Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later."