NOTE: On the one-year anniversary of COVID-19 in New Jersey, we will publish several opinion pieces about our experiences over the past year. Today, a professor writes about how the pandemic affected Black and brown communities. Thursday, a teacher writes about how she endured a year of teaching at home.
By Elise C. Boddie
My grandmother used to say “there’s something good in everything.” That’s hard to imagine, considering the past year. With the death toll from the pandemic now standing at over half a million, the scope of human loss is unfathomable, like a math equation that leads to infinity.
It was not immediately clear how vulnerable Black and Latinx people were. At first, some of us thought we couldn’t get the virus. Mixed messages from the government and the news didn’t help. Before long, the numbers showed COVID-19′s devastation and that Black and brown people, especially in the cities, lay directly in its line of fire.
Then there was the cruel logic of the lockdown: How does a family of five live safely in one bedroom? How do we protect people in nursing homes and the essential workers who drive the buses, cook and deliver the food, and tend to the sick? Many without insurance stayed home when they became ill, rather than risk the piles of bills that would come from a trip to the hospital.
Others who made it to the hospital died alone. Soon it seemed everyone was dying as bodies overwhelmed hospital morgues and funeral homes. Still, there could be no proper homegoing services during the lockdown. Even in death, things were not the same.
Summer, one of the hottest on record, brought more misery, city residents without air conditioning were especially vulnerable. Some kept their windows shut out of safety concerns, trapping heat inside their apartments. Before COVID-19, people could have gathered at city cooling centers. They could have gone to air-conditioned malls or movie theatres. But with everything closed, there was no place for relief.
Fifty-two studies show that Black and Latinx people have suffered the brunt of COVID-19. The truth, however, is that all of this was foreseeable if those in power had wanted to pay attention. For decades we’ve had disparities in healthcare, in co-morbidity factors, in wages, in education. According to some estimates, 19,000 Black Americans would not have died from COVID-19 if not for systemic racism. Black and brown lives have long been precarious. COVID-19 just laid bare what America must have known but would not see.
Until the murder of George Floyd. We saw the video of the policeman — I will not say his name — kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck, crushing the life out of him as he called for his long-dead mother from the brink of his early grave. 8 minutes and 46 seconds exposed the two Americas: one of aspirations just within reach and the other of dreams dried up, like a raisin in the sun.
But back to my grandmother — because then something happened. Our grief spilled into the streets and it flowed and flowed. Millions marched and protested in cities, small towns, suburbs. Suddenly, Black Lives Mattered and the country turned its attention, ever so slightly, to the racial divides that have haunted us for generations.
In September schools remained closed. Native American, Black, and Latinx children have been the most disadvantaged: One in three do not have access to high-speed internet. The hours of lost learning time and the social and emotional costs of being out of school will be steep. School is an early detection system for abuse and a safety net for families without food. Without it, children in need fly under our radar. Women with children have disproportionately shouldered the challenges of home-schooling by not working outside the home. For low-income women who have to work, however, that has not been an option.
By the time the holidays came, a quarter-million people were dead. Unwilling to bear the loneliness, some traveled to see family and friends despite the warnings and the risks. Others decided that being together meant staying apart. Some did socially-distanced celebrations in backyards or on porches, trying to wrest some normalcy from the abnormal.
We saw the first vaccination in December, followed by news that there was not enough for everyone and that more contagious variants were on the horizon. People began to cheat the system by lying about their eligibility. Wealthy people flooded registration hotlines, taking up more than their share of scarce appointments. Community clinics in Black neighborhoods around the country were suddenly full of white people.
Distrust of the vaccine has run high in Black and Latinx communities. According to a Fall 2020 report by UnidosUS, the NAACP, and the Covid Collaborative, just 14% of African Americans and 34% of Latinx American trusted the safety of the vaccine. The historical trauma of the Tuskegee experiment — when Black men were purposely denied treatment for syphilis — is partly to blame. Another problem is transportation, as many vaccination centers are in places that cannot be reached without a car. Thus, those being hit the hardest by COVID-19 have been the least likely to get vaccinated.
2020 could not have ended soon enough. But have we learned anything? Are we more compassionate, more forgiving, more likely to see ourselves in others? To end where I began, that would be consistent with my grandmother’s theory that there’s something good in everything. Sometimes I believe that. Other times I’m not so sure.
Elise Boddie is a professor of law, Henry Rutgers Professor and Judge Robert L. Carter Scholar at Rutgers University. She is also the founding Newark director of Rutgers University’s Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice.
Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.
Here’s how to submit an op-ed or Letter to the Editor. Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow us on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and on Facebook at NJ.com Opinion. Get the latest news updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.com’s newsletters.