After witnessing yet another inhumane murder of a Black man at the hands of police, rage permeated across the country. Smoke plumed over city streets populated by peaceful protestors, looters with varied motives, news media, and law enforcement. Mayors of Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, New York and more, stood staunchly behind the right to protest and the need to contain COVID’s spread.
Just two weeks earlier, and in some of the very same cities that saw protest as a result of George Floyd’s murder, throngs of protestors, a significant majority of them White and middle-to-upper class, poured onto steps of city halls to voice their desire that businesses re-open for the sake of the economy. These campaigns and protests appeared to take shape under the guise of an economic necessity.
In Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin, Washington, and more, some reopen protestors waved Confederate flags and held signs emblazoned with Swastikas. These protests were found to have been catalyzed, in part, by The Proud Boys, a racist yet savvy group of White nationalists operating in new ways to move the country toward a racist agenda.
It is hardly a stretch to see the images of looting displayed across the nation’s television and computer screens on May 30, 2020, as reactions to the same extreme white nationalists present at some of the reopen events. For it was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who noted: “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed;” and later, after noting that white complacency toward oppression is the singular most dangerous threat to American society that “a riot is the voice of the unheard.” His point was not that rioting is justified, but the inevitable outcome of a society that continuously oppresses.
What King also noted and that is becoming more and clearer and dangerously true is that oppression occurs even by well-meaning people and institutions if they are not actively seeking anti-racist agendas. For instance, on May 29, 2020, The Centers for Disease Control hosted a nation-wide phone call with presidents and vice presidents of academic institutions focused on best practices to bringing students back to campuses while reducing the risk of spreading COVID-19. While the presentation itself was helpful, the majority of it focused on concerns that would be central to residential colleges, not community or vocational colleges.
The worries about protests leading to COVID outbreaks, bringing students back to schools are similar in their problematic frames. They not only see COVID and institutional racism as separate issues, but they also see a return to normal from a perspective that continues to dismiss the importance of focusing on those areas and institutions that serve communities that have consistently been attacked by institutional racism.
For instance, there is every reason for community colleges to be the foremost concern about CDC guidelines and federal funding from CARES act. For the students at community colleges overwhelmingly work day-to-day at jobs and live in neighborhoods of close proximity—they are particularly vulnerable to COVID. As a result, is clear when we consider the intersection of education, poverty, and housing, COVID responses need to consider race a lens that assists in prioritizing action. But it is an American tradition not to consider African-American bodies and experiences as a point of focus. We know this from the simple fact that the killing of Black men by people in authority is a centuries-old practice. We know this because reopen protestors are voicing an opinion that puts African-American bodies more at risk. One has to wonder how many reopen protests would have occurred if COVID affected those using computer screens more than any other population.
